Oct 23, 2014 11:46 PM EDT By J Baulkman, UniversityHerald Reporter

New research suggests that nations with higher levels of compassion and openness score better when it comes to environmental sustainability.

Researchers from the University of Toronto demonstrated that a country's personality profile can predict its environmental sustainability records. While previous work has looked at how personality traits predict an individual's attitudes about the environment, this latest study takes the research to another level, examining how those traits play out across whole nations

"We used to think that personality only mattered for individual outcome, but we're finding that population differences in personality characteristics have many large-scale consequences," Jacob Hirsh, an researcher and assistant professor of Organizational Behavior & Human Resource Management, said in a statement..

The new study examined nation-level personality traits from a database of more than 12,000 people in 51 countries. National personality differences, reflecting average trait profiles of a country's citizens, were used to predict scores on the Environmental Performance Index (EPI). The EPI, developed at Yale and Columbia Universities, ranks countries across 22 environmental indicators, including Co2 emission levels, use of renewable energy, and ecosystem management.

Higher scores on the EPI, reflecting more environmentally sustainable practices, were positively correlated with national levels of two personality traits: Agreeableness, which reflects empathy and compassion, and Openness, which reflects cognitive flexibility and aesthetic appreciation. The same relationships were observed even when controlling for national differences in wealth, education, and population size.

Hirsh said these results highlight the psychological factors that can shape a nation's environmental policies.

"Not only can a person's attitudes about the environment be predicted from his or her personality traits, but the environmental practices of entire nations can be predicted from the personality profiles of their citizens," Hirsh said.

 The findings are detailed in the Journal of Environmental Psychology.

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