The United States is the only country where a majority of people think their compatriots are morally suspect, a new poll has found. For the first time, Pew has looked into how people perceive the morality of their fellow citizens, and in the U.S., the answer is striking. Researchers found that while 92 percent of Canadians thought their fellow citizens were good people, 53 percent of Americans thought theirs were either somewhat bad or very bad people. Seven percent of Canadians thought their fellows were bad. People from 25 countries were involved in the research, with all 24 others returning overall positive views. The data found that people whose preferred political party is out of power tend to have a more negative bias, with 60 percent of Democrats holding a negative view of Americans, compared to 46 percent of Republicans. As this is the first time Pew has asked such a question, there is no historical data to compare against, nor were any follow-up questions asked about why people felt the way they do. Gallup has asked Americans about the nation’s “overall state of moral values” since 2003, and the answer has always come back in the red.
Read it at Pew Research Center
