If researchers who studied the psychological profiles of the states are right, Rhode Island could benefit from an attitude adjustment –– sooner rather than later. The study found us to be the second-most neurotic state, and the sixth-most disagreeable.

That finding doesn’t surprise Scott Molloy, University of Rhode Island historian.

The Ocean State, he says, “began neurotically. They tossed Roger Williams out of Massachusetts.” A preacher who believed in religious freedom, an unpopular notion at the time, Williams was exiled from what is now the Bay State.

Williams was a malcontent –– and the 17th-century founders of Portsmouth and Newport, Anne Hutchinson and William Coddington, the historian says, were highly disagreeable sorts. “These people were crazy by the definition of their own days. They were so cantankerous they couldn’t even live with each other.”

A tone was set –– one that apparently continues today, according to three eminent psychologists who spent years studying the “personality” of each of the states. Drawing on surveys they conducted and their analysis of independent population, crime, occupation, mortality and related data, the scientists reported their conclusions in a 30-page article published last year in the Washington, D.C.-based Association for Psychological Science’s journal, Perspectives on Psychological Science.

Led by scientist Peter J. Rentfrow of the University of Cambridge, England, the researchers ranked the states and the District of Columbia in each of the five dimensions of personality (the so-called Big Five) that psychologists commonly use to describe individual humans: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism.

Rhode Island ranked poorly on all.

The state was judged 40th on extraversion, characterized by positive emotions and the desire to seek the company of others; a near-bottom 48th on conscientiousness, which involves self-discipline and organized planning; and a middling 28th on openness, an appreciation for adventure and imagination. The state was ranked 45th on agreeableness (a tendency toward cooperation and compassion), 6th from the bottom, but was number 2 on the one negative trait, neuroticism (a type of emotional instability).

Like Molloy, Dan Yorke, afternoon talk show host on station 630-WPRO, was not surprised by the findings. “Neither should anyone else be,” he says. “And just like any destructive behavior, it won’t get any better until we admit it and seek help.”

So maybe that’s a job for the future: improving the collective attitude.

But how, exactly?

Lisa Uebelacker, Brown University assistant professor of psychiatry and a staff psychologist at Butler Hospital, maintains that an improved economy would benefit the collective persona.

“Is there some sort of public health initiative we should be taking for neuroticism?” Uebelacker says. “No. If you want to improve mental health, decrease unemployment, make sure people have health care, make sure people have jobs. Unemployment is very hard on people.”

Debra Curtis, assistant professor of anthropology at Salve Regina University, isn’t sold on the idea that states have individual personalities –– but having spent most of her life in Rhode Island, she does not dispute that the state has its fair share of neurotics.

“If we are neurotic or if we are bordering on intolerant or disagreeable, with a tendency to blame others,” she says, “then we need some help. A little handbook on how to work with others and live with others.”

Her suggestion: Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, the groundbreaking 1936 self-help guide to better living.

Among the basic tenets of the book: Don’t criticize, condemn or complain. Smile. Avoid arguments. If you’re wrong, admit it.

Good luck with that, Rhode Island.

Psychology professor Arthur Frankel, Curtis’s Salve colleague, doesn’t put much credence in the findings by the University of Cambridge’s Rentfrow and his fellow researchers. The sample size –– 2,021 respondents for Rhode Island, 619,397 for all 50 states and the District of Columbia –– struck Frankel as small. And he questioned an aspect of Rentfrow’s methodology: self-generated responses over the Internet. “Non-random sampling is a problem,” he says.

“I don’t see the purpose in this kind of research,” he says. “If the data are reliable –– if they are –– what does that get you? Does that mean I shouldn’t take a job in a particular state? Or it would be better if I vacationed somewhere else? It just seems ridiculous to me.”

Sounds disagreeable, doesn’t it.

Historian Molloy, 62, a lifelong resident of Rhode Island, doesn’t hold much hope that the state can overcome its ornery neuroticism –– and not just because of its origins with dissenting and quarrelling Puritans. The state, he says, is just too small.

“We’re constantly whacked with this inferiority complex about our size,” he says –– comparisons outsiders regularly make that wildfires, Texas cattle ranches, glaciers, Yosemite National Park, Texas counties, etc. are the size of Rhode Island.

“It’s the old adage of seven degrees of separation,” Molloy says. “In Rhode Island, it’s about one degree. We know everyone else’s problems. We know the problems of people we don’t even know.”

Which is fine by him.

“I love the intimacy of this place,” he says. “I always say in Rhode Island, you’re somebody –– even if you don’t like it.”

Which those of us who are neurotic obviously don’t.

For those seeking improvement by means of relocation, consider Utah, the least neurotic state, or Colorado, the second-least. Just don’t look to West Virginia, the only state judged more neurotic than Rhode Island.

gwmiller@projo.com