The U.S. States With the Highest ‘Dark’ Personality Scores, and What a New Study Adds

Have you ever wondered whether the place you live could shape your personality?

Researchers have been asking the same question, and a growing body of studies suggests the answer is “a little.” Some U.S. states consistently score higher on so-called “dark” personality traits such as psychopathy and narcissism.

Now a new 2026 study adds a twist: Americans who never left their home state score slightly higher on psychopathy than those who moved away. Here’s what the research shows, and what it doesn’t.

Which States Score Highest on “Dark” Traits?

The best-known state ranking comes from a large study published in 2025 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), led by psychologist Ingo Zettler of the University of Copenhagen.

It measured the “Dark Factor of Personality,” or D, a single score that captures the common core of traits like psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism.

Based on answers from 144,576 Americans who took an online test between 2019 and 2024, the states with the highest average scores (on a 1-to-5 scale, with a U.S. average of 2.17) were:

• Nevada: 2.26
• New York: 2.24
• Texas: 2.22
• South Dakota: 2.22

The lowest averages were in Vermont (1.96), Utah (2.03), Maine (2.04) and Oregon (2.06). The samples for South Dakota and Vermont were small, so their results are less certain.

An earlier analysis took a different approach and reached different results. Economist Ryan Murphy estimated psychopathy by state from existing personality data in a 2019 paper in the journal Heliyon. His list was topped by Washington, D.C., followed by Maine, Connecticut and New York. Murphy himself called the estimate “conjectural.”

The New Twist: People Who Stay Put

The newest study, published in 2026 in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, surveyed 3,958 adults across 38 states.

People who still lived in the state where they grew up scored about 0.06 points higher on a psychopathy scale than those who had moved. That’s roughly 8% of a standard deviation, a very small difference.

Researchers quoted by PsyPost called the result “interesting but extremely small” and stressed that it is “very important not to think of stayers as ‘psychopaths.’”

Why Would Where You Live Matter?

The Copenhagen team linked higher D scores to harsh social conditions, such as corruption, inequality, poverty and violence, measured about two decades earlier.

“The more adverse conditions in a society, the higher the level of the Dark Factor of Personality among its citizens,” Zettler said in a university statement. He added that personality is “not just something we are born with, but also shaped by the society” around us.

What These Studies Don’t Mean

None of this means your neighbors are dangerous. The PNAS authors described the effects as “robust, albeit small in absolute magnitude,” and their data came from volunteers who chose to take an online test.

Seena Fazel, a forensic psychiatry professor at the University of Oxford, told Science Focus that the figures “don’t really relate to an individual level.”

Still, the research points to a hopeful idea: if harsh conditions can nudge personality in a darker direction, better communities may help bring out the better side of people.

Sources:

• Zettler et al., PNAS (2025): Aversive societal conditions explain differences in “dark” personality
• University of Copenhagen press release (June 2025)
• PsyPost (October 2026): Psychopathy scores and Americans who stay in their home state
• Murphy, Heliyon (2019): Psychopathy by U.S. state
• Science Focus (June 2026)

You might also want to read: Massive Study Finds Dark Personalities Like Narcissism More Common in Less Democratic Nations