New Research Indicates Texas Among Leaders For Psychopaths

Believe it or not, the state of Texas is one of America's top four states for potential psychopathic behavior.

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Texas? Yes, same state where bass fishing, deer hunting, bull riding and Six Flags rule the roost, is also home to more potential psychopaths than forty six other states.

An article from nypost.com reveals that the residents of Nevada, New York, South Dakota, and Texas are more likely than any other state to possess “dark personality traits”, which includes psychopathic behavior.

The results of a study done by Ingo Zettler, Lau Lilleholt, Benjamin E. Hilbig, Morten Moshagen, and Martina Bader at the University of Copenhagen were posted to pnas.org and show that these "dark personality traits" include "psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism", which is the desire to exploit others.

The study, conducted over a twenty year span and included nearly two million people across 183 countries, concluded that humans will display different levels of these traits, depending on their location, and the state of Texas ranked near the top, making it highly likely that if your neighbor isn't the psychopath, it could very well be you with that tendency.

On the flip side, rural areas like much of Vermont, Utah, Maine, and Oregon, reported the least probability of individuals with these "dark personality traits" and this could be largely due to the fact that residents live somewhat geographically isolated and aren't driven to these "Aversive Societal Conditions" because they simply aren't exposed to as many others displaying these traits.

Though researchers concluded that just because there are areas with higher occurrences of "Aversive Societal Conditions", people aren't automatically predisposed to be diagnosed with "dark personality traits."

It would appear to have a lot to do with the behavior they see others exhibit and being around a lot less people could certainly help to alleviate that issue.