Americans are 'weirder than Brits' and think 'it's a good thing', says new research
Americans are more likely to think it is better to be a 'distinctive individual'
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Your support makes all the difference.American people are significantly more likely than British people to say they are weird - and see it as a good thing.
According to YouGov research, which surveyed people from a range of age groups and voting persuasions, yanks are far more likely to say they are “quite weird”.
When asked to place themselves on a weirdness scale, where zero is “not weird at all” and 10 is “completely weird”, 34 per cent of Americans admitted to being “quite weird”, ranking themselves between seven and 10, compared to 20 per cent of Britons.
At the other end of the scale, 42 per cent of British people said they were “not weird”, ranking themselves between zero and three, while 34 per cent of Americans ranked themselves low in the weirdness stakes.
The difference in how weird British and American people see themselves is even starker in younger age groups.
Forty-eight per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds confessed to being weird in the US, whereas only 30 per cent of Brits in the same age group do.
Americans are also more likely to say being weird is a “good thing”.
Over half, or 52 per cent, of Americans said being weird was an asset, compared to 42 per cent of Brits.
As is appropriate for the founding home of individualism, Americans are far more likely to think it is better to be a distinctive individual, with 78 per cent of people in the US valuing an idiosyncratic character compared to 63 per cent of British people.
Despite this, British people who proclaimed to be weird were more likely to think it is "better to be distinctive", suggesting weirdness has become a mark of originality rather than a sign of oddness.
British people who voted Conservative in the 2015 general election are more likely to say they are “not weird”. They are also more likely than Labour voters to think being weird is a "bad thing".
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