Self
Understanding America’s Regional Personality Types
How place, nurture, and nature shape who we are.
I lived across the United States prior to turning 18. It wasn’t bad for the first decade of my life, but around adolescence, the adjustment became quite difficult. In 1999, I moved from a small town in North Carolina to Coronado, California for high school, and was dumbstruck on the first day.
I saw same-sex couples holding hands and students with brightly dyed hair and expressive outfits. People’s sensibilities and sense of humor felt so foreign. The local lingo and accents were unfamiliar. Even the sports were different. We had a varsity surfing team. Our high school water polo team was more popular than our football team.
Author and researcher, Colin Woodard, suggests there are as many as 11 cultures within the United States, including the Deep South, Greater Appalachia, Tidewater, The Left Coast, the Midlands, and more. Recently, a psychologist at the University of Cambridge took this idea a step further, asking the fundamental question, “Do different places have different personalities?”
After sending thousands of surveys around the country, he discovered three regional trends in how people perceive and interact with the world. Friendliness was correlated to…
