Sometime around 2000, I searched for questions about the general moral condition of the country. I wanted to trace changes in the assessment, so I was only interested in questions that had been asked at least twice. I found seven questions with a total of thirty occasions, ranging from 1949 to 1999. I didn't try to publish the research, although I talked about it at a conference or two, but I thought about it from time to time and finally came back to it, thinking that at least I'd have more data to work with. To my disappointment, I found only a five more occasions, and none after 2005. The questions and results are listed below--I give the results in the form of favorable vs. unfavorable assessments.
1. On the whole, would you say that you are satisfied or dissatisfied with the honesty and standards of behavior of people in the country today?
Positive Negative Year
34% 59% 1963
27% 66% 1965
26% 66% 1966
22% 72% 1973
33% 63% 1986
23% 71% 1987
24% 73% 1991
20% 78% 1992
27% 68% 1992
32% 68% 1998
21% 74% 1999
2. Do you think people in general today lead as good lives--honest and moral--as they used to?
47% 46% 1952
39% 52% 1965
30% 66% 1976
26% 71% 1998
21% 73% 2002
21% 74% 2005
3. Do you think that young people today have as strong a sense of right and wrong as they did, say, fifty years ago?
57% 34% 1952
41% 46% 1965
20% 78% 1998
15% 82% 1999
19% 76% 2002
18% 79% 2005
4. Which of the following statements comes closest to expressing how you feel about the state of morals in this country at the present time? (Pretty bad vs. pretty good).
37% 55% 1964
19% 77% 1996
32% 63% 2004
5. Do you believe that life today is getting better or worse in terms of morals?
20% 52% 1949
8% 78% 1968
17% 70% 1985
17% 69% 1986
6. Do you believe that life today is getting better or worse in terms of honesty?
24% 36% 1960
13% 61% 1968
7. Do you personally agree or disagree with those who feel that there is something morally wrong with the country at this time?
35% 61% 1976
25% 71% 1992
19% 77% 1993
Then I discovered the good news--almost every year since 2002, Gallup has asked "Right now, do you think the state of moral values in the country as a whole is getting better or getting worse?" Results can be found at: https://news.gallup.com/poll/393659/record-high-americans-rate-moral-values-poor.aspx
So now I can put it all together and get a picture of changes since 1949:
There's a pretty clear downward trend, but to go beyond that observation, you have to consider the fact that the questions aren't identical, and even if you trust my judgment that they are similar, they might get somewhat different responses. The simplest way to adjust for this is to calculate the mean for the question and subtract it from the score at each time. The results:
This way, it doesn't seem like steady decline. I'd describe it as a decline in the 1960s, followed by some recovery and then stability into the 1980s, then a decline into the 1990s, and then rough stability, or maybe even some increase. I've experimented with fitting some models, but haven't found anything that I have much confidence in yet, so I'll save that for a future post.
[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]
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