… Haidt pointed out that several surveys, including one in April by More in Common, show that the pandemic is having the sort of unifying effect that major crises tend to have … For example, 90 percent of Americans believe that “we’re all in it together,” compared to just 63 percent in the fall of 2018. The share of Americans who describe the country as “unified” has grown from 4 percent in 2018 to 32 percent today, while the percentage of Americans who regard the country as “very divided” has dropped from 62 percent to just 22 percent. Other polls show that the divide between Republicans and Democrats on social-distancing measures isn’t all that large. “When we look at the stories of moral beauty versus moral depravity, it certainly seems like there are far more stories of moral beauty out there than moral depravity,” Haidt said. “So what I think is happening is that the most politically active Americans are just incorporating this into their preexisting culture war, but most Americans seem to be having a surge of common sentiment, of prosocial feeling. We are all going through similar experiences at the same time, which has hardly ever happened before. So I’m still hopeful.”
