The investigation of Minnesota Nice in terms of trust, communication style and personality

Abstract

This study investigated the concept of Minnesota Nice, using three psychological variables: trust, communication style and personality. We obtained scores on measures of personality, conversational style, and trust from University of Minnesota students and a sample of other Americans through mTurk. We divided the sample into MN and non-MN groups based on their self-identified primary residency and compared the differences between them. We hypothesized that Minnesota Nice would correlate with the personality factors of Extraversion and Agreeableness. Our results found significant differences on the enthusiasm facet of Extraversion but not Assertiveness. We found a significant difference on the compassion facet of Agreeableness but no significant difference on the politeness facet. We also found that Minnesotans scored significantly lower on Openness to Experience. We then hypothesized that Minnesotans would score significantly higher on conversational styles involving Impression, Manipulation, and Expressiveness, and lower on Verbal Aggressiveness. Our results showed that they scored significantly higher on the talkativeness facet from Expressiveness and significantly lower on the non-supportiveness facet from Verbal Aggressiveness. We also hypothesized that Minnesotans would score significantly higher on Trust, and our results supported that.