Friday, September 12. 2008

US State "Personality Map" Coverage: Where are the maps?

I guess researchers and/or some of the press have not figured out that if you want to report on science that uses a map, you need to have a map!

The news is a report, "The Geography Of Personality; A Theory of the Emergence, Persistence and Expression of Geographic Variation in Basic Traits" currently running in Perspectives On Psychological Science. You can read the abstract free but the article requires a fee. Thus, I don't know if the article provides a map or not. In any case, the UK's Telegraph (the lead author is a US-born Cambridge professor) sums up the research: "The results revealed clear patterns of personalities - neuroticism is highest in the east along a line stretching from Maine to Louisiana - the "stress belt"" but provides no map. Most of the U.S. papers that covered the story that I read focused on the "local" personality traits (good!) but had no maps either.

But wait, McCLatchy Newspapers did the work. That organization provides an interactive Flash-based map built on the findings.

For tips about getting mapping stories to the media, listen to the podcast I did with conversational media consultant and content strategist Amy Gahran on the topic.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Media & Maps at 07:05 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0) |

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Well I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that couldn't find the map. I was afraid my blogging card was going to be revoked due to being too ignorant to know where to click to view the map.

#1 Roger Hart (Link) on 2008-09-12 13:31 (Reply)

The actual article has some maps.

#2 dennis on 2008-09-12 15:13 (Reply)

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In reply to	[ Top level ]#1: Roger Hart on 2008-09-12 13:31 #2: dennis on 2008-09-12 15:13
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