According to a recent Gallup poll, 54% of Americans say the state of moral values in the country is “poor”—a record number. Some 83% say they believe morals are in decline. They aren’t alone: Survey data from a study published this week in Nature suggest that people in more than 60 nations share a general sense that people are less moral now than they used to be. The study, based on more than 12 million surveys administered to people around the world between 1949 and 2021, argues that people have felt this way for at least 70 years. Participants generally estimated that such a moral decline began around the time they were born, regardless of how long ago that was. When asked to report specific examples that illustrate such slouching morality, however, few could cite any. Ultimately, the team concluded, the notion that morals are in decline is an illusion that may result from news focusing on negative information and our tendency to forget or misremember bad experiences, making the past look rosier than the present. “The challenge,” Melissa Wheeler, an ethics researcher at Swinburne University of Technology, tells Nature reporters, “will be in getting people to accept that they hold this illusion, which is so prominent and widely held.”
People everywhere believe society’s morals are in decline
