There's no place like home: Stayers are more psychopathic than movers

Recent evidence links residential mobility, moving away from one's childhood region, to higher Dark Triad scores. We ask the mirror-image question. In a U.S. adult sample with known childhood and current state ( N = 3958), respondents still living in their childhood state (stayers) scored higher on psychopathy than those who had moved away (movers). The difference was small and survived comparisons within origin state and birth cohort with the current state held fixed. Machiavellianism and narcissism showed no statistically significant adjusted difference. The stayer difference did not depend on sex or on how far movers had gone, and a state-level education proxy gave no sign of socioeconomic selection. Among movers, higher scorers on all three traits went to denser destinations, and higher psychopathy scorers to states with more homicide and inequality. Lifetime immobility and recent mobility thus relate to psychopathy in opposite directions, which is consistent with interstate moves being pulled by opportunities that reach high scorers less often. Individual socioeconomic status and reasons for moving were unmeasured.