Associations between self-rated personality traits and automobile fatality rates across small geographic areas

Abstract

We explore how variation in fatal automobile crashes across small geographic areas is associated with geographic variation in self-rated psychological and behavioral characteristics. Specifically, estimates of ZIP-code-level automobile fatality rates were linked to a separate dataset comprising 2.8 million responses to a widely used self-report personality questionnaire. To control for an area's wealth and population density, associations were estimated at the slightly larger level of US Census ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs). Relationships were estimated using an intraclass adjustment method, where the estimated correlation between individual scores and ZCTA-level fatality rates was divid..