THE United States is the only country in the world in which a majority of the people believe their fellow citizens to be immoral, Pew Research suggests.
Of the US adults surveyed by the organisation, 53 per cent rated the morality and ethics of their fellow citizens as “bad” or “very bad”.
In every other country surveyed, people were more likely to rate fellow citizens as having good morals and ethics, although people in Turkey and Brazil were only slightly behind the US in viewing their compatriots negatively.
The Pew Center surveyed a total of 28,000 adults outside the US, and 3600 adults within the country. While younger adults in many countries tended to be more likely to hold favourable views of fellow citizens, younger people in the US were more likely than older adults to say that other people had “bad morals”.
The current political climate in the US may be influencing these negative views of fellow citizens’ morality, the researchers suggest, as rising numbers of people in both of the main parties are likely to say that members of the other party are “immoral”.
Although results showed the US to be the most extreme, such a partisan view of political opponents’ morality was present in half of the 25 countries surveyed for the study.
In the UK, a large majority (82 per cent) of people rated their fellow citizens as “morally good”. Conversely, 17 per cent said that their fellow citizens were “morally bad”.
The Pew Center also asked respondents to rate whether nine different “behaviours” — including drinking, abortion, gambling, and the use of contraception — were morally acceptable or not acceptable.
The results showed that among Christians around the world there is a wide variation in views of what is considered to be morally wrong.
Almost one third (27 per cent) of the Christian respondents in the UK said that abortion was morally unacceptable, compared with 59 per cent in the US. In Indonesia, Nigeria, and Kenya, both the Muslims and Christian groups were very likely to say that abortion was morally unacceptable. In Kenya, 79 per cent of the Muslims felt strongly on this issue, alongside 81 per cent of the Christians. In Europe, the response from Christians giving this view was much lower, from 40 per cent in Spain to just seven per cent in Sweden.
Views on contraception also varied widely between Christians, depending on geography. In Europe, very few Christians in comparison, with those in countries in the global South, said that contraception was morally unacceptable. Twenty per cent of the Brazilian Christians and 41 per cent of the Nigerian Christians said that it was unacceptable.
The behaviour most disapproved of across all countries was having an extramarital affair. An average of 77 per cent of the adults across all countries said that it was morally unacceptable.
The latest study suggests that the public’s view of some forms of behaviour have shifted in the past few years. Divorce has become more widely accepted since 2013. In only two countries, Nigeria and India, did a majority of people now say that divorce is immoral.
People were also less likely in many countries to say that homosexuality was morally unacceptable, although men tended to be more likely to say this than women, and there remained a wide variation in views on homosexuality. In the US, 39 per cent considered it “morally wrong” — much higher than the 16 per cent in the UK, but lower than Nigeria at 96 per cent, and Indonesia at 93 per cent.
When asked about pornography, women were more likely than men to say that it was unacceptable. Women were also more likely to disapprove of gambling, drug use, and drinking.
Age and education also affected views on morality, researchers found. Older adults were more likely to find pornography, drinking, homosexuality, and gambling unacceptable, but younger adults were more likely to view having an extramarital affair as unacceptable.
The less educated were also more likely to rate behaviour as morally unacceptable.
