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.