The illusion of moral decline - PubMed (original) (raw)

The illusion of moral decline

Adam M Mastroianni et al. Nature. 2023 Jun.

Abstract

Anecdotal evidence indicates that people believe that morality is declining1,2. In a series of studies using both archival and original data (n = 12,492,983), we show that people in at least 60 nations around the world believe that morality is declining, that they have believed this for at least 70 years and that they attribute this decline both to the decreasing morality of individuals as they age and to the decreasing morality of successive generations. Next, we show that people's reports of the morality of their contemporaries have not declined over time, suggesting that the perception of moral decline is an illusion. Finally, we show how a simple mechanism based on two well-established psychological phenomena (biased exposure to information and biased memory for information) can produce an illusion of moral decline, and we report studies that confirm two of its predictions about the circumstances under which the perception of moral decline is attenuated, eliminated or reversed (that is, when respondents are asked about the morality of people they know well or people who lived before the respondent was born). Together, our studies show that the perception of moral decline is pervasive, perdurable, unfounded and easily produced. This illusion has implications for research on the misallocation of scarce resources3, the underuse of social support4 and social influence5.

© 2023. The Author(s).

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1

Fig. 1. Countries surveyed by Pew in 2002 or 2006.

In every country surveyed by Pew in 2002 or 2006 (shown in red), the majority of participants reported that moral decline was at least a “moderately big problem”. Map created with MapChart.

Fig. 2

Fig. 2. Results of studies 2a–c.

The panels show the results of studies 2a (left panel), 2b (middle panel) and 2c (right panel). Opaque points represent means. Transparent points represent individual observations jittered for legibility. Error bars represent 95% CIs. Study 2a n = 698, study 2b n = 148 and study 2c n = 347.

Fig. 3

Fig. 3. Results of study 5a.

a–e, From left to right, this figure shows the perceived difference in morality of (a) people in general in 2005 and people in general in 2020 (overall) (b), people in general who were sampled both in 2005 and 2020 (personal change among people in general) (c), people in general who were sampled in 2005 or 2020 but not in both years (interpersonal replacement among people in general) (d), people in the participant’s personal world who were sampled both in 2005 and 2020 (personal change among people in personal world) and (e) people in the participant’s personal world who were sampled in 2005 or 2020 but not in both years (interpersonal replacement among people in participant’s personal world). Opaque points represent means. Transparent points represent individual observations jittered for legibility. Error bars represent 95% CIs. n = 283.

Fig. 4

Fig. 4. Results of Study 5b.

The figure shows the perceived morality of people in various years. Opaque points represent means. Transparent points represent individual observations jittered for legibility. Error bars represent 95% CIs. n = 387.

Extended Data Fig. 1

Extended Data Fig. 1. Descriptive Statistics in Study 3.

Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals. Transparent points represent individual observations jittered for legibility.

Similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Eibach, R. P. & Libby, L. K. In Social and Psychological Bases of Ideology and System Justification (ed. Jost, J. T. et al.) 402–423 (Oxford Univ. Press, 2009).
    1. Herman, A. The Idea of Decline in Western History (Free Press, 1997).
    1. Thaler, R. H. & Sunstein, C. R. Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness (Penguin Books, 2009).
    1. Epley N, Kardas M, Zhao X, Atir S, Schroeder J. Undersociality: miscalibrated social cognition can inhibit social connection. Trends Cogn. Sci. 2022;26:406–418. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2022.02.007. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Sparkman G, Walton GM. Dynamic norms promote sustainable behavior, even if it is counternormative. Psychol. Sci. 2017;28:1663–1674. doi: 10.1177/0956797617719950. - DOI - PubMed

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources