Moral decline is an illusion.

Photo by Nik on Unsplash

The world is getting worse. I think.

A new study published in Nature found that people persistently believe that society is in a state of moral decline. Who could blame us? We’re constantly inundated with grim media stories, many of which are specifically tailored to sow polarizing distrust. There’s a major ground war in Europe again. We’re told that inequality is worse than ever and showing no signs of improvement. Climate change is just a few years away from getting out of control (and probably already has). Your neighbor can be annoying sometimes.

People are the worst, things are bad, and it’s always been that way.

Or so we think.

Adam M. Mastroianni and Daniel T. Gilbert, the authors of the study titled “The Illusion of Moral Decline,” contend that this pervasive worldview is a psychological illusion. The world is not in fact in a perpetual state of moral decline. Actually, it has been steadily improving over the last hundred years; but that isn’t really what matters in our minds. As a great social scientist once said: the facts (of the social sciences) are what people think and believe. We should take this seriously because when erroneous beliefs become actions things can get unwieldy quickly.

The contours of the illusion

Mastroianni and Gilbert weave a persuasive story about the contours of our propensity to mistakenly believe the world is in moral decline. They found that “people in at least 60 nations do indeed believe that morality is declining, and that they have believed this for at least 70 years.”

They discovered that when people were asked about long periods of time, they believed that moral decline was a real problem. But when they were asked about progress on specific social issues like the treatment of black people, women, disabled people, and gay people, they were more likely to believe that moral progress had been made. The authors helpfully point out that this indicates “well-considered beliefs, and not merely expressing some vague sense of despair about humanity.” Respondents had arrived at their worldviews through reflection, not reaction.

In addition to the long-term belief in moral decline, the researchers “show that people attribute this decline both to the decreasing morality of individuals as they age and to the decreasing morality of successive generations.”

We’ve all heard it (sometimes even from our own mouths): “damn kids!” The perception that morality in other people decreases as we age and that younger generations are less moral is not new. As the authors put it, personal change (how we as individuals change over time) and interpersonal placement (our position relative to other people) strongly predict our perceptions of decline. 

The third bit of evidence to support the claim that moral decline is not real is that “people’s reports of the current morality of their contemporaries have not declined over time, which strongly suggests that the perception of moral decline is an illusion.”

This one seems pretty straightforward. Clearly, we believe, others’ morality declines as we age, and younger generations are undoubtedly less moral, but our cohort remains morally upright through all of it. I won’t go much further than this here as the argument is unsurprising, but the robustness of the evidence uncovered by the researchers is doubly convincing.

Finally, the authors 

The psychological mechanism they are referring to is the ‘BEAM’ mechanism, or “biased exposure and memory.” In short, the BEAM mechanism can attenuate or reverse the illusion of moral decline if 

The BEAM mechanism basically predicts that the illusion of moral decline can be lessened if we surround ourselves with positivity or simply delude ourselves about the past.

The world is getting better, actually

I glossed over many details in the study for the sake of time and space. It would have been difficult to dig further into it without block-quoting the entire thing. The authors did it better, so I encourage you to read the article for yourself. 

I provided that overview to highlight robust scientific findings about our relationship with negativity and reality. Throughout history, negativity has been pervasive. But if we look at a number of important data points, we’ll find that things are not only not getting worse; they’re actually improving. 

Approval of interracial marriage in the U.S. is at an all-time high of 94%. LGBTQ+ rights have been rising for many years. The gender wage gap is decreasing. Economic growth continues to rise. Along a number of metrics, the world is far better than it has been in recent history. To be sure, this is not a linear phenomenon. There are setbacks and challenges. Contending with the return of socially acceptable bigotry during the Trump years is real. Even so, what we have seen and continue to see in the way of moral improvement is unprecedented in world history. 

So why do we see such persistent belief in moral decline? According to the study's authors, we are especially attentive to negative information. We are surrounded by it in our media and in our minds. Additionally, they show that when we “recall positive and negative events from the past, negative events are likely to be forgotten,” giving us an inaccurate picture of the past and a distorted view of the present. In this case, we tend to weigh the past more positively and the present more negatively. Both of these things contribute to a strong sense of moral decline.

The stakes

Such persistent feelings of moral decline hold some troubling implications. How do we function as a free society if we see each other as morally inferior? Trust and mutual respect are indispensable to the liberal order. The veneer of civilization is thin and must not be taken for granted.

The authors point out a different survey that showed that “in 2015, 76% of US Americans agreed that “addressing the moral breakdown of the country” should be a high priority for their government.”

Rigid moral convictions that are entrenched in distrust and disdain for others are a recipe for authoritarianism. Suggesting the government could legislate morality (it can’t) assumes that that sword won’t be wielded on you (it will be). 

That’s why this study caught my attention; it helps us understand this time in which we find ourselves. If everyone thinks the world is bad and getting worse, it makes it harder for us to trust each other. If it’s hard for us to trust each other, we’re vulnerable to manipulation by bad actors. We’ve seen this at the political level with the demagoguery of Donald Trump and the rise of the authoritarian right. On the left, bad-faith activists have hijacked the social justice movement, robbing it of the legitimacy it deserves. Libertarians are now, apparently, fascists. Distrust and inflexibility have deprived us of the empathy we need to guide our interactions, shredding the social institutions on which we depend.  

Susceptibility to authoritarian ideas is not inevitable, though. As highlighted earlier, the BEAM mechanism the authors point out could be useful here. Engaging with more positive stories about others can help us to calibrate our natural bias toward negative thinking. And since the institutions which mediate our information are unlikely to do this, it’s up to us to do the work to get there.

Let’s not give them the satisfaction.

No matter how much we might want to believe it, the world is not in moral decline. Our imperfect humanity burdens us with biases. Our brains do not perfectly compute information. Our senses can deceive us. Given this, we need to make room for our shortcomings, embrace humility, and allow grace for each other. Assuming the worst will bring us the worst. This is what makes us susceptible to entrepreneurs who deal in perversity. Their keen eyes will see the opening and exploit our divisions. I’m not saying we need to come together in some kumbaya sense, but we also can’t open ourselves up to manipulation by bad actors. Authoritarianism does not sleep. It waits. And when we’re preoccupied with destroying each other for perceived moral shortcomings, we’ve taken our eyes off the ball. By then, it’s too late.