Thursday, October 09, 2008

Survey: Wyoming residents "closed-minded and disagreeable"

Time for a change of pace, courtesy of Associated Press:

Wyoming residents are closed-minded, disagreeable and not very conscientious compared to people in nearly every other state, according to a new study of the personalities of more than 600,000 people nationwide.

While that sounds like Wyomingites are plain surly, at least they're not very neurotic.

The study was published in the September issue of the academic journal Perspectives on Psychological Science. It looked at the prevalence of five personality traits and created personality maps of the states and the District of Columbia.

The five traits were extroversion, or how outgoing and socially energetic people are; agreeableness - how friendly and cooperative people are; conscientiousness - how dutiful and reliable people are; neuroticism - how prone to anxiety and stress people are; and openness - how open to new ideas and new experiences people are.

The article goes on to explain that Wyomingites rank second last in openness, third to last in agreeableness, and in regards to conscientiousness, the Equality State came in fourth to last.

As far as neuroses, Wyoming came in 15th place--that is, 15th least neurotic.

Amazingly, in the article's 15 paragraphs, Vice President Dick Cheney, a resident of Wyoming, doesn't rate a reference.

I've been fortunate to travel to Wyoming a couple of times, and it's beautiful state--once you travel away from Interstate 80.

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1 comment:

Genevieve Netz said...

I was thinking about the Cheneys too. I think they're tough, independent people, probably pretty representative of the Wyoming mindset.