The Three Kinds of People Who Live in the United States

[applegrove]

The Three Kinds of People Who Live in the United States

by Marina Koren at the Atlantic

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/10/the-three-kinds-of-people-who-live-in-the-united-states/280799/?utm_source=SFFB

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The researchers used self-reported information from nearly 1.6 million people collected over 12 years for 48 states (excluding Alaska and Hawaii) and the District of Columbia. They employed a commonly used personality scale to measure participants on their levels of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience, as well as separate measures to gauge opinion on politics, social issues, leisure interests and music preferences. When a given state is said to be high in neuroticism, for example, that is to say that the mean level of that trait derived from a sample of that state's residents is high compared with the mean levels of the trait from samples of residents from other states. State-level factors like economic, social, health, and religious trends, along with census data, were also included in the analysis.

Here's what they found:

The "Friendly and Conventional" region. The first region features the states of Middle America, including South Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa, known as the "red" states. People here ranked highly in levels of extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness, moderately low in neuroticism, and very low in openness. Residents of the region tend to be "sociable, considerate, dutiful, and traditional," the researchers write. They are predominantly white with low levels of education, wealth, and social tolerance, and tend to be more religious and politically conservative than people outside of the region. They are also less healthy compared with other Americans.

The "Relaxed and Creative" region. The second cluster consists of West Coast states, Washington, Oregon, and California. Its personality profile is marked by low extraversion and agreeableness, very low neuroticism, and very high openness. Cultural diversity and alternative lifestyles are high, and residents are politically liberal and healthy, both mentally and physically. This region is richer, has more residents with college degrees, and is more innovative than other areas. These states cast fewer votes for conservative presidential candidates and are less religious compared with others. Here, the study's authors write, people value tolerance, individualism, and happiness.

The "Temperamental and Uninhibited" region. The third and final grouping comprises of mid-Atlantic and Northeast states like Maine, Pennsylvania, and New York—the "blue" states. The region is low in extraversion, very low in agreeableness and conscientiousness, very high in neuroticism, and moderately high in openness. People here, the researchers say, are "reserved, aloof, impulsive, irritable, and inquisitive." Residents are politically liberal and less religious, and are disproportionately college-educated individuals, older adults, and women. A good chunk of the "passionate" and "competitive" residents are leaving the area, according to census data, and heading south or southwest.




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[NuclearDem]

1. 1) People who are good at math 2) People who aren't

[hifiguy]

2. A. The True Believers

B, The Empirical Skeptics. I was born one of nature's skeptics

[Tipperary]

3. California low in neuroticism?

Now that is funny.

[Hortensis]

6. I'm a transplanted Californian. We really are more relaxed, open,

positive out there, even though without the Bible Belt comforts of godly living here and hereafter which make those people the happiest overall.

A bare-bones definition of neuroticism is "a fundamental personality trait in the study of psychology characterized by anxiety, fear, moodiness, worry, envy, frustration, jealousy, and loneliness." It's more complex than that, though. Northeasterners aren't actually unhappy, and this trait can make people function better in pressure environments, including taking knocks well. Conservatives overall tend to be more anxious and fearful than liberals in any region.

As for all the niceness of the "Friendly and conventional" areas, it's real but generally speaking only applies to people they see as their own. Others they tend to have a very dark view of. Many unhappy square pegs escape these regions to live elsewhere.

Interesting to me in the maps is what Muriel points out. "Relaxed and creative" is seen along the east coast as well, to a lesser degree. A function of less insularity, less conformity on coasts maybe.

[Ex Lurker]

4. In the reddest red state, a third or more of the residents are blue, and vice versa

You can break it down by county or city and get more homogeneity, but residents of rural California will have more in common with residents of rural Oklahoma than they will with San Franciscans. And a Tulsa university professor would feel more at home in Berkeley than in Ardmore, OK.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. The words describing the regions are poor; for instance, Texas is in "Temperamental and Uninhibited"

more than the other categories:



and "Relaxed and Creative" is more than just west coast states.

[betterdemsonly]

7. Minnesota and Iowa are not red states

and Texas is not blue. This is a group of researchers who created a poll for traits that don't correlate to anything.