Are folks in California actually laid back? Are New Yorkers really rude? Wonder no longer, because now a team of researchers has mapped personality clusters across the US and presented them in this fascinating set of maps.
Combining data from five surveys, totalling responses from about 1.6 million people, Peter J. Rentfrow and his colleagues recently published their results in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. They explain:
There is overwhelming evidence for regional variation across the United States on a range of key political, economic, social, and health indicators. However, a substantial body of research suggests that activities in each of these domains are typically influenced by psychological variables, raising the possibility that psychological forces might be the mediating or causal factors responsible for regional variation in key indicators.
There are three main clusters: friendly and conventional, relaxed and creative, and temperamental and uninhibited. It’s not clear that each state really adheres to one type, but it’s an interesting set of results, and kinda confirms some existing stereotypes. You can go read the original research here. [Journal of Personality and Social Psychology via Flowing Data]