According to a recent poll conducted by the Wall Street Journal and NORC, priorities that have long defined the national character of Americans, such as patriotism, religious faith, and having children, are becoming less significant to the population.

A nonpartisan research organization, NORC at the University of Chicago, conducted the survey, which reveals that the country is deeply divided along political party lines when it comes to social trends such as promoting racial diversity in businesses and adopting gender-neutral pronouns.

The survey results show that 38% of those polled considered patriotism as a very important priority, while 39% considered religion as very important, the Wall Street Journal reported.

This marks a significant decline from 1998 when the Wall Street Journal first asked this question, with 70% of respondents considering patriotism as very important and 62% considering religion as very important.

The survey indicates a decline in the percentage of Americans who consider having children, community involvement, and hard work as very important values.

Moreover, tolerance for others, which was considered very important by 80% of Americans just four years ago, has fallen to 58% since then.

According to the survey, 21% of respondents believe that America is superior to all other countries in the world, a perspective often referred to as American exceptionalism.

Meanwhile, half of the respondents consider America to be one of the greatest countries in the world, alongside some others.

However, the percentage of people who believe that other countries are better than the United States has increased from 19% in 2016 to 27% in this survey.

In the survey, 75% of Republicans expressed the view that society has become too accepting of transgender individuals, while 56% of Democrats felt that society hasn’t gone far enough in this regard.

Regarding the issue of companies taking public stands on social and political matters, 63% of respondents believed that they should not do so, while 36% thought they should.

Among Republicans, 80% were opposed to companies taking such stands, whereas 56% of Democrats favored the idea.

In terms of the use of gender-neutral pronouns, half of the respondents did not like the practice of using words such as “they” or “them” when addressing someone, compared to only 18% who had a favorable view of it. Among those under the age of 35, 30% viewed the practice favorably, compared to only 9% of seniors.

The survey was conducted by the Journal-NORC from March 1-13, with 1,019 participants, mostly online. The margin of error was plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

Written by staff