Most Americans Don't Believe in Objective Morality

Nearly two-thirds (64%) of Americans reject moral realism, the claim that there is an objective truth about right and wrong. When given the choice between major metaethical theories, a plurality (43%) of Americans said that emotivism, (the view that statements about right and wrong merely express personal sentiments like "boo killing" or "yay charity") best aligns with their beliefs. Nearly one in five Americans said that cultural relativism best describes their beliefs, with only 3% preferring error theory.

What is Metaethics?

The field of metaethics studies what kinds of things right and wrong are (objective truth, opinion, cultural beliefs), as opposed to normative ethics which studies theories of what makes a given action right or wrong. Moral realism is sometimes classified as agreement with three claims:

1. Some moral statements are true.

2. Moral statements refer to properties.

3. The properties moral statements refer to are normal, they are like other properties out in the world.

There are a range of different metaethical theories that deny at least on of the propositions above. For a primer on the difference between ethics and meta-ethics, check out this video:

Philosophers that deny the first premise are called error theorists. This theory was developed by J. L. Mackie and it claims that all moral statements are false since moral properties do not exist. Others think that moral statements can be true and do refer to properties, but that these properties are weird in some way (i.e. denying the third premise). A common version of this is cultural relativism which claims that moral statements can be true, but only relative to the views of a given culture (you can say a statement is true or false indexed to a given culture, but cannot say one culture's views are right or wrong). Here's a video on the differences between moral relativism and moral subjectivism, both of which might be described as fitting into this category:

Others, often called non-cognitivists deny the second premise and claim moral statements don't express properties about the world, but are short hand for a different kind of statement, such as "I don't like killing" or "Do not kill." Emotivism is one such position which claims that moral statements are actually statements of how you feel about a particular action, that saying "stealing is wrong" is equivalent to saying that "I don't like stealing" or "Boo stealing!". Check out this video for more:

According to our survey, emotivism is more popular than moral realism or cultural relativism. For more on the survey itself and the methodology, check out this blog post.

Religion and Race Significant In Views on Metaethics

Religion is one of the most significant determinants of one's views on metaethics. Using a linear probability model, we can see that religious "Nones" (Atheists, Agnostics, and Nothing in Particulars) are 9.8%*** less likely than all others to be moral realists, and 6.4%*** more likely to be cultural relativists. Identifying as a religion other than Christianity or None was associated with an increase of 4.8%*** in your chances of identifying as an error theorist. This makes sense as many strains of Christianity promote some version of moral realism. However it is still surprising that this effect is not higher: a majority of Protestants, Catholics, and Other Christians are not actually realists.

Race, political party, and education also appears to be associated with one's views on metaethics. With a linear probability regression we can see that your chances of being a cultural relativist increase if you are Black (by 11.5%***) and decrease if you are a Democrat (by 6.2%**) compared to all others. Higher education reduces your chances of being an emotivist, whether at least a bachelor's (by 6%**) or any philosophy courses (by 7%**).

Religious Beliefs Closely Linked to Moral Realism

While the demographics of these viewpoints are very interesting, if we conduct a dominance analysis on demographics as well as the other philosophical viewpoints in the survey, we find that, other philosophical views are closely associated with views on metaethics. While these views may not logically entail each other, they are closely linked empirically. The top viewpoints that predict moral realism are being a non-moral exclusivist about the afterlife (the only thing you need to do to get into the "good" afterlife is believe in the true religion), which increases the chances of being a moral realist by 20%*** epistemic internalism (beliefs are justified by other beliefs not something outside your head), which increases the chances of being a realist by 15%***, divine command theory (belief that right and wrong are dictated by God, which increases chances by 29%***, and Racial Naturalism (the claim that race is real, genetic, and manifests itself in inheritable behavioral characteristics unique to each race), which increases chances of being a realist by 9%***.

Despite what you might expect given this collection of beliefs (e.g. more conservative views on religion and race), Moral Realism is not significantly correlated with either political party. Here is a waterfall chart of the top 15 predictors of being a Moral Realist and the top 15 predictors of being an emotivist.

The predictors for emotivism are largely the inverse of those for moral realism, though the emphasis is slightly different. The biggest predictor is the denial of Logical Dogmatism (the claim that you can know logical truths with certainty) which decreases the likelihood of being an emotivist by 12.6%***. Afterlife Pluralism (the belief that everyone goes to an afterlife based on their own beliefs) also features as the fourth highest determinant, (increasing likelihood of being an emotivist by 12.7%***.

Overall, both of these analyses point to those with a certain set of religious and racial views (theism, non-moral exclusivism, racial naturalism, and divine command theory) being the best predictors of moral realism. While atheism, pluralism, racial constructivism, and logical skepticism are stronger predictors of emotivism.

Methodology Specifics

Before leaving, here are the specifics of how the question we have been focusing on was asked. This study was conducted in March of 2026 on a representative sample of Americans. For more on the overall methodology of this survey consult this blog post. As we publish more blogs on this survey the information on the questions for the other philosophical positions will come out. The best attempt was made to make the statements succinctly represent the four positions, while still being accessible to a general audience without too much philosophical lingo. Of the statements, 1 corresponds to moral realism, 2 corresponds to emotivism, 3 corresponds to cultural relativism, and 4 corresponds to error theory.

When someone makes a statement about right and wrong (like "it is wrong to kill") your view of that statement is best described as...

1. Moral statements are objectively true or false (i.e. "killing is wrong" can be true or false in the same way statements like "snow is white" can).

2. Moral statements express a person's feelings about an action (i.e. that they don't like killing).

3. Moral statements express cultural norms (i.e. that killing is wrong in their culture, but might be ok in other cultures)

4. All moral statements are false, because they fail to refer to anything real (saying "killing is wrong" is like saying "killing is bgike" it does not mean anything).

Data like these are a public good that can help us all understand how normal people view important philosophical questions. Our goal is to put out more surveys like this in the future, but we need your help! Have you ever wanted to ask a philosophical question to a representative sample of Americans? Have you ever been curious about how normal people see questions that are important to philosophers? You now have the chance to get your question on our next nationally representative survey! We need around $2,500 to conduct another survey, hopefully in the next few months. Visit our Patreon page to find out more. Here's how you can help:

• Raw Data $10: If you want access to the raw data from the survey we just finished, it is available! You can use it to run and publish whatever analyses you want, just 1) don't publish the raw data yourself and 2) make sure to give credit to Carneades.org. We'll even throw in the data from our pre-survey of 100 people.

• Likert Statement $30: Want to see how much Americans agree or disagree with a certain statement? For just $30, you can add a statement to our Likert question, where participants will respond to it with Strongly Agree, Agree, Neither Agree or Disagree, Disagree, or Strongly Disagree. The statement must be about philosophy, less than 150 characters, and safe for work. We'll include the raw data from the next survey.

• Multiple Choice Question $150: Want to design and ask your own multiple choice question? You can have up to 1000 characters in the question and up to 500 characters in each of the answers. Only up to 10 answers are allowed. The question must be about philosophy and safe for work. We'll include the raw data from the next survey. We will even throw in a Likert statement (as described above) and the raw data from the next survey for free!

  
  

We reserve the right to edit any statement for grammar, spelling, or to clarify any philosophical ideas for the respondents. We also reserve the right to reject any statements, but will give a full refund for any that are rejected.

Notes:

All graphs show the total sample cut first by the metaethical question first, then by the demographic group or other philosophical question. So, when a graph shows 4% for Hispanic and Error Theorist, it means that 5% of Hispanics are Error Theorists regardless of which value is used for grouping vs color. Similarly when a graph shows 53% for Afterlife Exclusivism (Non-Moral) and Moral Realism, it means that 53% of Non-Moral Afterlife Exclusivists are Moral Realists. All margins of error are calculated at the 95% confidence level.

Dominance analysis is run with all of the views in the study converted to binary or Likert scales. All likelihood estimates are created using a linear probability model with both dependent and independent variable treated as binaries.

*Significant at the p < 0.1 level

**Significant at the p < 0.05 level

*** Significant at the p < 0.01 level

How to cite this report:

Carneades (2026). Most Americans Don't Believe in Objective Morality. Experimental Philosophy. https://www.carneades.org/post/most-americans-don-t-believe-in-objective-morality