The next time some Republican tells you that we need to re-instill love of God and country in our kids to stop our moral decline, tell them moral decline is a widespread psychological illusion. This new study in Nature finds “the perception of moral decline is pervasive, perdurable, unfounded, and easily produced.” People in the U.S. and 59 other countries say morality is falling apart:
…but history and people’s own reports of specific everyday moral acts indicate morality has at least remained consistent, if not improved:
People believe that morality is declining. Is it? Societies keep (or at least leave) reasonably good records of extremely immoral behaviour such as slaughter and conquest, slavery and subjugation or murder and rape, and careful analyses of those historical records strongly suggest that these objective indicators of immorality have decreased significantly over the last few centuries. On average, modern humans treat each other far better than their forebears ever did—which is not what one would expect if honesty, kindness, niceness and goodness had been decreasing steadily, year after year, for millennia.…
In study 4, we searched the databases of major survey research providers (using search terms listed in the Supplementary Information) and found 107 items that were administered to 4,483,136 people across a 55-year span from 1965 to 2020, and that (1) asked participants to report on some aspect of current morality and (2) were administered at least twice, at times that were at least 10 years apart (Supplementary Table 3 shows the items). To determine whether people’s reports of the current morality of their contemporaries changed over time, we fit a linear model for each survey. The year of each survey was always entered as a predictor, and the outcome was always the average perception of current morality.
…The results of both analyses were clear: people’s reports of the current morality of their contemporaries were stable over time. On average, the year in which the survey was conducted explained less than 0.3% of the variance in responses, and in almost all cases it explained less than 1%…. In short, studies 1–3 showed that when people are explicitly asked to assess moral change, they claim that morality has declined, but study 4 shows that when people are asked to assess the current morality of their contemporaries, their assessments do not change over time [Mastroianni and Gilbert, 2023.06.07].
Blame me—or, less synecdochally, the media—and memory:
First, numerous studies have shown that human beings are especially likely to seek and attend to negative information about others, and mass media indulge this tendency with a disproportionate focus on people behaving badly. As such, people may encounter more negative information than positive information about the morality of ‘people in general’, and this ‘biased exposure effect’ may help explain why people believe that current morality is relatively low. Second, numerous studies have shown that when people recall positive and negative events from the past, the negative events are more likely to be forgotten, more likely to be misremembered as their opposite and more likely to have lost their emotional impact. This ‘biased memory effect’ may help explain why people believe that past morality was relatively high. Working together, these two phenomena can produce an illusion of moral decline. Specifically, biased exposure to information about current morality may make the present seem like a moral wasteland, biased memory for information about past morality may make the past seem like a moral wonderland and when people in a wasteland remember being in a wonderland, they may naturally conclude that the landscape has changed [Mastroianni and Gilbert, 2023.06.07].
Believing in a fake moral decline “may have troubling consequences”:
With that said, the illusion of moral decline seems to be a robust phenomenon that may have troubling consequences. For example, in 2015, 76% of US Americans agreed that “addressing the moral breakdown of the country” should be a high priority for their government. The United States faces many well-documented problems, from climate change and terrorism to racial injustice and economic inequality—and yet, most US Americans believe their government should devote scarce resources to reversing an imaginary trend. The belief that everyday morality is on the wane may also affect people’s interpersonal behaviour. For example, research shows that people are reluctant to seek the aid and comfort of those whom they do not know because they underestimate how willingly those people would provide it. The illusion of moral decline may be one of the reasons people do not depend as much as they might on the kindness of strangers—an act that might well ameliorate the illusion itself. The illusion of moral decline may also leave people dangerously susceptible to manipulation by bad actors. Research shows that people are especially influenced by ‘dynamic norms’, which are perceived changes in customary ways of behaving. If low morality is a cause for concern, then declining morality may be a veritable call to arms, and leaders who promise to halt that illusory slide—to “make America great again”, as it were—may have outsized appeal. Our studies indicate that the perception of moral decline is pervasive, perdurable, unfounded and easily produced. Achieving a better understanding of this phenomenon would seem a timely task [Mastroianni and Gilbert, 2023.06.07].
Alas, students of psychology and political science in South Dakota won’t get to read this study; if any of their professors assign Mastroianni and Gilbert, some Republican snowflake will call the Governor’s hotline and rat the profs out for assigning liberal anti-Trump propaganda.
On January 6, 2021 the attack on the US Capitol was a climax of the JBS movement.
Marjorie Taylor Greene and her Christian Nationalists support Donald Trump because they’re convinced he’s the Antichrist who will enable them to conquer the Seven Mountains. The End Times fulfill a prophesy and welcome a supernatural extraterrestrial to create a one-world government. No higher being could be anything but predatory. It’s dystopian fantasy run amok.
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/17/1176662608/a-historian-details-how-a-secretive-extremist-group-radicalized-the-american-rig
Hey Kristi: tell us how the prosperity gospel isn’t rabid moral decline.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/20/pilgrim-fathers-harsh-truths-amid-the-mayflower-myths-of-nationhood
“Po’pay had succeeded in expelling the Spanish from New Mexico and according to later accounts, possibly prejudiced, set himself up as the sole ruler of all the Pueblos. He attempted to destroy every trace of the Spanish presence in New Mexico. “The God of the Christians is dead,” he proclaimed. “He was made of rotten wood.”[12]
“The Sand Creek massacre (also known as the Chivington massacre, the battle of Sand Creek or the massacre of Cheyenne Indians) was a massacre of Cheyenne and Arapaho people by the U.S. Army in the American Indian Wars that occurred on November 29, 1864, when a 675-man force of the Third Colorado Cavalry[5] under the command of U.S. Volunteers Colonel John Chivington attacked and destroyed a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho people in southeastern Colorado Territory,[6] killing and mutilating an estimated 69 to over 600 Native American people. Chivington claimed 500 to 600 warriors were killed. However, most sources estimate around 150 people were killed, about two-thirds of whom were women and children.”
“The Tulsa race massacre, also known as the Tulsa race riot or the Black Wall Street massacre,[12] was a two-day-long white supremacist terrorist[13][14] massacre[15] that took place between May 31 – June 1, 1921, when mobs of white residents, some of whom had been appointed as deputies and armed by city government officials,[16] attacked black residents and destroyed homes and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The event is considered one of the worst incidents of racial violence in American history.[17]”
In the 1960s and 70s Deadwood, South Dakota’s most famous brothel owner, Pam Holliday gave generously to charities, befriended the motorcycle gangs that came to the Black Hills and offered a safe house for gun smugglers, cocaine and “speed” or “bennies,” the old names for amphetamine. The law enforcement industry is bracing for retaliatory violence likely to wash over into the 2023 Sturgis Rally in occupied South Dakota where the Bandidos and Mongols have warred in previous years.
Little has changed.
In 2015 after Trace O’Connell and a wad of other entitled white guys from Philip spilled beer on a group of American Horse School students Rapid City businesses shat all over themselves trying to extinguish the wildfire of anger. Organizers of the Lakota Nation Invitational even sought alternative locations for the annual event — Sioux Falls, Bismarck and Spearditch were considered. That same year Watertown High School finally dropped a racist ritual called Ki-Yi.
In 2017 a South Dakota school board voted unanimously to cancel homecoming activities that would have featured a football game between the Sturgis Scoopers and the Pine Ridge Thorpes after a car bearing hate speech and a symbol painted on it that some said resembled a swastika was smashed by Sturgis students.
In April 2019 sleepy Vermillion became ground zero for Donald Trump’s war on America in South Dakota by hosting Charlie Kirk.
In 2022 five tribal chairpersons and presidents called for a boycott of Rapid City after the owners of the Grand Gateway Hotel leveled racist diatribes at Indigenous Americans there. Confederate flags routinely fly in Rapid City showing support for racism in like-minded states, South Carolina and Mississippi. Many more come out during the Sturgis Rally.
Just say it: white christianic terrorism.
Like Mr. He’s blogging quoted:
But we will all be OK. It will be fine.
The Sturgis bacchanal is really all about male white privilege at any cost. Thanks to selective enforcement white thugs have carte blanche to commit flagrant criminal acts during the Rally. A long history of lawlessness can make the event highly virulent attracting common parasites who breed in the cesspools of human existence.
Cory feeds needs. SD people need negativity. Consistency is Cory’s hallmark.
I agree with your “SD people need negativity” statement, P. Aitch. The last time a Reptilian told me I had to re-instill love of God and country in my (nonexistent) children to halt moral decline, I replied tersely “Oh, horsesh – horsetwinkies.” Oops. I might have declined some morals and spread negativity right there. There was conservative white christian sputtering all around when I left the building.
This is the first time I remember reading the word “perdurable.” Gonna be difficult to work that into conversations.
The offense taken by Larry at the suggestion that some folks are aggrieved unjustifiably by the perceived decline of moral outage is perdurable.
Just repeat “perdurable” to yourself twenty or thirty times and you’ll question EVERYTHING.
Good morning, Bob. Your Lapham quote about politics the other day is perdurable. That anyone believes anybody can hold any moral high ground cements humanity’s doom. That’s likely why astrobiologists hypothesize that any civilization capable of interstellar travel is already dead.
“The revolution is successful. But survival depends on drastic measures. Your continued existence represents a threat to the well-being of society. Your lives mean slow death to the more valued members of the colony. Therefore, I have no alternative but to sentence you to death. Your execution is so ordered, signed Kodos, Governor of Tarsus IV.”
@ Bonnie – Calling horsesheit on someone lecturing you is validly contrary and quite proper. Picturing a conservative, white Christian sputtering around a public space like the air coming out of an over inflated child’s balloon. Like that word picture you created. #grins
I have a low expectation of human morality in the first place. Humans, by and large, are a mess. The overall state of human morality fluctuates between awful and complete evil. I’d put most people in the awful category. There are a few, I’m one, in the barely acceptable category, which means we have serious flaws but we’re so much better than most other people. Most of us, particularly Lutherans, understand our faults, and we accept them as a badge of honor. As Martin Luther said, “Sin boldly.” I do my best. The thing is, there are sins and there are sins. There are sins of omission and sins of commission. I’m greedy, so I don’t give much to charity, but I won’t cheat people who are in need, like Donald Trump. I don’t mind paying taxes to give to needy folks, unlike Trump, but I don’t want to hand anyone change from my pocket., which is similar to Trump. I’m seriously flawed, I know, but I also give a lot of myself to help people and that’s been free of charge to my own detriment. But comparing myself to evil, like Donald Trump, is not the best yardstick to use.
Donald, your use of simile could use some grease. I am not sure when you are saying you are like Donald Trump as opposed to when your are saying something you avoid is something DJT embraces.
Moral decline? Is eliminating forced segregation a symptom of moral decline? Is the US Army no longer hunting down and killing Native Americans a symptom of moral decline? I will argue society as a whole is is less morally decadent thaan it was in previous generations.
Bonnie–I believe the verb is” perdure”. As far as I can remember, it means “to hang in there.”
The rule of law beats the spit out of civil war any day. Karma and Dogma should the names of a two-headed calf in a Pixar feature written by Mel Brooks called Moral Decline.
Most notable on that map is Scandinavia where that population jettisoned a divine creator long ago.
I’m with Nic on this one. I believe that as a society we are slowly but surely becoming a more moral people. It is a long trudge and has little to do with religion.
Bob, yeah, I need an editor bad.. My intent was to compare myself favorably to DJT. At least I don’t poop my pants and deny it. Is that clear enough or do I need to make it clearer?
The Dude abides. If only the Coen Brothers had considered “perdures.”
How many readers here still use teevee?
I submit Fox viewers see moral decline everywhere.
Hi Cory!
What exactly are you saying with this post? That morality has not declined under the administrations of Trump and Noem? That South Dakota is morally improving thanks to sensible lawmakers and elected officials? I mean if SD has morally improved even when the party in power does next-to-nothing that you find commendable… how can you conclude that this blog is pushing in the right direction?
This article strikes me as a pretty big turn of the worm compared to your other headlines. I think you’re trying to spin it as another gotcha for the GOP (i.e., why the MAGA slogan was perniciously successful), but if you actually agree that morality has been improving in SD over the years you’ve been blogging, how do you make sense of that?
Kind regards,
David
Hi, David Bergen,
Dakota Free Press, as a news website that covers various topics, including politics, social issues, and culture in South Dakota has done much to improve the morality of South Dakota citizens.
Cory’s articles are well-researched and fact-based, providing insights and information on various topics that impact the lives of South Dakotans as well as others nationwide. By sharing this information, Cory has helped raise awareness about issues related to morality, such as corruption, inequality, and discrimination.
Additionally, DFP has inspired discussions and debates among the public, encouraging people to think critically about their values and beliefs.
Bottom line though, it’s up to South Dakota individuals, a stubborn majority with stubborn and contrary German heritage, to determine how they’ll incorporate the information provided by Dakota Free Press into their moral compass.
Hi P. Aitch!
Thanks for the reply! I agree that Cory does an admirable job researching his topics.
How exactly do you measure that DFP “has done much to improve the morality of South Dakota citizens”? My impression is that the vast majority of candidates and policies that Cory has advocated for have not succeeded. He has had a hand in some federal lawsuit victories and a successful ballot measure here and there. But I don’t think there were appreciable gains to the state’s morality from some minor opening up the petition process (e.g., Minnehaha County building sidewalk vs parking lot) and getting rid of the law that would have banned out-of-state money in SD elections. (I’m with him on the petition issues, but not the out-of-state money.)
And it’s also possible that some aspects about the blog are not what we would consider moral, e.g., not putting the best construction on Republicans’ words and actions.
Kind regards,
David
Mr. H’s blog is more consistently down at the mouth than most. Thankfully grudznick is a beaming ray of cheerfulness.
op. cit.
The United States’ longest war wasn’t in Afghanistan; it was against Indigenous Americans and ran from about 1785 to at least 1973. Leonard Peltier is a prisoner of that war.
In 1974, President Richard Nixon issued a limited presidential pardon to convicted killer William Calley of My Lai Massacre fame after he and American troops, some under his command, raped and butchered some 500 unarmed Vietnamese people in 1968.
Castrations, rapes and atrocities continue in Ukraine, Sudan and elsewhere as the enemies of democracy seek to dehumanize soldiers and civilians alike.
Donald Trump is blackmailing prosecutors and threatening to expose the horrors of US atrocities at GTMO and beyond if his cases go to trial. Is that treason or evidence of the absence of morality?
Harry Truman committed war crimes against Japanese civilians at a level previously unheard of in human history!
Adolf Hitler’s crimes against humanity just barely eclipsed the Catholic Church’s crimes against Indigenous!
@ David Bergen – In response to your “How exactly do you measure that DFP “has done much to improve the morality of South Dakota citizens”?
I believe, which is only my opinion, that “Cory has helped raise awareness about issues related to morality, such as corruption, inequality, and discrimination.” I measure that by my impressions.
Andrew Jackson, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Idi Amin Bibi Netanyahu — criminals all!
Charles Whitman, Richard Speck, Timothy McVeigh, Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, Dylann Roof, Adam Lanza, Robert Dear, James Holmes, Eric Rudolph, Jared Loughner, Wade Michael Page, Eric Frein, Stephen Paddock, Anders Breivik, Nickolas Cruz, Dimitrios Pagourtzis, Payton Gendron and Salvadore Ramos now Ammon Bundy, David DePape, Stewart Rhodes and Anderson Lee Aldrich all are or were christians and misogynists.
Mr. Kurtz–cannot agree on Harry Truman…We would have had a million casualties invading Japan…200,000 dead. Who knows how many Japanese would have died. The Japanese military had many opportunities to surrender in 1944-45. The war was lost and they knew it. We were battered, bloody and exhausted. We had lost enough men to the fascists.
Truman’s message was aimed straight at Moscow and yes, the Soviet Union is no more so now the US is fighting a proxy war in Ukraine against the Putin machine which is a Chinese client state and New Mexico is building the weapons to fight that war moral decline be damned.
Contractors say the B-21 Raider isn’t expected to be delivered until maybe 2030 so which will it be: a bomber base in South Dakota or is a state law targeting pregnant people already jeopardizing military readiness?
TriCare pays for some abortions chosen by military personnel so after Kristi Noem becomes some Earth hater’s Veep choice will a Governor Larry Rhoden sue to overturn a winning ballot measure codifying Roe?
New Mexico has the bases for the B-21 and the space for women’s rights, too.
Note on the map in Cory’s post that China isn’t as concerned with moral decline as Russians are so maybe Mr. Putin has failed and his subjects are truly concerned they’re being led into extermination.
If you want to witness moral decline look at a photo of a sitting South Dakota governor straddling a motorcycle rubbing her hooty hoo on the saddle while spreading a deadly virus throughout Native America.
Mr. Kurtz..the Russians are being exterminated by a number of things including environmental, heavy metal pollution, smoking (as in China, everyone smokes), and pandemic alcoholism which is rampant everywhere but the Muslim areas. Throw in a historically low birthrate and they are on the way out.
Or, Mr. Bergan- If I may jump in, I like that you lent a new way to look at it. I have never considered your take in regards to DFL where Mr. H is writing to say ‘gotcha to Republicans’…I appreciate he does flip the spotlight on all parties pretty often. I still cannot agree though on the way I understand his intention. I always saw it that he needs to let them know ‘yes, we see what you guys are doing’. And that is important to do sometimes. Your perspective may shift once it is proven to you just how incessantly the people we pay to represent us are doing shady self-serving deeds. Non-stop machinations. Mr. H’s silence would only help the bad guys. I assume it gets pretty old always having to call them out like he’s a schoolmarm to a rascal of boys. Morality means to shine the light on what is being kept in the dark. Morality is to be woke, if you will.
Ü
Struck a chord Cory! To add my 2 cents on Mr Bergan’s supposition, the study simply points out that ‘moral decline’ is a perceptual mirage. If Cory led every article with ‘We are going to hell in a handbasket, I miss the good ol’ days’ you may have a point. As P. Aitch articulates, that isnt really Cory’s angle. Larry of course hits it w Fox News.
And Cory, this is great information we can all be armed with next time we are in a MAGA conversation with one of our ‘otherly informed’ south dakota bretheren. Well done.
And Larry, I thought Cory doubled his audience when I saw the post count at the top..
Hi All Mammal!
Thank you for sharing your thoughts!
There’s nothing hidden about DFP’s agenda. It’s right in the blog’s subtitle: “South Dakota’s True Liberal Media”. I went through the latest 30 articles and perceived that all-but-six were directly critical of Republican politicians, the Republican party, or Republican media in one way or another. Of the six non-critical articles…
– One was informing us of a Democratic challenger to the US House seat
– Another was explaining an alternative form of voting (approval voting) that the establishment doesn’t seem fond of
– Two stories were of neutral local information (accidental 911 calls in Lake County and an unusually high fall rate in Sioux Falls)
– One story was about an out-of-state RVer mad about SD not being his ideal tax haven
– And the final story was about how AI tools could unduly influence future elections
So no, I don’t think it’s accurate to say, “he does flip the spotlight on all parties pretty often.” 80% of the spotlight was directly critical of Republicans. When he does criticize a Democrat (and I don’t remember seeing any of that in the past 30 articles), it’s usually because the Democrat isn’t liberal enough.
I think the blog stays true to its stated agenda.
My original point was that this article in particular is quirky because while on the surface he’s criticizing the MAGA slogan/attitude, the content of the article itself says that morality has improved, or at least not declined. And I think it’s kind of ironic that he would publicly post that morality did not decline while Trump and Noem have been in charge since he has consistently criticized them for being immoral.
Kind regards,
David
We ought be encouraged by the Pew survey for it shows that people WANT the world to exhibit our better angels. In the US, people want this nation to live up to its creed to “establish a more perfect union”. It is uplifting that the responders are impatient for improvement.
The signs are obvious that the world and this nation are far better places than they were a century ago, or even 50 years ago.
The slightly dated lectures and book by Hans Rosling are irrefutable evidence.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm5xF-UYgdg
There are the updated perspectives of our human improving morality found in, The Better Angels of Our Nature, by Steven Pinker; and Getting Better, by Charles Kenny.
Yet, improving human and national morality is a long, slow marathon. The guardians of the status quo stand in the way at every turn whether they be justices like Thomas and Alito and Roberts, congress critters, governors like noem, desantis, reynolds, or even presidents.
“At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past.” Maurice Maeterlinck