Americans are three times more likely to say moral values in the United States are “poor” than to say they’re “excellent” or “good,” according to new poll by Gallup researchers. The researchers also found that 76 percent of Americans think moral values in the country are getting worse, while only 14 percent believe they’re getting better.


How, specifically, do Americans see values deteriorating? Here’s what the respondents said:
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Sam Harris has responded to cosmologist Sean Carroll’s latest response to his TED talk, maintaining that science can help us create a universal foundation for morality:

Imagine that we had a machine that could produce any possible brain state (this would be the ultimate virtual reality device, more or less like the Matrix). This machine would allow every human being to sample all available mental states (some would not be available without changing a person’s brain, however). I think we can ignore most of the philosophical and scientific wrinkles here and simply stipulate that it is possible, or even likely, that given an infinite amount of time and perfect recall, we would agree about a range of brain states that qualify as good (as in, “Wow, that was so great, I can’t imagine anything better”) and bad (as in, “I’d rather die than experience that again.”) There might be controversy over specific states—after all, some people do like Marmite—but being members of the same species with very similar brains, we are likely to converge to remarkable degree. I might find that brain state X242358B is my absolute favorite, and Carroll might prefer X979793L, but the fear that we will radically diverge in our judgments about what constitutes well-being seems pretty far-fetched. The possibility that my hell will be someone else’s heaven, and vice versa, seems hardly worth considering. And yet, whatever divergence did occur must also depend on facts about the brains in question.
Even if there were 10,000 different ways for groups of human beings to maximally thrive (all trade-offs and personal idiosyncrasies considered), there will be many ways for them not to thrive—and the difference between luxuriating on a peak of the moral landscape and languishing in a valley of internecine horror will translate into facts that can be scientifically understood.

No, maintains cosmologist Sean Carroll, who first responded to Sam Harris’ TED talk on the subject a couple of months back. (Harris’ main point is that science can help us get at what we ought to do to live the best life possible). Now, Carroll explains his objections in more detail.
In essence, he argues that in the real world, people don’t agree on what constitutes “well-being,” and it’s not clear that maximizing well-being is the proper goal of morality. And there are no experiments we can do to determine what well-being really is or how we should balance an individual’s well-being against the community’s. In other words, there is no scientific way to answer moral questions. We can use science to help us understand morality, he says, but we can’t use it to justify our moral values.
As he explains:

The whole debate is somewhat distressing, as we could be engaged in an interesting and fruitful discussion about how scientific methods could help us with our moral judgments, if we hadn’t been distracted by the misguided attempt to found moral judgments on science. It’s a subtle distinction, but this is a subtle game.

Performing good deeds (or just thinking about doing them) helps us perform better on tests of physical endurance and willpower, new research suggests. But doing evil things make us even stronger.
Kurt Gray, a postdoctoral student at Harvard University, gave people a dollar and told them they could keep it or donate it to charity. Then he asked them to hold a five-pound weight. He found that those who donated the money could hold the weight for an average of about 10 seconds longer than those who kept the money for themselves.
Next, he asked volunteers to hold the weight while writing a made-up story in which they helped someone else, hurt someone else, or did something that had no impact on another person. Those who thought about performing a good deed held the weight longer than those who thought about a neutral action. Those who imagined harming someone else, however, held the weight the longest.
What’s happening here? Gray calls it “moral transformation.” Helping others, he says, has the power to make average people extraordinary. Strength comes from moral actions, not the other way around. As Gray explains:

People perceive those who do good and evil to have more efficacy, more willpower, and less sensitivity to discomfort. By perceiving themselves as good or evil, people embody these perceptions, actually becoming more capable of physical endurance (Harvard Gazette).

The findings contradict suggestions that only those people with heightened willpower or self-control are capable of heroism. Researchers believe that simply attempting heroic deeds can confer personal power (Telegraph).