Study: NH, VT among states least likely to have psychopaths

Guy Page

11 months ago

by Alex Nuti – de Biasi, editor, Journal-Opinion

Though our eyes and ears sometimes tell us otherwise, psychopathy is not as prevalent in Vermont and New Hampshire as it is elsewhere in the country.

So we have that going for us.

“People with so-called ‘dark’ personalities — including psychopaths, narcissists and sadists — are more common in U.S. states with the most adverse conditions, new research found,” reports NewsNation.

The global study considers data from 183 countries and all 50 states.

“We find that the extent to which countries and US states are characterized by [aversive social conditions] is associated with individuals’ aversive personality levels about 20 [years] later,” write the study’s authors.

Dark personalities are least observed in Utah, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Oregon, and Alaska.

In fact, if (that’s a big “if”) we’re reading this study’s charts correctly, Vermont has — by far — the lowest mean level of the “Dark Factor of Personality,” which is defined as “the general tendency to maximize one’s individual utility — disregarding, accepting, or malevolently provoking disutility for others — accompanied by beliefs that serve as justifications.”

That’s not all. New Hampshire has — by some measure — the lowest level of “aversive societal conditions,” which are “essential” to the dark personality factors. For the purposes of the study, aversive societal conditions are based on four variables: “corruption, inequality, poverty, and violence, jointly reflecting societal conditions in which self-serving behavior at the cost of others can be perceived as adaptive, justifiable, the norm, and/or nonsanctioned.”

Of course, it’s still just a study.

NewsNation: “Researchers acknowledged that the study has some limitations. It’s impossible for them to know how long participants have lived in certain countries or states before personality tendencies developed, and some data was collected using self-selection services, which could result in inaccurate answers.”

In the meantime, it should be noted that New York is among the “standout states” for dark personalities.

Somewhere, Ethan Allen smiles.

The author is editor of the Journal-Opinion, the weekly community newspaper based in Bradford and serving neighboring communities on both sides of the Connecticut River.

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