Are People Better of Worse Than in the Past?

 While I was browsing online, I came across an article titled "Are we worse than people used to be.?"   Psychologists Adam Mastrocammi joined with Raul Rand to answer that often asked question.  They included a question that caught my eye.  They used the common comment, "You used to be able to leave your door unlocked at night."

That comment caught my eye because I remember exactly when we started locking our door at night.  It was 1959.  I came downstairs and went to the back door to go outside.  The door would not open, and since it was always unlocked, I kept yanking on it, assuming it was just stuck.  Very calmly my father said, "You might try unlocking it." 

November 15, 1959 was the night of the killing of the Clutter family.  Truman Capote wrote his book about the murders, and it was made into a movie titled "In Cold Blood", and after that night our doors were always locked.  Until then, we never locked our doors...not at night nor when we went to town, although I believe we did lock the doors if we were going on vacation.  I am certain that the news of the Clutter murders was the beginning of locking our doors.

However, this blog is about whether things in general were better than they are today.  Consistently, when asked, people today say that people were better when they were young than they are today.  Whether older people are asked or younger people are asked, the answer is the same.  People hold that opinion about a broad range of things, such as politics. One question commonly asked by social scientists to measure opinions about generosity or greed consistently gets the response that people today are greedier.  However, if they are asked that question about people they have known for at least 15 years, they generally say that their acquaintances are better today than they were in the past. 

Another example is that since older people and younger people both believe that people are worse today than they were in the past, logic would conclude that things must be awful, since things have been going downhill for years.   

The authors of this research concluded that people are not really getting worse.  Rather, as time passes, we do not remember the bad things that happened long ago, but we clearly remember recent bad things that just happened.  That is their explanation for why most people tend to think things are worse today.  

I followed their reasoning, and I am not sure that holds up.  Certainly, if bad things have just happened, they are going to be foremost in your mind.  However, the idea that we have an exagerated, sunny recollection of the past does not seem realistic to me.  Clearly, I am not the expert, and my memory may be different from others.  All that I know with certainty is that we never locked our doors until November of 1959.

I do think that traditions that made us feel good, like holiday traditions, like bringing friends and family together for holidays and birthdays, are less common, and that was a good tradition.  Chatting on the phone seems less common, and that reduces sharing news, becoming aware when someone is not well and baking some cookies or bringing a supper basket, simply staying in touch.  I don't know that such things represent being worse than in the past, but those traditions were nice.  Traditional customs did seem to make for a kinder world.

Just for fun you might try your own test by creating a personal questionnaire.  Think back to your clear memories of the past, good and bad.  Then reflect on recent events similar to the old memories you recalled.  Your personal test might not be accurate, but it might be interesting.