Moral decline perception: Unveiling the Cognitive Perception of Humanity’s Ethics. People around the world say kindness, respect, and honesty are declining but that may be a cognitive illusion, researchers reported this week.
People’s beliefs can guide their behavior toward each other, shape policy and influence how resources are allocated.
Survey data from 60 countries shows most people around the world believe morality is declining—and they’ve thought that for at least 70 years, according to new research published this week in the journal Nature. The study — by Adam Mastroianni, a postdoctoral research scholar at Columbia Business School and author of the Experimental History blog, and Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert — focuses on “everyday morality,” the kindness, respect, and honesty that most people agree are a reflection of morality.
The researchers also surveyed people in January 2020 and asked them to compare whether people were “kind, honest, nice, and good” in 2020, 2010, and 2000, as well as at various times in the past, including when they turned 20 years old and the year they were born. Young and old people, liberals and conservatives, people who had graduated degrees and those who hadn’t finished high school, parents and non-parents all said morality was declining.
The belief was seen across races and genders as well. (The decline was perceived to be greater between some groups — for example, conservatives said there was more decline compared to liberals). The researchers then compared surveys taken over time that asked respondents to rate the morality of people in the present time by answering questions like, “Would you say that most of the time people try to be helpful, or that they are mostly just looking out for themselves?” The 107 surveys of more than 4.4 million people were done between 1965 and 2020, and participants were asked at least twice and at least 10 years apart.
“If, as people all over the world claim, morality has been declining steadily and precipitously for decades, then people’s reports of current morality should also have declined over the years,” they write. But they didn’t. That suggests the perception of moral decline is an illusion, the researchers argue. (Mastroianni notes that just because morality is not worse, it doesn’t mean it is good, and wars, climate change, racial injustices, and massive inequality remain).
There are likely many ways the illusion is created, Mastroianni says. One possibility is it arises from the combination of two psychological phenomena: our tendency to pay more attention to negative than positive information and for our negative memories to fade faster than positive ones. Paying more attention to the negative behavior of people makes sense if you are to be aware of threats and to survive, Mastroianni adds. And as time goes on, those past threats fade in our memory, says Norbert Schwarz, a professor of psychology at the University of Southern California who wasn’t involved in the study. There are notable exceptions, he says, including memories involving racism or horrific events like the Holocaust.
The findings are a “powerful demonstration of this illusion,” offers Richard Eibach, a professor of psychology at the University of Waterloo.
There are limitations to the study: The authors note that some of the surveys ask about perceptions of moral values without defining it or are vague about the time in the past people were asked to compare to the present.
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