The Campaign Company specialises in social research and behaviour change. This is your guide to what we’ve been reading. Here’s what’s coming up this week:
Engagement Hub ~ Why is the belief in moral decline so strong?
This week we look, in our Engagement Hub, at societies’ susceptibility to believe in moral decline. Why is this the case and why does it matter when engaging with communities?
And of course, there’s Charlie’s Attic, the part of the bulletin that goes to the dogs each Friday. And talking of moral decline, we’ve got a Boris Johnson quiz for those of you who may be missing him already.
We were interested in this piece, which reports on a new study into why so many people think society is in a state of moral decline. The study described starts with a lit review, looking at research across 59 societies, and finds that a staggering 86% think society is becoming less moral. People tend to believe both that individuals are becoming less kind and good over time, and that each generation is less moral than the last. People believe this regardless of the generation they were born into and tend to see the start point of the decline as somewhere around the year of their birth.
The research also tests whether this is true. Are all the people who believe this in fact correct? It finds, to the contrary, that something close to the opposite is happening. Studies over the past six decades show a marked uptick in cooperative behaviour between people.
So why do most people think the world is getting less moral, when in fact the opposite is the case? The academics behind the analysis argue that two cognitive biases are at play: “biased exposure to negative information about current morality and biased memory for positive information about past morality can create an illusion of moral decline.” In other words, we continually read and hear about immoral behaviour, in a media (and social media) context where ‘bad news is good news’. And this adds to the proneness for nostalgia about our own lives which most of us have inbuilt.
This is all interesting from an intellectual perspective. But it is also relevant when it comes to policy-making and engagement. The belief in moral decline is damaging for trust – in decision-makers and in fellow citizens – and can make societies suspicious of change and difference. Pessimism makes people less likely to believe change is possible and can cause citizens to turn inwards. For those looking to engage better with communities, the first step is arguably to address and interrogate people’s sense of moral decline.
And finally, this week, the den of iniquity that is Charlie’s Attic:
Get your tongue around these 10 words that can’t be translated into English.
