The Three Personalities of America, Mapped

The Three Personalities of America, Mapped

A few years ago, Jason Rentfrow, a psychologist at the University of Cambridge, dug into a question that has captivated him for decades: Do different places have different personalities? Do people in Los Angeles, for instance, have measurably different temperaments than the residents of Augusta, Georgia? If so, what does that mean for both places? Rentfrow decided to test these questions on a phenomenon that has captivated all of America lately: The rise of Donald Trump.

Together with his co-authors, Rentfrow analyzed a set of surveys that had been conducted between 2003 and 2015 in 2,082 U.S. counties—about two-thirds of all the counties in the country. The surveys asked three million people 44 questions about their habits and dispositions. Rentfrow and his co-authors focused on neuroticism, one of the “big five” traits that psychologists often use to measure personality, which is a tendency to feel depressed or anxious, and to respond more severely to stress. The study authors compared each county's level of neuroticism to whether those counties later voted for President Trump in the 2016 election, and whether they had historically voted for Republicans.

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