Woods: Our brains say humanity is on the decline. Are our brains messing with us?

I had a close group of friends in college. The summer after we graduated, someone suggested we use the 4th of July as an excuse to get back together for a few days.

We crammed into a few dumpy cabins on a lake, arrived with many cases of cheap beer, and stayed up late playing games and reminiscing about the good ol’ days.

Ever since then — every 4th of July for more than 40 years — at least some in the group have kept this tradition going. I appreciate that now more than ever. But since this gathering typically is in the Midwest, I usually don't make it. This year I did.

We no longer cram into dumpy cabins (this year one of the couples offered their house on Lake Michigan). We don’t drink nearly as much beer (and while some of it still is cheap, some is craft and some is non-alcoholic). But we still spend a lot of time reminiscing about the good ‘ol days — and, in the process, shaking our heads about these days.

Beyond today’s headlines — the politics, mass shootings, culture wars, Artificial Intelligence — we lamented how it was a simpler time when we were growing up, somehow managing to do so without cell phones, the internet and streaming TV.

Flying home on the night of 4th — looking out the window, seeing flashes of soundless fireworks dotting the landscape — I thought about something I read before the trip.

Adam Mastroianni, author of the science blog “Experimental History,” partnered with Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard professor, to examine the perception that today is much different from the past. And not in a good way. Civility and maybe even civilization are on the decline. Our world, near and far, is going down the drain.

OK, they used more scientific terms. Beyond doing their own recent surveys, they searched databases and found hundreds of surveys done worldwide about morality, going back to 1949, comparing past and present. For instance, in 1987 Gallup asked: “Compared to 10 years ago, are people more honest, less honest, or about the same?”

They found the same sentiment, across all eras, all kinds of demographics, in all 59 countries where the surveys were conducted. Civility, maybe even civilization, was on the decline.

“People say it just gets worse and worse — that moral decline has been happening their whole lives and it’s still happening today,” Mastroianni wrote.

The researchers offered a rebuttal. They noted that not only are there steadily declining rates of things like war and genocide over the past 2,000 years, but that their research showed things like kindness, honesty and civility actually have been stable in recent decades,

They published their findings in the journal Nature, and Mastroianni wrote a piece for the New York Times titled, “Your Brain Has Tricked You Into Thinking Everything Is Worse.”

When I first read this, my first thought was that it’s not just my brain. Just glance at the news or, speaking of good ol’ days, open a print newspaper.

“Mass shootings cloud July 4th holiday,” “Boy, 7, shot and killed during Florida jet ski dispute,” “Florida homeowner fired 30 shots at pool cleaner,” “Mobile meth lab found at Florida Welcome Center,” “World sees hottest days on record.”

At times it sure feels like the world and a lot of the people living on it, particularly in Florida, are melting down.

The researchers said that this perception is an illusion. Well, not the part about the world getting hotter — but about how the people living on it treat each other.

They found that when people were asked specific questions about kindness and morality in their day-to-day life, they gave almost identical answers across decades — but also consistently reported a decline in the world around them.

Nostalgia is a powerful drug, the stuff of songs and political campaigns long before this century.

The researchers concluded that the perception of decline was flawed — and that it can be attributed to two psychological tendencies.

The first is biased exposure. Negative information captures attention and it spreads. The second is biased memory. This has to do with how we remember the past — often fondly.

Both good and bad fade, but not in the same way. While we hang onto the positives of the past, we tend to forget the negatives, maybe even romanticize some of them.

Mastroianni wrote: “Our biased attention means we’ll always feel like we’re living in dark times, and our biased memory means we’ll always think the past was brighter.”

I’ve been thinking about this. I don’t know if I completely believe it — some pieces of today seem unlike anything in my lifetime. But I do tend to focus on the negative twists that seem unlike anything in my lifetime, while taking for granted the positive ones. And when I think about my perceptions of the past and present, there certainly are some elements of biased exposure and biased memory.

For instance, when I gathered with friends, I thought about when I got my first job, at a newspaper not far from there. At the time, I drove a car that seemed made for the 4th: a 1976 Chevy Chevette.

It had a bicentennial-themed interior. It also had a hole in the floorboard that eventually gave me some serious carbon monoxide poisoning. Now we laugh about that. And now, when I reminisce about those days, I tend to remember the good times and forget there were times when I was not in a good place — and I don’t just mean the apartment where I lived, with a bean bag chair for furniture and sheets for drapes.

The same could be said of the world then and now.

When we look around today, we do so with the blessing and curse of today’s technology. A few decades ago, when bad things happened, you heard about them on the nightly news, read about them in the morning paper and, in between, went about your day. Now it’s 24/7. Not just the news, but the reaction to it, which leads to more reaction, and on and on. And it's not just national and international news. It’s neighborhood networks like Nextdoor.

Is all of this creating an illusion of decline or is it a reality?

Even if it’s an illusion, the damaging effects are quite real, both on a personal and societal level.

With that in mind, I’m trying to spend less time on social media. And when I’m thinking of column topics, while I don’t want to pretend everything is idyllic, I also want to find stories that can remind my brain and yours that maybe everything isn’t worse.

mwoods@jacksonville.com

(904) 476-0397

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Experimental psychologist says moral breakdown is illusion