Britain facing boom in dishonesty
A study on integrity, carried out by the University of Essex, has found that British people are becoming less honest and that their trust in government and business leaders has fallen – with lying, drink driving, buying stolen good all found to be more acceptable compared to ten years ago. Describing the situation as an ‘integrity crisis’, the study’s author, Professor Paul Whiteley, believes the findings may be attributed to a life cycle effect in which people become more honest as they age.
Worryingly, Professor Whiteley describes how “there are reasons to be pessimistic about this, since people tend to acquire their basic political beliefs in adolescence and these do not change very much as they grow older. If integrity is anything like political values, then it is likely to decline in future as the norms which sanction such behaviour weaken further. This will be more likely if new cohorts of young people learn to be even more dishonest than at present.” According to the University of Essex the findings have implications for public policy. In particular, where social capital is low and where communities do not work together, residents have worse health, lower education attainment, are less happy and less entrepreneurial. Essex Centre for the Study of Integrity
We often hear that crime is less prevalent in rural areas – we also often like to think that they have strong “social capital” derived from people needing to cooperate to overcome the challenge of remoteness. It would be fascinating to apply the rural_urban definitions to the locations of the respondents to this survey to see if there is a case for claiming rural dwellers are more or less honest than the norm!!