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The illusion of moral decline - Nature (www.nature.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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"We show that the perception of moral decline is pervasive, perdurable, unfounded and easily produced, and suggest that this illusion has implications for research on the misallocation of scarce resources, the underuse of social support and social influence."

I think EVERYONE should read this... it is so easy for media to manipulate people into thinking that the world is somehow darker, weirder, or more dangerous than it was before... I think this article will help people think critically about what inflammatory news tells them

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I guess that study is quite flawed when thinking about morality as a highly subjective value. Things that were highly moral 100 years ago are now seen as barbaric and a person alive 100 years ago would certainly not agree to many moral standards today. Religion comes into play as a conserving agent for morality of generations past, it still changes its interpretation of moral directives over time (at least true for christianity) but this change is far slower than the actual change in society.

So yes, from an individual standpoint, morals are possibly declining if you believe that the morals you grew up with are correct and you do not accept new concepts of morality produced by generational differences and societal change, even more so if you're religious. Therefore the feeling of moral decline is not something you can counter by saying "you're imagining it" because all moral is a, to some extent, abstract (read imagined) concept.

[–] chillhelm 1 points 1 year ago

The study is more concrete than what you describe. Specifically they looked at questions like

“Do you think that over the last few decades our society has become less honest and ethical in its behavior, more honest and ethical, or has there been no change in the extent to which people behave honestly and ethically?”

So specific virtues are mentioned in the questionaires they evaluated, which counters the argument of changing morals over time. So your argument only holds if the morals in the time frame of the study (post WW2 USA) had shifted so dramatically that things like honesty had received a radically different valuation (which I don't think has happened).