When were the good old days?

[Savonarola]

I saw this article on MSN (originally from the Washington Post) and thought it was interesting:

When America was 'great,' according to data
Story by Andrew Van Dam

How do you define the good old days?

The plucky poll slingers at YouGov, who are consistently willing to use their elite-tier survey skills in service of measuring the unmeasurable, asked 2,000 adults which decade had the best and worst music, movies, economy and so forth, across 20 measures. But when we charted them, no consistent pattern emerged.

We did spot some peaks: When asked which decade had the most moral society, the happiest families or the closest-knit communities, White people and Republicans were about twice as likely as Black people and Democrats to point to the 1950s. The difference probably depends on whether you remember that particular decade for "Leave it to Beaver," drive-in theaters and "12 Angry Men" — or the Red Scare, the murder of Emmett Till and massive resistance to school integration.



"This was a time when Repubs were pretty much running the show and had reason to be happy," pioneering nostalgia researcher Morris Holbrook told us via email. "Apparently, you could argue that nostalgia is colored by political preferences. Surprise, surprise."

And he's right! But any political, racial or gender divides were dwarfed by what happened when we charted the data by generation. Age, more than anything, determines when you think America peaked.



So, we looked at the data another way, measuring the gap between each person's birth year and their ideal decade. The consistency of the resulting pattern delighted us: It shows that Americans feel nostalgia not for a specific era, but for a specific age.

The good old days when America was "great" aren't the 1950s. They're whatever decade you were 11, your parents knew the correct answer to any question, and you'd never heard of war crimes tribunals, microplastics or improvised explosive devices. Or when you were 15 and athletes and musicians still played hard and hadn't sold out.

Not every flavor of nostalgia peaks as sharply as music does. But by distilling them to the most popular age for each question, we can chart a simple life cycle of nostalgia.



The closest-knit communities were those in our childhood, ages 4 to 7. The happiest families, most moral society and most reliable news reporting came in our early formative years — ages 8 through 11. The best economy, as well as the best radio, television and movies, happened in our early teens — ages 12 through 15.

Slightly spendier activities such as fashion, music and sporting events peaked in our late teens — ages 16 through 19 — matching research from the University of South Australia's Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, which shows music nostalgia centers on age 17.

YouGov didn't just ask about the best music and the best economy. The pollsters also asked about the worst music and the worst economy. But almost without exception, if you ask an American when times were worst, the most common response will be "right now!"

This holds true even when "now" is clearly not the right answer. For example, when we ask which decade had the worst economy, the most common answer is today. The Great Depression — when, for much of a decade, unemployment exceeded the what we saw in the worst month of pandemic shutdowns — comes in a grudging second.



To be sure, other forces seem to be at work. Democrats actually thought the current economy wasn't as bad as the Great Depression. Republicans disagreed. In fact, measure after measure, Republicans were more negative about the current decade than any other group — even low-income folks in objectively difficult situations.

So, we called the brilliant Joanne Hsu, director of the University of Michigan's Surveys of Consumers who regularly wrestles with partisan bias in polling.

Hsu said that yes, she sees a huge partisan split in the economy, and yes, Republicans are far more negative than Democrats. But it hasn't always been that way.

"People whose party is in the White House always have more favorable sentiment than people who don't," she told us. "And this has widened over time."

In a recent analysis, Hsu — who previously worked on some of our favorite surveys at the Federal Reserve — found that while partisanship drove wider gaps in economic expectations than did income, age or education even in the George W. Bush and Barack Obama years, they more than doubled under Donald Trump as Republicans' optimism soared and Democrats' hopes fell.

Our attitudes reversed almost the instant President Biden took office, but the gap remains nearly as wide. That is to say, if we'd asked the same questions about the worst decades during the Trump administration, Hsu's work suggests the partisan gap could have shriveled or even flipped eyeglasses over teakettle.

To understand the swings, Hsu and her friends spent the first part of 2024 asking 2,400 Americans where they get their information about the economy. In a new analysis, she found Republicans who listen to partisan outlets are more likely to be negative, and Democrats who listen to their own version of such news are more positive — and that Republicans are a bit more likely to follow partisan news.

But while Fox and friends drive some negativity, only a fifth of Republicans get their economic news from partisan outlets. And Democrats and independents give a thumbs down to the current decade, too, albeit at much lower rates.

There's clearly something more fundamental at work. As YouGov's Carl Bialik points out, when Americans were asked last year which decade they'd most want to live in, the most common answer was now. At some level then, it seems unlikely that we truly believe this decade stinks by almost every measure.



A deeper explanation didn't land in our laps until halfway through a Zoom call with four well-caffeinated Australian marketing and consumer-behavior researchers: the Ehrenberg-Bass folks behind the music study we cited above. (Their antipodean academic institute has attracted massive sponsorships by replacing typical corporate marketing fluffery with actual evidence.)

Their analysis began when Callum Davies needed to better understand the demographics of American music tastes to interpret streaming data for his impending dissertation. Since they were already asking folks about music, Davies and his colleagues decided they might as well seize the opportunity to update landmark research from Holbrook and Robert Schindler about music nostalgia.

Building on the American scholars' methods, they asked respondents to listen to a few seconds each of 34 songs, including Justin Timberlake's "Sexy Back" and Johnny Preston's "Running Bear." Then respondents were asked to rate each song on a zero-to-10 scale. (In the latter case, we can't imagine the high end of the scale got much use, especially if the excerpt included that song's faux-tribal "hooga-hooga" chant and/or its climactic teen drownings.)

Together, the songs represented top-10 selections from every even-numbered year from 1950 (Bing and Gary Crosby's "Play a Simple Melody") to 2016 (Rihanna's "Work"), allowing researchers to gather our preferences for music released throughout our lives.

Like us, they found that you'll forever prefer the music of your late teens. But their results show one big difference: There's no sudden surge of negative ratings for the most recent music.



Marketing researcher Bill Page said that by broadly asking when music, sports or crime were worst, instead of getting ratings for specific years or items, YouGov got answers to a question they didn't ask.

"When you ask about 'worst,' you're not asking for an actual opinion," Page said. "You're asking, 'Are you predisposed to think things get worse?'"

"There's plenty of times surveys unintentionally don't measure what they claim to," his colleague Zac Anesbury added.

YouGov actually measured what academics call "declinism," his bigwig colleague Carl Driesener explained. He looked a tiny bit offended when we asked if that was a real term or slang they'd coined on the spot. But in our defense, only a few minutes had passed since they had claimed "cozzie livs" was Australian for "the cost of living crisis."

Declinists believe the world keeps getting worse. It's often the natural result of rosy retrospection, or the idea that everything — with the possible exception of "Running Bear" — looks better in memory than it did at the time. This may happen in part because remembering the good bits of the past can help us through difficult times, Page said.

It's a well-established phenomenon in psychology, articulated by Leigh Thompson, Terence Mitchell and their collaborators in a set of analyses. They found that when asked to rate a trip mid-vacation, we often sound disappointed. But after we get home — when the lost luggage has been found and the biting-fly welts have stopped itching — we're as positive about the trip as we were in the early planning stage. Sometimes even more so.

So saying the 2020s are the worst decade ever is akin to sobbing about "the worst goldang trip ever" at 3 a.m. in a sketchy flophouse full of Russian-speaking truckers after you've run out of cash and spent three days racing around Urumqi looking for the one bank in Western China that takes international cards.

A few decades from now, our memories shaped by grainy photos of auroras and astrolabes, we'll recall only the bread straight from streetside tandoor-style ovens and the locals who went out of their way to bail out a couple of distraught foreigners.

In other words, the 2020s will be the good old days.

[Savonarola]

I'm curious if how you would answer the questions in the middle.  My thesis is that Languish is a forum full of history nerds and would therefore be interested in things outside their lifetime.  What year were you born, and starting from the 1930s from which decade came:

The most close-knit communities
The least close-knit communities
The most moral society
The least moral society
The least political division
The greatest political division
The happiest families
The least happy families
The most reliable news reporting
The least reliable news reporting
The best music
The worst music
The best radio
The worst radio
The best fashion
The worst fashion
The best economy
the worst economy
The best movies
The worst movies
The best television
The worst television
The best sporting events
The worst sporting events
The best cuisine
The worst cuisine

[Savonarola]

I was born in 1972:

The most close-knit communities:  1940s  (I assume people had to work together because of the war, and joining organizations was very much characteristic of the GI generation.)
The least close-knit communities:  2020s  (Trump high poll numbers is a symptom of this.)
The most moral society:  2020s
The least moral society:  2020s      
The least political division:  1940s  (We had a common enemy)
The greatest political division:  1960s  (Vietnam war, civil unrest.)
The happiest families:  1990s  (Strong economy, no major wars)
The least happy families:  1930s  (Assuming the stress of the Depression would lead to unhappiness.)
The most reliable news reporting:  1970s  (Vietnam, Watergate)
The least reliable news reporting:  2020s  (Social media, social media, social media.)
The best music:  1970s  (Peak of the album era.)
The worst music:  2020s  (Unfair because you forget the dross of the previous eras, but you're confronted with that from the present)
The best radio:  1940s  (Jack Benny was the man)
The worst radio:  2000s  (When national franchised radio brands took off in the US.)
The best fashion:  1950s  (I think the mid-century suits/dresses looked sharp.)
The worst fashion:  1970s  (Can there be any debate?)
The best economy:  1990s
the worst economy:  1930s
The best movies:  1970s  (I can't actually pick my favorite era, so I wen with New Hollywood.)
The worst movies:  2010s  (Especially the Trump years when banal "Message" pictures dominated the Oscars.)
The best television:  2020s
The worst television:  1950s
The best sporting events:  1990s  (Red Wings - Avalanche rivalry)
The worst sporting events:  1940s  (Many athletes were in the army, two Olympics cancelled.)
The best cuisine:  2020s
The worst cuisine:  1930s

[Josquius]

I've certainly noticed in American media there's a big love for this post-war 50s era where the suburbs were springing up, cars were plentiful, but the negative side of this had yet to really bite with town centres still being thriving places, community cohesion being there....and racism eh....depends on the show whether its neatly ignored, lightly addressed to show how awesome the protagonist is, or the entire plot.

As to the "Oh we like the songs from our childhood thing"- no, this is a hill I will fight on. Objective studies have found modern music to be increasingly shit. It started going down hill whilst I was still in my supposed prime.


Anyway. I was born in the mid 80s and I have always through life had the impression I was born a decade or so late, just missing the golden zone for various things.



So. Looking through your list.


The most close-knit communities:    1940s
The least close-knit communities:   2020s:
The most moral society:  late 2000s/early 2010s
The least moral society: 2020s (the 80s just never went away completely and have really came back)
The least political division: 1940s
The greatest political division: 1980s
The happiest families: 1960s
The least happy families: 1930s? 1940s? 1980s? 2020s? Too many
The most reliable news reporting: 1980s?- really hard as big problems everywhere. I'm just reminded of the printers strike.
The least reliable news reporting:: 2020s?
The best music: 1980s? Though there's a good period that ebbs and flows between the 70s and 2000s.
The worst music: 1930s. But that's cheating. Since modern music began its been downhill since the financial crash, so today.
The best radio: Ra..di...o? err.... 30s?
The worst radio: 2020s
The best fashion: 1940s
The worst fashion: 1970s
The best economy: 2000s
the worst economy: At first seemed tough as there's lots for different reasons... but thinking more the 1940s is obvious for Europe.
The best movies: 1990s?
The worst movies: 1930s
The best television: 2000s
The worst television: 1930s
The best sporting events: 1990s
The worst sporting events: 2020s
The best cuisine: 2010s
The worst cuisine: 1940s

[Zanza]

The graph that shows the peak relative to the birth year is very comforting. It shows that each generation loved its youth and that we can assume that this trend will continue.