For starters, it’s important to remember that the survey is comparing data from a non-election year (2011) with data taken less than a month before a presidential election.
When you ask a question like this in a non-election year, respondents are likelier to grapple with the question in abstract terms. They may also find it easier to lean toward an aspirational response—one that reflects the way they’d like to think of themselves. When you ask the same question in October 2016, though, respondents are going to answer with some concrete consequences at stake.
In other words, it’s not necessarily that people’s moral values have changed since 2011. It’s just that they hear the same question through a very different lens in an election year.
Read Full Article »