{"id":498,"date":"2025-09-08T09:11:04","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T13:11:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/?p=498"},"modified":"2025-09-08T14:11:17","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T18:11:17","slug":"americas-moral-inflection-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/americas-moral-inflection-point\/","title":{"rendered":"America&#8217;s moral inflection point"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/32335083130_fbcd2c52b7_b.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-501\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/32335083130_fbcd2c52b7_b.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/32335083130_fbcd2c52b7_b-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/32335083130_fbcd2c52b7_b-768x512.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Last week, Gallup released the latest in its series of polling <a href=\"https:\/\/news.gallup.com\/opinion\/polling-matters\/694550\/trends-adults-acceptance-moral-values-behaviors.aspx\">evaluating America&#8217;s moral worldview<\/a>. Respondents were presented with a number of scenarios \u2014&nbsp;wearing fur for fashion, cheating on a spouse, etc. \u2014&nbsp;and asked whether those actions were generally morally acceptable or morally wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There was a wide variation in responses, as you&#8217;d expect given the wide range of scenarios presented. Here are 19 of the options presented to respondents, listed from most to least likely to be considered morally acceptable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"min-height:1300px\" id=\"datawrapper-vis-GTE3g\"><script type=\"text\/javascript\" defer src=\"https:\/\/datawrapper.dwcdn.net\/GTE3g\/embed.js\" charset=\"utf-8\" data-target=\"#datawrapper-vis-GTE3g\"><\/script><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/datawrapper.dwcdn.net\/GTE3g\/full.png\" alt=\"Americans' moral evaluations (Small multiple line chart)\" \/><\/noscript><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>What I noticed in looking at this data is that, for a number of these measures, there has been a sudden reversal of the long-term trend in recent years, with issues that were becoming more likely to be viewed as morally acceptable or consistently likely to be viewed that way suddenly being viewed more negatively. Those shifts appear to have often begun after the data from 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If we re-order the results to show the largest declines since 2022, that trend is more apparent (albeit sometimes inconsistent).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"min-height:1313px\" id=\"datawrapper-vis-wOZJ5\"><script type=\"text\/javascript\" defer src=\"https:\/\/datawrapper.dwcdn.net\/wOZJ5\/embed.js\" charset=\"utf-8\" data-target=\"#datawrapper-vis-wOZJ5\"><\/script><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/datawrapper.dwcdn.net\/wOZJ5\/full.png\" alt=\"The recent shift in America's moral views (Small multiple line chart)\" \/><\/noscript><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>This mirrors another shift that is easy to believe to be related: Pew Research Center data from earlier this year showing that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/religion\/2025\/02\/26\/decline-of-christianity-in-the-us-has-slowed-may-have-leveled-off\/\">self-identification as Christian has stabilized in recent years<\/a> \u2014&nbsp;and even increased a bit since a low in \u2026&nbsp;2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"min-height:548px\" id=\"datawrapper-vis-vaHaR\"><script type=\"text\/javascript\" defer src=\"https:\/\/datawrapper.dwcdn.net\/vaHaR\/embed.js\" charset=\"utf-8\" data-target=\"#datawrapper-vis-vaHaR\"><\/script><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/datawrapper.dwcdn.net\/vaHaR\/full.png\" alt=\"Percent of Americans identifying as Christian (Line chart)\" \/><\/noscript><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>The timing here is striking. It is by now well established that there were shifts in behavior that accompanied the emergence of the coronavirus in the U.S. in 2020. But this isn&#8217;t that. This suggests that something else shifted in the 2022-2023 period \u2014&nbsp;a period when, for example, the covid-era <a href=\"https:\/\/realtimecrimeindex.com\/\">spike in crime was beginning to recede<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"min-height:275px\" id=\"datawrapper-vis-fQsjf\"><script type=\"text\/javascript\" defer src=\"https:\/\/datawrapper.dwcdn.net\/fQsjf\/embed.js\" charset=\"utf-8\" data-target=\"#datawrapper-vis-fQsjf\"><\/script><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/datawrapper.dwcdn.net\/fQsjf\/full.png\" alt=\"12-month rolling crime totals (Small multiple line chart)\" \/><\/noscript><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Gallup&#8217;s analysis, summarized by Frank Newport, notes that the shifts over the past few years haven&#8217;t been uniform. Younger Americans, for example, have become disproportionately more likely to view porn, sex between teenagers and extramarital affairs as not morally acceptable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>His analysis ends with a cautious note.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;More research and more time are necessary to understand this recent shift,&#8221; Newport writes. &#8220;It may be a temporary, short-term change. Or it could be evidence of a more substantial shift in Americans\u2019 moral and values positioning.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s data-speak for &#8220;it looks like something happened here, but it&#8217;s not clear what \u2014&nbsp;or if it even anything significant happened at all.&#8221; But if it did, as it seems to have, the question is: Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Photo: LGBT Solidarity Rally in front of the Stonewall Inn, New York on Feb. 4, 2017. (Mathias Wasik\/Flickr under Creative Commons license)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, Gallup released the latest in its series of polling evaluating America&#8217;s moral worldview. Respondents were presented with a number of scenarios \u2014&nbsp;wearing fur for fashion, cheating on a spouse, etc. \u2014&nbsp;and asked whether those actions were generally morally acceptable or morally wrong. There was a wide variation in&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":501,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":521,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498\/revisions\/521"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}