Sometimes, it can feel like there are psychopaths everywhere. If you live in the United States, it’s now possible to move to less psychopathic environs, thanks to new research ranking 48 contiguous states by psychopathy.

Connecticut wins the dubious award of most psychopathic state in the US, followed by California in second, and New Jersey third. New York and Wyoming tie for joint fourth place, followed by Maine. The least psychopathic state is West Virginia, followed by Vermont, Tennessee, North Carolina, and New Mexico. The full list of psychopathic states is below:

Rank State 1 Connecticut 2 California 3 New Jersey 4 New York 4 Wyoming 6 Maine 7 Wisconsin 8 Nevada 9 Illinois 10 Virginia 11 Maryland 12 South Dakota 13 Delaware 14 Massachusetts 15 Arizona 16 Florida 17 Iowa 18 Colarado 19 Texas 20 Ohio 21 Utah 22 Arkansas 23 Idaho 24 North Dakota 25 Michigan 26 Alabama 27 Pennsylvania 28 Rhode Island 29 Louisiana 30 Kansas 31 Georgia 32 Minnesota 33 Missouri 34 Washington 35 Kentucky 36 Nebraska 37 South Carolina 38 New Hampshire 39 Oregon 40 Indiana 41 Mississippi 42 Montana 43 Oklahoma 44 New Mexico 45 North Carolina 46 Tennessee 47 Vermont 48 West Virginia

The psychopathy evaluation for each state is an estimate, notes Ryan Murphy, professor at Southern Methodist University and author of the study, published on Social Science Research Network (SSRN.) The calculation is based in part on previous research that established the levels of big five personality traits (extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience) in each state.



Earlier research shows that psychopathy is composed of disinhibition, boldness, and meanness, and a forthcoming paper shows that these characteristics can be translated into the big five traits: “Boldness corresponds to low neuroticism and high extraversion, meanness corresponds to low agreeableness, and disinhibition corresponds to low conscientiousness,” explains Murphy. This finding allowed the researcher to translate analysis of personality in US states to a score for psychopathy.

The paper has been prepublished on SSRN, meaning it hasn’t yet been published in a journal or gone through peer review. Murphy also included the District of Columbia in his research, and found it had a psychopathy level far higher than any other state. But this finding is an outlier, as Murphy notes, as it’s an entirely urban area and cannot be fairly compared with larger, more geographically diverse, US states. That said, as Murphy notes, “The presence of psychopaths in District of Columbia is consistent with the conjecture found in Murphy (2016) that psychopaths are likely to be effective in the political sphere.”

Wyoming’s high psychopath rate is another interesting data point. The state came in joint fourth, whereas its neighboring states came in far lower: Montana is 42nd, Idaho 23rd, Colorado 18th, and Utah 21st (the District of Columbia is excluded from all these rankings.) Murphy notes that the survey of Wyoming was based on the smallest sample size and the data point could simply be incorrect, though the result is still based on a considerable sample size of 3,166.

Murphy notes that the findings are estimates and further data by state is needed to corroborate the findings. But his current survey, which suggests the northeast of the US is the most psychopathic region in the US, will ring true to anyone who’s been stuck on the New York subway.