25 January 2012: Are Britons becoming more dishonest?
A new survey carried out by Professor Paul Whiteley at the Essex University ‘Centre for the Study of Integrity’ (ECSI) claims this is so for misdemeanours (minor wrongdoings) as distinct from major crimes.
The survey repeated, with the same questions, a survey carried out in 2000. The survey was of the attitudes of over 2,000 adults who “were asked to take an ‘integtity test’, in which they were asked whether they thought a range of activities could ever be justified”.
Compared with the survey of attitudes in 2000, people were more tolerant of activities like having an extramarital affair, or failing to leave a contact after damaging a parked car.
The only offence of which people have become less tolerant since the year 2000 was cheating on benefits.
These results suggest that there might be an on-going decrease in honesty that could eventually have serious consequences for society in the future by making it much more difficult for government to maintain order.
But there was another finding that was also very relevant to the concerns of GaiaPopulationWatch, namely, that young people were “much more likely to condone bad behaviour than older people”.
Now since today’s young people are tomorrow’s adults (who in turn will affect the attitude of their children to misdemeanours), we think this finding is consistent with the idea that a decline in honesty is likely to continue.
However, as the report points out, there is an alternative explanation of the significance of the difference between young people and older people. It might simply be that people tend to become more honest as they grow older!
See the report:
See also the BBC News item:
“25th Jan. Britons ‘more dishonest than 10 years ago’, study finds”