Inductivist

General Social Survey (GSS) participants were asked if they agree that life serves no purpose. Answers range from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). I calculated the mean by occupation and list below the top and bottom five:

Nihilism--Top Five Means 

Farm workers 2.20
Health aide 1.91
Construction laborers 1.89
Sewing machine operator 1.88
Farmers 1.86
Machine operator 1.86


Nihilism--Bottom Five Means

Sales supevisor 1.30
Other finanical officers 1.25
Financial managers 1.20
Managers 1.19 
Real estates sales 1.17

The difference between farm workers and real estate sales is large--1.3 standard deviations.  Evidently, a sense of meaningless is more of a problem for people with low status, repetitive occupations. Jobs with power and money are correlated with less nihilism.  Perhaps powerlessness is a major source of thinking that life serves no purpose.

Extraversion and type of job: I put together a list of the mean introversion scores of people in various occupations. I included them if they were significantly higher than average ("introverts") and if they were significantly lower ("extraverts"). The sample size is 16,796 (GSS).


Introverts

Mail clerks, except postal service 16.3
Laundering and dry cleaning machine operators 16.0
Postal clerks, except mail carriers 15.9
Statistical clerks 15.7
Licensed practical nurses 15.7
Typists 15.6
Private household cleaners and servants 15.5
Farmers, except horticultural 15.4
Textile sewing machine operators 15.4
Farm workers 15.3
Maids and housemen 15.3
Librarians 15.3
Bus drivers 15.1
Hand packers and packagers 15.1
Laborers, except construction 15.1
Machine operators, n.s. 15.1
Cooks, except short order 14.9
Assemblers 14.9
Nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants 14.8
Bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks 14.7
Janitors and cleaners 14.7
Registered nurses 14.5
Secretaries 14.3


Extraverts

Designer 13.2
Managers, properties and real estate 13.1
Real estate sales occupations 13.1
Painters, sculptors, craft-artists, and artist printmakers 13.0
Sales occupations, other business services 12.9
Advertising and related sales occupations 12.5
Actors and directors 12.4
Airplane pilots and navigators 12.1
Architects 11.8
Athletes 11.7
Securities and financial services sales occupations 11.4


I don't see any big surprises. Introverts tend to have clerical or low-skill jobs, while extraverts have jobs requiring people skills (sales), leadership skills (managers), or creativity (designers, artists, actors).

Here'a a table of the median lifetime sex partners for the occupations with at least 100 GSS sampled white men. I use median since the mean is completely thrown off by the small number of men with dozens and dozens of partners. Keep in mind that the overall mean for white men is about 6.

Managers, salesmen, and those with muscular jobs are toward the top (although supervisors and proprietors, sales occupations is an anomaly) and computer geeks, low status janitors, and farmers are at the bottom. I suspect farmers are more traditional and marry early.

Which common occupation is most conservative? I looked at the GSS's occupation question cross-tabulated against who the respondents voted for in 2004 for president (N = 4,017). I had to limit the analysis to very common jobs so that cell sizes are large enough. Results? Seventy percent of security guard supervisors voted for Bush. By contrast, 77 percent of health aides voted for Kerry. Makes sense.