How important is your state? Probably not nearly as important as you think, study says

This Fourth of July, you might feel tempted to sit back and think about the role your state played in American history.

And if you do, you'll probably get it wrong. Sorry.

That's because a new study published in the journal Psychological Science found that people are likely to exaggerate just how important their state is in the full scope of this country's history.

And we're looking at you, East Coasters — because the study says you're the worst offenders.

For the study, researchers asked just under 3,000 people from all 50 states to guess, "in terms of percentage, what do you think was your home state’s contribution to the history of the United States?"

Subjects were supposed to judge all 50 states and have their final answer add up to 100.

But that's not what happened, study author Adam Putnam said in a press release on the Washington University in St. Louis website.

“The responses are even more amazing because we explicitly tell people in the question that there are 50 states and the total contribution of all states should equal 100 percent — even with that reminder Americans give really high responses,” Putnam said.

People in Virginia, for example, guess on average that their state is responsible for 41 percent of all U.S. history. Pennsylvania and New York aren't far behind with 31 percent each, the study found, and Massachusetts narrowly edged them out with 35 percent.

Residents of Georgia and Delaware are also likely to over-hype the contributions of their own states, guessing it is responsible for 33 percent and 28 percent of history, respectively. Californians estimated 22 percent, Texans guessed 21 percent and Floridians took credit for an average of 19 percent of all American history.

Putnam said he and his team guessed that people on the East Coast and in big states like Texas were likely to fall victim to a mild form of revisionist history.

“As we originally hypothesized, the original 13 colonies, Texas and California showed high levels of narcissism, but there were also some surprises,” Putnam said. “For example, people from Kansas and Wyoming thought much more of their state than nonresidents.”

Kansas residents guessed that their state can take credit for 19 percent of American history, the study found, while people in Montana guessed an average of 18 percent.

When people were asked to rate the historical importance of states they don't live in, Virginia and Delaware came in first with an average of 18 percent. Georgia was second with 15 percent and Massachusetts third with 12 percent.

Researchers also broke the participants up into two groups, quizzing one about U.S. history beforehand and doing the same for the second group after they took the survey. But both groups still over-estimated their own state's importance at about the same rate.

“Being reminded about the scope of U.S. history before making the estimate doesn’t seem to lower the responses," Putnam said.

Putnam theorized that the study "is a nice reminder to try and think about how people from different backgrounds see things" — but said it doesn't indicate something more sinister.

“The most important take away from this research is that people may appear to be egocentric or narcissistic about their own groups, but there isn’t necessarily anything malicious or evil about it," he said. "It is just the way we view the world."