According to a study conducted in 60 countries by several American psychologists, the perception of “moral decay” of society is only an illusion, which explains this phenomenon with a number of known cognitive biases, reports AFP.

“The process of our moral decline” began “at the dark dawn of our modern age,” according to a phrase quoted in a study published Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature, Agerpres quoted. This “diagnosis” dates back to ancient Rome and was written by the historian Titus Livius, but it can also be found in the statements of some of his modern “descendants”.

Adam M. Mastroianni of Columbia University in the United States and Daniel T. Gilbert of Harvard University show that this feeling about the decline of values ​​such as kindness, honesty and ethics was shared by most of the study participants. a series of opinion polls conducted in at least 60 countries on five continents. And which covered periods of time up to 70 years.

“This feeling is persistent and we find its expression in every era of history,” said Professor Mastroianni, lead author of the study. While this perception is stronger among people who are more conservative or older than the population average, “the effect of age or political preference remains quite weak,” he said.

Then who is to blame? Participants in one study attributed this decline to a progressive loss of moral sense both at the level of individuals and at the level of entire generations. The reasons for this process would be very diverse, for example, the emergence of social networks or overly permissive education.

But, as the authors of the study noted, societies “keep fairly reliable records of particularly immoral behavior,” such as crimes. And everything points to the fact that in this matter “modern people, on average, treat each other better than their ancestors.”

Political and social consequences

For what Prof. Mastroianni called “everyday morality,” such as looking after the neighbor’s dog or giving up a seat on the bus to an elderly person, “we find pretty strong evidence that it remains stable.” Evidence: a Gallup poll in 2002, then in 2020, in which the opinion of those polled on the “state of moral values” was identical.

Therefore, “moral decline” would be an illusion. After an interval of ten years, a person, as a rule, makes the same judgment about the morality of the society in which he lives. But the same person will be convinced that morality has degraded if he analyzes it in connection with the ten years that have passed since then.

Two American psychologists suggest that the mechanism of such perception is based on a combination of two prejudices. The memorial positive bias, also called “Pollyanna,” which tends to erase the negative emotional impact of the past, and the negative bias—effective in the present—which naturally directs attention to negative information widely disseminated by the media. The first bias “paints” the past in pink, and the second blackens the present, so that the observer can conclude about the moral decline of society.

This bias mechanism suggests that feelings of decline can be mitigated or even suppressed when respondents rate only the level of morality of their relatives or the era that preceded their own.

American researchers confirmed this fact through a survey in which respondents said that in 2020, people were no longer as attentive, kind and generous as they were 15 years ago. Instead, their relatives “went” in the opposite direction. Another survey confirmed that people surveyed believe that the beginning of moral decay dates back to the era in which they were born.

The authors of the study came to the conclusion that the illusion of moral decline is not without “disturbing” political and social consequences.

In 2015, three-quarters of Americans thought it was a priority for the government to “fix the moral decay of society,” as their country was already facing much more serious problems, such as climate change. According to the authors of the study, this perception, which makes people reluctant to help each other, is also more easily influenced by the speeches of politicians who promise to eliminate the “illusory decline”.