In a new 25-country survey, the United States gained a dubious honor: Americans were more likely than any other nation surveyed to think their fellow citizens were “morally bad” people.

When Pew Research Center asked people around the world to rate the morality and ethics of people within their country last year, most people had faith and trust in the morality of other people living in their nation ― but Americans didn’t.

In the survey, a majority of U.S. adults said fellow Americans were morally bad (53%) rather than morally good (47%).

The Pew Research Center report’s lead author, Jonathan Evans, said what was especially “striking” was that Americans were not so negative about specific issues.

“What we find is that the U.S. is often towards the middle of the pack,” he said. “So it’s neither the country where the highest percentage are saying something is morally wrong, nor are they the least likely on all of these measures.” On specific habits that other countries judged more harshly, like having an abortion and drinking alcohol, the U.S. was in the middle about whether these polarizing actions were morally unacceptable or morally acceptable.

But overall, Americans were the harshest when asked specifically about other Americans’ morality and ethics.

John Jost, a New York University professor of psychology and politics, said the low moral ranking of the U.S. is likely due to political polarization.

“My hypothesis would be that religious conservatives think that liberals and people who support sexual minorities are immoral and not living up to the religious standards they set for themselves,” Jost said.

“At the same time, I would hypothesize that liberals and progressives increasingly view Republicans in the era of Trump as immoral for completely different reasons, including concerns about corruption and anti-democratic behavior and the fact that many Trump supporters appear to be embracing far-right rhetoric that is racist, sexist, and overtly prejudiced in general.”

Because this is the first time Pew Research Center has asked this question in a survey, it’s not known if Americans always have held such bleak trust in their compatriots compared with other nations, but similar studies suggest this is not a new trend for Americans.

Gallup, which does poll Americans every year on their moral values, noted in 2025 that the current levels of moral acceptance toward behaviors like having unmarried sex or an abortion, or changing one’s gender are “down from the peaks measured a few years ago.” In other words, Americans, in general, are not as accepting as they used to be.

While the U.S. judged the morality of their fellow Americans poorly, Canada and Indonesia, meanwhile, ranked the highest in believing in their compatriots as “morally good.” Scott Schieman, a sociology professor at the University of Toronto who studies sentiments of Americans and Canadians and is a dual citizen of the two countries, said political differences could be why there’s such a stark contrast between American and Canadian answers in the survey.

Schieman said, in general, Canadians can be judgmental but someone else’s politics are not as personal as they are for Americans. “They might personally not love it, but they don’t necessarily live and breathe to bring it down,” he said. “The questionable morality would be directed at elites or the government, but not necessarily other Canadians.”

But in the U.S., politics are personal.

“I think that political identity means a lot more in the U.S. than it does in Canada,” Schieman said. “There’s more intense moral judgment for the other side.” Schieman cited how political parties are described as “evil” and President Donald Trump has called media an “enemy of the people” as two examples.

In this way, disagreements about environmental policies can become “but you’re really a bad person” in the U.S., Schieman said.

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