Article By Samantha Kamman
53% of U.S. adults view fellow citizens as morally bad, according to a Pew survey.
American adults are more likely than people in other countries to view their fellow citizens as morally bad, according to a recent survey.
The survey, released by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center earlier this month, asked people in 25 countries about the morality and ethics of others in their country. According to Pew, 53% of U.S. adults ages 18 and older rated the morality and ethics of their fellow citizens as bad, while 47% rated them as good.
Among the other countries surveyed, Turkey ranked second, with 49% of respondents describing their fellow citizens’ morals as bad, followed by Brazil at 48%. Ninety-two percent of Canadians and Indonesians said that others in their country have good morals.
In Canada, 7% of respondents rated the morality and ethics of their fellow citizens as bad, while 8% of Indonesians said they see their countrymen as morally bad.
“Because we have never asked this question before, we don’t know whether a majority of Americans have long held a skeptical view of the ethics of fellow Americans, or if it’s something new — and if so, what’s driving it,” Pew researchers stated. “But partisan politics appear to play a role.”
Sixty percent of Democrats and independents who lean toward the Democratic Party rated their fellow Americans as morally and ethically bad, compared to 46% of Republicans and Republican-leaning individuals.
In addition to the U.S., the countries featured in the survey include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Poland, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the United Kingdom.
Pew highlighted an August 2022 survey that found growing shares of Republicans and Democrats say members of the opposing party are immoral. In the survey, 72% of Republicans said Democrats are more immoral than other Americans, with 63% of Democrats saying the same about Republicans.
“However, this partisan pattern is not unique to the U.S.,” Pew said in its recently released analysis. “In more than half of the countries surveyed, people who don’t support the governing party are particularly likely to view their fellow citizens as immoral.”
Pew’s survey also asked respondents in the 25 countries about the morality of nine behaviors: using marijuana, gambling, extramarital affairs, drinking alcohol, having an abortion, viewing pornography, homosexuality, divorce and using contraceptives.
Regarding the nine behaviors, Pew found that the U.S. is “neither the country where the highest percentage of adults view each behavior as morally wrong, nor is it the country where the highest percentage say the same behavior is morally acceptable or not a moral issue.”
Adults in the U.S. are among the most accepting of behaviors like using marijuana and gambling, with 23% describing the former as morally unacceptable and 29% saying the same about gambling.
Nine in 10 Americans condemned extramarital affairs as immoral, and the U.S. was among the countries whose residents were most likely to say it is morally wrong for married people to have affairs.
Americans were more likely to describe extramarital affairs as morally wrong compared to other behaviors, such as getting an abortion (47%), viewing pornography (52%) and homosexuality (39%).
Another survey that Pew published this month found that a record majority of Americans now say that it is not necessary to believe in God to be moral and have good values. People who already did not believe in God primarily held this view, however.
The survey collected data for the United States between March 24 and 30, 2025, as part of the American Trends Panel Wave 166 survey. According to the data, 68% of U.S. adults in 2025 agreed that “It is not necessary to believe in God in order to be moral and have good values.”
The question has been asked 18 times since 2002, and the latest survey showed the largest share of U.S. adults agreeing that belief in God is not necessary for being moral and upholding good values.
Be the first to comment