Page 8 - Internationalist Magazine 2013 66

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A New View of Three Americas

Key Regions Exhibit Distinct Personality Traits

According to a new study of multinational collaboration from researchers at the

University of Cambridge, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University

of Helsinki, the United States of America may be divided by three different

psychological proiles.

The paper, which was recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology, looked at 1.5 million responses gathered from ive different online

surveys and assessed respondents across ive key personality traits: Openness,

conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

They then clustered the traits together to see which areas have the highest — and

lowest — populations with these traits.

Three distinct regions emerged: the “Friendly and Conventional” states in the

Midwest and South, “Related and Creative” states mainly on the West Coast, and

the “Temperamental and uninhibited” states on the East Coast and in Texas.

Friendly & Conventional Region

The Friendly & Conventional
Region (Blue): “The region

is deined by moderately

high levels of Extraversion,
Agreeableness, and

Conscientiousness, moderately

low Neuroticism, and very low
Openness. This coniguration
the sort of
of traits portrays
person who is sociable,

considerate, dutiful,
and traditional
, qualities
that are also relected in

the patterns of correlations
with the PESH indicators.

This region comprises

predominantly White residents
with comparatively low levels

of education, wealth, economic

innovation, and social
tolerance.”

6 the internationalist