The Myth of the Unmoving Past

Americans believe the past is different from the present—that progress has occurred. Yet previous research has demonstrated that people believe the past was more conservative than it really was, a misperception of American attitudes going back to the year 1972. Here we replicate and extend this idea of misperceptions. First, we manipulate within-subjects across 39 attitudes what year in the past we ask people to estimate American attitudes from 2012 back to 1822. We also manipulate whether we ask people at all about the past, or present, or future, across attitudes. Finally, we ask people to predict American attitudes in the future, within-subjects from 10 to 200 years in the future. Across 4,664 estimates—we replicate the finding that Americans believe progress has occurred. We also show, however, that Americans believe progress has occurred only relatively recently, attitudes in the more distant past were stable and unchanging. We also show that Americans believe progress will continue into the future, although at a slower rate. Overall, our findings replicate that stereotypes of the past lead people to misperceive attitude change, but largely because we misperceive how the past was. Americans see the past as a stable and unmoving place.