The Personality of American Nations: An Exploratory Study
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Date
2021-01-14
Authors
Lanning, Kevin
Warfel, Evan A.
Wetherell, Geoffrey
Perez, Marina
Boyd, Ryan
Condon, David M.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
PsychOpen
Abstract
Some scholars have presented models of the United States as a set of “nations” with distinct settlement histories and contemporary cultures. We examined personality differences in one such model, that of Colin Woodard, using data from over 75,000 respondents. Four nations were particularly distinct: The Deep South, Left Coast, New Netherland, and the Spanish Caribbean. Differences between nations at the level of the individual person were typically small, but were larger at the level of community, revealing how aggregation can contribute to differences in the lived experience of places in nations such as Yankeedom or Greater Appalachia. We represented effects in a three-dimensional model defined by Authoritarian conventionalism (which differentiated ‘Red’ and ‘Blue’ nations) as well as Cognitive resilience and Competitiveness (which differentiated among the Blue nations). Finally, we adjusted Woodard’s model to better fit the data, and found that nations largely maintained their boundaries, with the most drastic changes occurring on the East Coast.
Description
61 pages
Keywords
Regions, Geography, Aggregation, Ideology, United States, Visualizations, HEXACO
Citation
Lanning, K., Warfel, E. A., Wetherell, G., Perez, M., Boyd, R. L., & Condon, D. M. (in press). The personality of American nations: An exploratory study [Accepted manuscript]. Personality Science. http://dx.doi.org/10.23668/psycharchives.5578