More than a decade ago, in 2006, the magazine Science published this graph showing the acceptance of the evolution in more than 34 countries.
If you look for the United States, we are at the bottom of this list, with a skinny 40% of people who accept that evolution is true. The only country lower than us when it came to science literacy was Turkey.
The most recent Gallup survey on this topic, from 2019, found it a little more optimistic. Only 22% of Americans correctly said that humans developed over millions of years without God playing any role in the process. But another 33% of Americans agreed on the fact “developed over millions of years”; they simply felt that God guided the process. However, it is 55% of Americans who accepted the evolution.
It is a very low acceptance rate of reality. But … yes to being a majority?
We can now add more useful data to this collection. According to a new article published in the journal Public understanding of science, the researchers examined national surveys collected over the past 35 years to see what acceptance of the evolution during that time was like. What they found was that acceptance of evolution “has increased substantially in the last decade.”
The surveys they used asked the same question throughout this time period: Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? “Humans, as we know them today, evolved from earlier animal species.” (They did not ask about the role of God.) They found that over the past decade, the percentage of Americans who agreed with this sentence went from 40% to 54%.
“From 1985 to 2010, there was a statistically dead heat between acceptance and rejection of evolution,” said lead researcher Jon D. Miller of the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. “But acceptance increased and became the majority position in 2016.”
Examining data from more than 35 years, the study constantly identified aspects of education (literacy in civics, college science courses, and college degrees) as the strongest factors leading to acceptance of evolution.
“Almost twice as many Americans earned a college degree in 2018 as in 1988,” said co-author Mark Ackerman, a researcher in Michigan Engineering at the UM School of Information and Michigan Medicine. “It’s hard to get a college degree without gaining at least some respect for the success of science.”
Wow! Majority! The number is not high enough … but it is in the right direction. So what moved the numbers in the right direction and how can we continue? As Ackerman said, going to college helped:
Completion of one or more university science courses was the strongest predictor of adult acceptance of evolution. between demographic variables …
They also observed a positive correlation with college graduation and a negative correlation with age (older people were less likely to accept evolution), but here’s one that surprised me: having children also helped.
Finally, another family demographic of interest is the number of minor children at the respondent’s home. While we often think that adults pass on scientific information to their children, research in recent decades has shown that many parents learn new scientific information by helping their children. with homework, helping with science fair projects and answering questions that arise during visits to science museums or viewing science-related events on television
Religious fundamentalism is obviously an obstacle for many Americans when it comes to evolution, and so is political partisanship. But overall, the trends are going in the right direction. Researchers make it clear that they do not believe that the deniers of science are the other way around; rather they believe that “insecure” people accept reality.
As more Americans get advanced degrees (which they are), they receive a basic dose of science education, which is good news. As more Americans move away from organized religion, they escape the kind of anti-science rhetoric that is heard in so many churches in the country, which is good news. I would also add that as we find more space for scientific communicators (YouTube, TikTok, anything), no matter how much we know that bad communication thrives, there are also ways to spread good information to the masses.
So we are a nation that has a long way to go in terms of evolution. But if recent trends are a clue, it is moving in the right direction.
(Featured image via Shutterstock)