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I can tell you this much ~ I get crankier than Hell when I'm cold, and it amazes me that people can live in places like Michigan.
Pacific Northwest isn't that cool ~ or warm ~ but it's shortage of blue skies affects people than the mass is willing to admit. And while I can't speak for the rest of Oregon, Portlanders are known to be friendly in a stand-back sort of way.
It may be one of the factors, but by no means the only one. For instance in Britain northerners thend to be warmer than southerners, even though the North is colder.
I agree with your impressions...but I still think you'd have difficulty showing an absolute relationship between warm climate and friendly inhabitants...I just think it's too complex to define. Certainly Australia has a relatively warm climate, and a generally laid-back, informal, "friendly" population....for the most part. But Sudan and Somalia and Yemen ALSO have warm climates....and I'm not sure how they're regarded by most visitors, but I don't recall these places being referred to as notably 'visitor-friendly'...at least not at first glance. A century or so ago, Tahitians were famously friendly to foreign visitors...while Fijians regularly made "dinner" out of shipwrecked foreigners....yet BOTH cultures shared similar, near-ideal, warm climates.
Rural Montana and North Dakota (cold places) are probably "friendlier" overall, than Miami or Houston (warm places)....yet I'm not sure what inferences you'd draw from this, or that everyone would even agree. In addition to climate, there are a lot of OTHER differences in these places...
Yeah, anywhere in the Middle East doesn't seem particularly friendly. I think you could correlate this with proximity to the equator. It seems like countries close to the equator have much more civil unrest, corrupt governments, poverty, etc. Places near the equator tend to be warmer so you're probably right.
Yeah, anywhere in the Middle East doesn't seem particularly friendly. I think you could correlate this with proximity to the equator. It seems like countries close to the equator have much more civil unrest, corrupt governments, poverty, etc. Places near the equator tend to be warmer so you're probably right.
Basically, the thinking among antropologists, etc., in former years was that a temperate climate simply 'forced' people to be 'on their toes', and gave rise to invention, coping skills, etc, in order to 'deal with' the environment. Life in the temperate zones was never EASY, but with a little imagination and problem-solving, man could prosper.
The tropics was too 'easy' to force such adaptation..(there, you could live a good life WITHOUT it)...and the polar region (North) was simply so hostile to life that civilization never rose above bare survival..(the SOUTH polar region, of course, was inaccessible to primitive man, and he never reached there, so the comparison there is 'moot').
Whether this is altogether true is debatable. Certainly the tropics have given birth to SOME great civilizations in the past...(the Khmers, the Incas, the Mayas, various groups in India and Indonesia)...but just as certainly, "bad" things happen there too....diseases are more deadly, predators more dangerous, etc. Even bacteria are more active in hot climates. The temperate zones, too, had some rather primtive nomads, but all-in-all, I think the basic 'theory' still holds..."High tech" culture is overwhelmingly a product of the temperate zone.
Don't know how much truth there is in any of this, (or how politically-correct it may sound), but it's probably safe to say that the 'inventiveness' and 'adaptation' forced upon the residents of temperate climates by their changing environment and weather, gave rise to MODERN technology...The tropics ARE, of course, a place 'bursting with life'....but it's also a place in many ways hostile to progress. Things..(both bad things and good things)...just 'happen' faster in the tropics, as opposed to more temperate regions....and the arctic, once again, is SO harsh that no one had time to 'invent' much...they were focused on surviving.
In terms of openness or general friendliness- The colder the climate the colder the people or the warmer the weather the warmer the people? What's your opinion on this, especially those who have lived in both climates?
I think people who live in colder climates are more open and friendly then people in warmer climates
This is a subject I've thought about a lot since I had a similar observation....with some caveats.
I'm from Minnesota and have lived here for all my 48 years so I think I'm somewhat qualified to speak about Minnesota from the cold weather point of view.
It's a complicated issue...but generally I don't think it has as much to do with the people as the enviroment at the time. In the summer in my own neighborhood (surburban type) we're all outside in the yard, neighbors walking by on the sidewalk etc... We tend to socialize much more due to just seeing each other. I can't count how many times we'll see one of our neighbors outside doing something or another, or just walking by for pleasure and we'll yell a greeting, end up talking for a few minutes and tell them to come over for a drink later in the evening or to sit around the fire ring and shoot the bull. The warmer weather is just so much more condusive to being happy, in a good mood and wanting to enjoy yourself with others.
On the other hand, when it's cold/wintery out...you drive home from work, put the garage door down, go into the house and thats it for the evening folks...lol. You might do more reading, watching TV, playing games with the family etc..., but you definately do less spontaneous interacting with others than you do in the summer. We do talk walks sometimes one the more mild temp days....but even then you don't see anybody out in their yard to talk to...and on teh occasion when you do it's just not condusive to stand around when it's 10 degrees out and chat for 15 minutes....you just put your head down and keep moving to stay warm.
I would guess this same observation would apply to Phoenix in July or August. You do your business outside and get inside as soon as possible.
There is the saying "changes in attitudes with changes in lattitudes". We definately have observed that in traveling too. People up north (colder climates generally) tend to be more uptight, wooden, all business like, in a hurry etc... People in the south/west (warmer climates generally) we've found to be more easy going, less hurried about life (other than driving), live and let live types.
Yeah, anywhere in the Middle East doesn't seem particularly friendly. I think you could correlate this with proximity to the equator. It seems like countries close to the equator have much more civil unrest, corrupt governments, poverty, etc. Places near the equator tend to be warmer so you're probably right.
Well, the Filipinos are very kindhearted people and they're from the tropics. Russians and Brits tend to be rude and they're from a cool climate.
I do agree that most of the undeveloped countries seem to be centered around the equator. But just because you're not a prosperous country doesn't mean that the civilians there would be demons.
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