I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Does New Mexico have a personality?
Apparently so. As it turns out, New Mexicans are first in the nation for “conscientiousness,” according to a study published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science.
Researchers mapped regional personality traits from over 600,000 questionnaires and then compared them with state data on such things as crime, health and economic development to see if there were correlations. Turns out there are.
If you don’t want to wade through the dense academic report yourself, The Wall Street Journal gives us the scoop, with methodology, examples and a nifty state-by-state map showing how we rank in the five evaluated traits: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness.
The WSJ notes that the research sample was “proportionate to the U.S. population by state and race,” and that it doesn’t distinguish between those who are from a state, born and bred, and recent migrants. This suited the purposes of the researcher, whose goal was to gain a “psychological snapshot” of each state. This snapshot is informed in part by migrants who were drawn to the state based on personality.
While New Mexico is the leader in conscientiousness, we sort of hug the middle in all the other traits. Conscientiousness is defined as dutifulness and self-discipline. Well? Does that reflect New Mexicans?
Having a perverse streak, in addition to checking out New Mexico, I couldn’t help but look into which states are ranked last — in this case 51st; Washington, D.C., was included — for each trait. Here’s what I found:
For extraversion, Maryland brings up the rear. Does that mean they’re a bunch of introverts? Sorry, not the Marylanders I know.
Agreeableness: Alaska. Must be the cold.
Conscientiousness: Alaska. Wait … wow, the highest Alaska ranks on any of the traits is 47. I’ll let someone else speculate on what that means.
The least neurotic state? Utah! One thing you have to give folks from Utah: They know what they think about things.
And at the bottom for openness: North Dakota. Interestingly, though, North Dakota had two No. 1 rankings: extraversion and agreeableness. Openness, as it turns out, has to do with being open to new ideas.
