Rentfrow, who is a lecturer in political and social sciences at the University of Cambridge, and his co-authors based their findings on responses to "The Big Five" test, a series of questions that assesses a respondent on five broad dimensions of personality: extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness. They used more than 600,000 responses to tests conducted on the Internet, tossing out possible repeat entries and correcting to match census figures.
Here's how Maryland placed in the other four categories: extroversion, 51st; agreeableness, 38th; conscientiousness, 35th; neuroticism, 17th, and openness, 10th.
The study makes for great reading, like horoscopes, but science-based, where you can find evidence of whatever regional characteristic you've already noticed or suspected. It's like that classic joke about heaven being where the police are British, the chefs are French, the mechanics are German, etc., and hell being where the Brits are the chefs, the French are the mechanics and the Germans are the cops.
North Dakota ranked first in extroversion and agreeableness? No wonder those farmers were so nice when I was out there, even though I was writing about all of them going bankrupt. Are the Mormons responsible for making Utah the least neurotic state? Is Washington, D.C., really the most open-minded?
And make of this what you will, but Alaska, a state recently much in the news on the coattails of its governor, Sarah Palin, scrapes bottom in every category: last in agreeableness and conscientiousness and nearly last in extroversion, neuroticism and openness.
Other than providing small talk for those parties people in other states enjoy more than we do, the study has some serious implications, Rentfrow said.
Neuroticism, for example, correlates with higher rates of heart disease and shorter life expectancies, he said, so states in the "neurosis belt" would be wise to look at ways of helping residents better manage their stress and anxieties. And, if you're a state that also scores high on openness, he said, that would indicate residents would be more amenable to alternative therapies.
There are also correlations between crime and personality traits, he said. "Places where crime is high, the people there score low on agreeableness. They're not forgiving, they're more skeptical," Rentfrow said.
The solution isn't that simple, of course - everyone be nice and crime will go down - because it's a chicken-and-egg thing.
"If you live in a place with high crime," Rentfrow said, "maybe you have a good reason to be more skeptical."
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