Have people gotten more rude in public in the past five years?
A survey by the Pew Research Center found more than half of Americans did not think so.
While 20% said people are “a lot more rude” in public since the COVID-19 pandemic, and another 26% who see “a little more” rudeness, nearly as many — 44% — said rudeness is about the same.
Adding in the nine percent who saw a little or even a lot of implementation tipped the scales into the positive range.
What does that mean?
Well, rudeness is in the eye of the beholder, but it might be fair to say the deck is stacked against the perception of politeness.
After all, what one person finds objectionable, a majority could find to be fine, but just a few violations of etiquette could lead someone to decide for themselves rudeness is on the rise even if most of their public interactions are positive.
Case in point: While roughly three quarters of respondents said smoking around others (77%) or taking a photo of someone without their permission is rarely or never acceptable (74%), the response was more split on wearing headphones or earbuds while talking to someone (57%) or bringing a pet into an indoor space like a grocery or shop (45%).
That being said, 84% of respondents said knowing what is appropriate to do in public is very or somewhat easy for them to know, though that is also a matter of personal perception.
More people said they often (9%) or “almost always” (25%) see people behaving rudely in public than those who said rarely (18%) or never (2%), but nearly half (46%) reported at least sometimes seeing it.
Five Worst Acts
Pew surveyed people on eight different categories, and five came in over 60% rarely if ever acceptable.
Along with smoking around other people and taking a photo or video of someone in public, the next three were bringing a child into a place typically for adults (69%), visibly displaying swear words on a shirt or sign (66%) and cursing out loud (65%).
Bringing a pet into an indoor space (like a store) was the only thing to come in below 50% acceptable.
Digging Deeper
Perhaps not surprisingly, age was a factor in how people responded.
The biggest differences came when it came to swear words.
While 89% of people 65 and up and 76% of people 50-64 found cursing out loud rarely or never acceptable, only 38% of respondents aged 18-29 said so.
The results were similar for visibly displaying swear words on a shirt or a sign: 86% of those over 65 and 75% of 50-64-year-olds rejected that, while 43% under 30 said it was OK.
There was also a 40% gap on the headphones/earbuds issue: 36% under 30 and 49% of those from 30-49 said it was rarely or never acceptable, but that figure jumped to 66% for people 50-64 and 86% for those 65 and up.
On the flip side, the age groups were mostly in agreement on taking a photo or video of someone without their permission: 70% of 18-29-year-olds said it is rude, while 78% of those 65 and up agreed, and the other age groups fell in between those percentages.
Pew found no major differences in views by political party, but women were slightly more likely than men to see five of the behaviors surveyed as rarely or never acceptable.
Click here to see the full results.
How They Did It
Pew reached 9,609 adults either online or by telephone for this survey last November.
Respondents were all members of the Pew’s American Trends Panel, a group recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses who agreed to take surveys regularly.
That gives nearly all U.S. adults a chance of selection, according to the organization.
