Do you think people are "basically the same" from place to place? Or do they vary by region?

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There' a part of me that believes people are basically the same everywhere. At a deep level, I think we all have the same needs: for love, meaning, comfort, etc. But I have also noticed regional differences in areas I'm sensitive to. In Montana, I feel safe. Even though many people up there have guns, I do not worry I will be mugged on an average day up there. People also seem to be basically "honest," though I could be naive, as I only spend a week or two a year up there these days. In Iowa, it was similar. Fewer guns, perhaps, but people were generally honest. In Santa Barbara, where I spent six years in Graduate School, people were quite beauty-orinted. Even many of the street people were "good looking." But I never worked a job there where I sensed a lack of honesty or integrity. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, my experience has been different. People are more "Machiavellian" than anywhere else I've lived, including Chicago. Not most, but a greater PERCENTAGE than anywhere else I've lived. When I worked in Oakland, Ms Horse and I donated closes to the mother-and-child rehab program where I worked. I later saw those clothes not on the backs of the poor children I worked with, but on the Director's children. At my previous residence my live-in landlord accused Ms Horse and myself of "stealing her bassoon." Ms Horse and I looked at each other, confused. The bassoonist landlord found it moments later behind her BMW, where she had misplaced it while taking her groceries in. Some musicians here often "throw each other under the bus," in almost Trumpian fashion, when other musicians have "better connections." One cocaine-addicted preschool teacher I worked with was abusive to the children at said preschool, but did house-sitting at managers' places so she had their favor and would not get fired. I have seen different pay scales, based on race and ethnicity. The "intellectual hippy love dove" Bay Area of my early childhood days is long gone. It could be because I've lived here for a long time now, and have had more of a chance to see the "dark underbelly" of the Bay Area. But I hope you can see why I'm thinking of moving on. In what ways do you think people are "basically the same"? And in what ways do you think they differ by region? Or upbringing? Or twists of fate? Or anything else you can think of? I must be feeling better or I couldn't have written this tome.