The illusion of moral decline - Nature

"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

iwaspunkrockonce,
iwaspunkrockonce avatar

"The world has grown old, does not enjoy that strength which it formerly enjoyed, and does not flourish with the same vigor and strength with which it formerly prevailed ... The farmer is vanishing and disappearing in the fields, the sailor on the sea, the soldier in the camp, innocence in the marketplace, justice in the courts, harmony among friendships, skill among the arts, discipline in morals."

-- Cyprian of Carthage, c. 250 CE

"Same as it ever was"

-- Talking Heads

Xeelee,
Xeelee avatar

I bet they were having these sorts of conversations when someone invented the flintstone hand axe.

iwaspunkrockonce,
iwaspunkrockonce avatar

When the wheel was invented, there was almost certainly someone shaking their fist about it.

PabloDiscobar,
PabloDiscobar avatar

Is it really about science?

The article never mentions religion, while religions everywhere present themselves as a beacon of morality.

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.

This is a very naive view of morality in a country conquered by religion. Ask a christian if he believes that this is morally fine that his neighbour is gay.

Was conquering north america moral? How many native indian did Davy Crockett murder? He is celebrated as a hero even by Disney, is it moral?

How can you qualify all of this as science material?

People clearly perceive moral decline, but to what do they attribute it? There are two possibilities. The average morality of a population may decline between two points in time (T1 and T2) because (1) individuals who are moral at T1 are less moral when they reach T2 (a phenomenon we refer to as ‘personal change’), and/or (2) older people who were alive at T1 but who died before T2 are more moral than younger people who were alive at T2 but who were not yet born (or who were not yet adults and therefore not sampled) at T1 (a phenomenon we refer to as ‘interpersonal replacement’).

Oh, that's why, there is T2 and T1, so We can do T2 minus T1. Sure.

The orthodox church in Russia has blessed the weapons of the russian soldiers, so by definition this war is moral. Do your T2 minus T1 in Russia and ask the russian citizen if Russia acts according to morality right now, you will get fantastic results! I'm not sure that your results would have any scientific value though. I'm very disappointed by Nature.

kitonthenet,

Simply disagreeing with the author’s definition of “extreme immorality” is not grounds for it to be deemed having “no scientific value”

I.e. just because the Orthodox Church says the war is moral does not make it so

lol3droflxp,
lol3droflxp avatar

I think there has to be a differentiation between perceiving an action as moral, an action being moral in some version of morality and an action being moral in your own version of morality. This study among other things, assumes a ground truth for morality that can be measured and agreed on by everyone, read the interview questions they cite from the studies. However, I don’t think that these very basic acts are a good indicator for overall morality. Some people believe very different things to be moral while still having a consistent internal moral construct. Therefore something is moral if someone consistently perceives it as moral in their own opinion. This is overlooked by the study and in my opinion a significant weakness.

PabloDiscobar,
PabloDiscobar avatar

I.e. just because the Orthodox Church says the war is moral does not make it so

And that's exactly the problem, they use one axis for morality while you don't even agree with the orthodox church on what axis it is. The study doesn't account for that. This is not science.

lol3droflxp,
lol3droflxp avatar

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.

updawg,

All I need to know is that the DH is now universal and that tells me that society is in decline.

chillhelm,

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).

fear,
fear avatar

I don't think their take is nuanced enough. They're talking in black and white terms, like either there is moral decline or there's not. What seems to be happening is that people who lack morals are often drawn to positions of power over others. This is leading to an imbalance of declining morals in our leadership. It's not all of us, but when they have control over the situation they're going to have a disproportionate impact.

amitten,

This paper is quite interesting.

tal,
tal avatar

I think that if one thinks of social constructs as memes -- I mean, not in the common-today-sense of a funny image, but in the original sense of memetics, as something composed of information and analogous to a biological organism that has to spread and have other features that biological organisms do to survive -- then that's not surprising.

If someone subscribes to a particular moral system, then I'd expect that a system that has people concerned about maintaining that moral system and shifts in society away from it will tend to outcompete one that doesn't.

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