Here are some giblets to paste on your hat:
The profession Americans trust most is that of firefighter. Metropolitans (Northeasterners) lead the country in keeping their virginity until marriage. The Pac Rim (northern California and the Northwest) has the country’s highest number of sociopaths. Fifteen percent of adult Americans would rather watch television than have sex. Want more? A third of surveyed married men and women confess to having had at least one affair. Men and women both fantasize about oral sex; 79 percent of men and 70 percent of women have actually had it. One married, Midwestern executive made out with two girls and a dog while immersed in hot wax and Jell-O.
Could you make up stuff like that? Well, let’s hope not, say James Patterson and Peter Kim, authors of an ambitious new survey of manners and morals called “The Day America Told the Truth.” The two, chairman and research director, respectively, of the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, say they secured these honest-to-goodness truths by urging people to confide their secrets under conditions of “absolute anonymity.” Given that assurance, says Patterson, he was amazed at the number who were “aching to talk to somebody about who they really are.”
Actually, sex is just the seasoning; the book has its mind on more sobering matters. Among the “revelations” the authors found startling: one in seven people reports being sexually abused in childhood, far more than the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimate of 2.5 per 1,000. Sixty percent, 600 percent more than official estimates, say they have been victims of a major crime. And 20 percent of the women in the survey report having been raped by their dates. In general, the authors were struck by the decline in morality and leadership in the country. “More than 70 percent said they didn’t have even one hero,” notes Kim. “So many of us seem to have lost faith in the future.” The effect is felt down the line, adds Patterson. “More than half our people said they would be interested in volunteer work or in donating money to help, if they believed in the leadership.” Instead, he says, Americans are making up their own rules that countenance cheating on their employers and their taxes.
The authors say they got the idea for the survey from market research on emotional issues connected with buying cars, beer, “anything connected with machismo.” Among other things, the data suggested men are deeply upset at being under-appreciated by women and still overburdened with responsibility. As a result, the ’90s will witness a “men’s revolution,” fueled, says Patterson, by “incredible anger.”
Patterson and Kim say they gathered their putative truths from a random sample of 2,000 people, quizzed in 50 different locations over a period of a week. (A shorter, mail-in version was sent to 3,500 people.) To prepare the questionnaire they analyzed data from “literally thousands” of studies and sifted through “over 200,000 potentially useful survey questions”–a conscientiousness quotient that may well surpass the Woodward and Bernstein standard of two sources per Watergate fact. Nearly every page of the questionnaire carried a reminder that the survey sought “total honesty.” And a good thing, as it turned out: in the spirit of truth-telling, 91 percent of the respondents admitted to lying at times.
That, indeed, may be the flaw in this entertaining, if not quite persuasive, attempt to take out the American Zeitgeist. The problem is not the possibility of lying so much as the likelihood of telling something less than the truth. Conclusions aside, one of the more surprising things about the survey was that respondents answered around 600 to 800 applicable questions (out of a total of 1,800) in as little as an hour. Professional pollsters observe that normally, it’s difficult to make people sit still for anything that long unless you show them three sitcoms–or pay them to do it, which would tend to put the results in question. Some pollsters were uncomfortable with the claim that people could get through so many questions so quickly, and do it reflectively enough to provide useful answers. Kim neverthless insists the questions were structured in a way that elicited thoughtful replies.
While reflecting on that, ponder this: early in the book, the authors divide the country into nine “moral regions” (Pac Rim, Rust Belt, Granary, etc.) that don’t seem to divide morally. Metropolitans, for instance, rank first in thoughts of cheating on their wives, but are tied with the Granary (Colorado and the Midwestern states) in that department, and straight-faced New Englanders rank first in actual cheating, which is rampant in all nine regions. Old Dixie ranks tops in hard-core racists and above the national average in folks who believe it’s their moral responsibility to help the poor. And so on, to the New South and beyond.
What does it all mean? As the travel books are fond of saying: America, a land of contrasts-and, it seems, inscrutable morality.
New Englanders lead the country in cheating on their spouses, spying on their neighbors and giving to charity.
Ninety-five percent of Americans believe in capital punishment; one in three would volunteer to pull the switch for the electric chair.
Sixty percent of Americans believe the next century will belong to the Japanese.
Twenty-two percent of males and 7 percent of females say they had lost their virginity by the age of 13.
Ninety percent of Americans say they believe in God.
