I don’t know how good the social science is, but this is too good to pass up. A study by Ryan H. Murphy, an economics professor at Southern Methodist University, has ranked the 48 contiguous U.S. states by “psychopathy,” or anti-social behavior.
It is disconcerting to see the Old Dominion ranking No. 10 on the list. Are Virginians that whacko? Perhaps so — and I have a theory to explain it. Murphy eliminated Washington, D.C., from the ranking because its standardized score was off the carts — almost twice as high as the highest-ranking state, Connecticut. My theory is that psychopathic behavior in D.C. spills over into the Maryland and Virginia suburbs. Please note that Maryland is ranked No. 11, right behind Virginia. I hypothesize that the Old Dominion’s score was diluted by regions of state that are sociologically similar to neighboring North Carolina, West Virginia, and Tennessee, among the least psycho states in the country. If we could isolate Northern Virginia, we would find that it is almost as loco as D.C.
Treading where Murphy dared not go, I have correlated each state’s psychopathology “Z score” with its vote for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.
Clearly, there is correlation between psychopathy and voting for Hillary! The R² suggests that 27% of the variability between states can be explained by the relationship between the two variables. Haha!
Hey, don’t look at me. It’s not my data. I’m just plotting the correlation.
OK, OK, I’m peddling junk science. There may be other explanations. Except for the outlier of Wyoming, there appears to be a strong correlation between urban states and the presence of anti-social traits in the population. Urban centers are more transient than small towns and rural areas. People are more anonymous and have weaker social bonds. For entirely distinct reasons, urban areas also lean left politically. The correlation is between psychopathy and urbanism, not psychopathy and liberalism.
If we could show that the psychopaths, not the urban populations where they live, vote for Democrats, we might on to something. Until then, I’m just playfully engaging in the same kind of nonsense as social scientists who purport to show that liberals are smarter, better informed or otherwise more virtuous than conservatives.
