There we are, the wallflowers at the party. We pretend to be vitally interested in the books on the host's shelf or our very own shoes, anything to avoid interacting with - eek! - other people. Maybe they're boring anyway, maybe they'll talk about us after we leave. Better to go home right now and just deal with the people we already know if not necessarily love.
That, fellow Marylanders, is how we stacked up in a recent "psychological map" of the U.S. that rated the states (including D.C.) on personality traits like sociability, affability and neuroticism.
Apparently we're rather disagreeable and neurotic, but that's OK, because we also don't impose our nasty, anxious selves on everyone. In fact, in the category of extroversion - which measures the extent to which we enjoy mingling and talking with others - Maryland scored dead last.
But Jason Rentfrow, the social psychologist and lead author of the study, assures me that there's no cause for worry about our state's collective personality. Although, given that he was born in Louisiana (highly agreeable) and raised in Texas (rather extroverted), maybe Rentfrow is just being nice.
"Extroversion is a broad personality factor, the extent to which someone enjoys being with other people, is talkative and sort of the life of a party," Rentfrow said yesterday, speaking from Cambridge - the one in the U.K. - where he is a professor. "Maybe people there keep more to themselves, they're more introspective. Maybe they're more selective with whom they'll interact. Maybe they enjoy more thoughtful conversation than small talk."
Or maybe we're just unfriendly.
Or maybe geography is destiny. Maryland, being a border state, seems like it should have the kind of dual personality that borrows elements from its Northern and Southern neighbors, but instead, it's always struck me as neither-nor, sort of sui generis. As in, we may not be as nice as Southerners supposedly are, but then, neither do we say the rudest thing but with a syrupy smile and, as writer Celia Rivenbark has hilariously noted, a breezy, self-absolving "bless your heart." But nor are we quite as openly hostile as our friends to the north reputedly are.
No, we keep whatever it is we are inside of us.
Renfrow's study, published in this month's Perspectives on Psychological Science, does validate some regional stereotypes, "the neurotic Woody Allen" of New York, "the laid-back California surfer dude." Midwestern and Plains states tend to score highly on niceness, while you can map something of a neurosis belt from the Northeast down to Louisiana.
