Perhaps no political promise is more potent or universal than the vow to restore a golden age. What these political myths have in common is an understanding that the golden age is definitely not right now. I and my colleague Daniel Gilbert at Harvard have found evidence for that bug, which we recently published in the journal Nature. We first collected 235 surveys with over 574,000 responses total and found that, overwhelmingly, people believe that humans are less kind, honest, ethical and moral today than they were in the past. Respondents of all sorts — young and old, liberal and conservative, white and Black — consistently agreed: the golden age of human kindness is long gone.

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Persons: Caesar Augustus, Medicis, Adolf Hitler, Xi Jinping, “ Bongbong ” Marcos Jr, Donald Trump’s “, ”, Joe Biden’s, Daniel Gilbert, pollsters, — Organizations: Harvard Locations: China, Philippines