lightning, flash floods, television charac- ters, genetically unrelated groups, and elec- tric light have in common? According to Kanazawa, their communality is that they pose problems that are logically solvable. But what is logically correct about being politically liberal when living in unrelated groups or about being slightly more noc- turnal when having electric light? Further- more, there is no coherent computational mechanism that embraces “methods of in- duction . . . deductive reasoning . . . , anal- ogy, abstraction, and so forth” (Kanazawa, 2010, p. 283) and could thus be called a domain-specific general intelligence adap- tation. Finally, novelty violates require- ments for rational decision theory (includ- ing logic), as by definition relevant information is unknown or has to be esti- mated from small samples when encoun- tering novelty (Gigerenzer & Brighton, 2009). More plausible evolutionary re- sponses to novelty include simple heuris- tics (Gigerenzer & Brighton, 2009), open developmental programs (Mayr, 1974), and domain-specific adaptations supporting so- cial/cultural learning (instead of wide- spread individual reasoning) (Henrich & McElreath, 2003). To conclude, while evolved adapta- tions can and often do vary in certain pa- rameters, an individual-differences vari- able need not correspond to a specific underlying adaptation. Because g is an in- dividual-differences variable, it is uninfor- mative about whether a domain-specific adaptation for evolutionary novelty exists. This undermines Kanazawa’s (2010) inte- gration of evolutionary and differential psychology as well as his empirical evi- dence for his evolutionary theory of intel- ligence—all based on g— completely. In addition, neither “evolutionary novelty” nor “general intelligence” as a computa- tional mechanism is a coherent concept. 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Psy- chological Review, 113, 842– 861. doi: 10.1037/0033-295X.113.4.842 Correspondence concerning this comment should be addressed to Lars Penke, Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology, Department of Psychology, The University of Edinburgh, 7 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9JZ, United Kingdom. E-mail: lars.penke@ ed.ac.uk DOI: 10.1037/a0024719 Regional Differences in Personality Exist, But How Do We Get to Them? The Case of Conscientiousness Dustin Wood Wake Forest University Katherine H. Rogers University of British Columbia The existence of real differences in person- ality-related characteristics across geo- graphical regions is becoming increasingly clear. We believe that the research re- viewed by Rentfrow (September 2010) linking U.S. state averages of self-reported responses to personality surveys to a wide variety of other state-level variables makes the case for this broad general claim almost undeniable. However, many of the findings discussed by Rentfrow indicate some un- derappreciated complications in saying ex- actly how regions differ in their average personality characteristics. Here, we sug- gest that average regional self-ratings are likely to be less accurate measures of re- gional personality for some traits than for others. In our research (Rogers & Wood, 2010), we found stereotypes regarding how regions of the United States vary in personality traits to correspond substan- tially with Rentfrow, Gosling, and Pot- ter’s (2008) original estimates of regional differences in self-reported personality traits for openness to new experiences (r = .48), and neuroticism (r = .59). Further, we found that people tended to judge regions of the United States with denser populations to be more neurotic, and tended to judge regions that vote Democratic and have a greater percent- age of people living in cities as more open. In other words, these findings indi- cate that people may attain accuracy in inferring regional variation in openness and neuroticism by utilizing cues that accurately reflect regional personality. Our finding of highest accuracy for open- ness and neuroticism becomes more in- teresting in light of Rentfrow’s (2010) indications that regional differences in these traits have been more consistently estimated across three independent inves- tigations than have the remaining Big Five traits. On the other hand, our research found regional stereotypes for conscien- tiousness and Rentfrow’s (2010) esti- mates of average regional conscientious- ness to be substantially negatively related among regions within the continental United States (r =-.55). People judge regions with cooler temperatures and denser populations to be more conscien- tious, but people in such regions tend to judge themselves as less conscientious. How should we interpret this? The most conventional interpretation would likely be that regional stereotypes for conscien- tiousness are inaccurate. This conclusion follows if we accept average regional self-reports as the proper accuracy crite- rion for regional differences in personal- ity traits (e.g., Terracciano et al., 2005). However, an alternative explanation is that there may be more problems with the average regional self-ratings of con- scientiousness than with the regional ste- reotypes. In shifting to cross-national comparisons, average national self-rat- ings of conscientiousness have been neg- atively associated with national longevity estimates and income levels, and posi- tively related to national estimates of po- litical corruption, despite the fact that opposite associations between conscien- 917 December 2011 ● American Psychologist