Do you interact differently with people due to the place you live?

[Chaotic]

I think it's as simple as contrasting city folk with small town folk. Cities are more dangerous and you're just another face in the crowd. So naturally people tend to be less friendly. Small town folk see familiar faces everywhere they go. They feel safer and are hence more trusting and open to other in public.

[Sonic_Spork]

Originally Posted by Chaotic

I think it's as simple as contrasting city folk with small town folk. Cities are more dangerous and you're just another face in the crowd. So naturally people tend to be less friendly. Small town folk see familiar faces everywhere they go. They feel safer and are hence more trusting and open to other in public.

Yeah, but people in different cities--and small towns--can be very different.

DC people are NOTHING like Seattle or Portland people. Some cities retain a lot of character from ethnicities (like the Germans in Cincinnati) that settled them. Some celebrate the arts (Seattle), some are all business (Des Moines.) The people in them act differently.

And small towns in the deep south are nothing like small towns in the upper midwest.

Has anyone seen the thing about the super-famous violinist who posed as a panhandler in a DC train station, playing his unimaginably valuable instrument, and practically no one even paused to give him a second look? I questioned very much what would happen if he did so in a more artistic/friendly west coast city. And of course just think about other nations and how different they can be culturally in various regions.

[RazorRob305]

Originally Posted by Very Curious

For years I worked as a Software Trainer and traveled over 200 days a year, all over the United States, big cities and small, staying at hotels, instructing people on how to use our companies business software products. Being naturally curious, I used this opportunity to see the places and to learn more about the cities and states I visited, and get to know as many people as I could as I traveled. What an experience!

What really hit me is how drastically different the social culture is from one town to another. Sure the media and travel and relocations have some impact at creating similar behaviors and lifestyles across America, but only to a point. I still found the social and cultural norms vary greatly between one city to another.

As with any stereotype of course, all generalizations are not true all of the time but my years of traveling really made me believe regional stereotypes are true most of the time.

Pick a hundred people at random in a certain town spend time with them and watch how they interact with people and you will see lots of commonalities. The people in Macon GA were so different how they interacted with me and each other than our staff in Fort Lee New Jersey. Or the person in West Palm Beach FL is so different than the people in Tulsa OK, in general.

So do you think that you interact differently with people based on the town you live in now and where you grew up?

I lived most of my life in all parts of Florida, but now I'm in Nashville. Even though Nashville is nicer on the surface as far as people goes, you have a slower kind of mentallity here for the most part. Lots of times people won't get my humor here or think I'm speaking too fast and I have to repeat myself sometimes. So, in my own experience I do find that my social life has been affected living in a different area.

[BrnTmr4Brkfst]

As someone who lives in the NYC-metro but has a few road trips under his belt, I notice it but find it hard to adjust my behavior.

If I'm somewhere where you smile at strangers I'll smile back after I think it through. Probably looks really weird seeing my face go from instant suspicion to smiling. I get a lot better at this one the longer I've been somewhere it's the norm.

Strangers talking to me can be a bit uncomfortable, and I personally find the faux pleasantry of retail/food employees annoying most of the time.

Eye contact is also something I'm not really good at. My natural inclination is to avoid all unnecessary eye contact with strangers, probably makes me look a bit shifty outside my area.