Why Does It Feel Like Everything Is Getting Worse?

There is a measurable gap between how bad people think the world is and how bad they think their own corner of it is — and the gap is enormous, consistent, and decades old. In Gallup's October 2025 survey, 49% of Americans described crime in the United States as an extremely or very serious problem, while 12% said the same about crime in their own local area.

Same people. Same survey. Same week. A 37-point difference.

That gap is the most useful thing in psychology you can carry around with you, because once you can see it you start noticing it everywhere — in how you rate the economy, your industry, your children's school, other people's marriages, and your own year.

What the numbers say

Gallup's annual crime survey ran 1–16 October 2025, with 1,000 US adults and a margin of error of ±4 percentage points. It asked the same questions two ways — once about the country, once about where the respondent lives.

• Crime has increased in the past year: 49% said yes about the US. 30% said yes about their own area.

• Crime is an extremely or very serious problem: 49% said yes about the US. 12% said yes about their own area.

The 2025 figures are the low end of the range. Both national numbers fell from 2024, and the local "increased" figure dropped 19 points, from 49%. Gallup describes the 2025 readings as the lowest measured since at least 2018 and similar to the early 2000s.

But the gap itself barely moves. Gallup puts the national-versus-local difference at 37 points in 2025, against an average of about 43 points across 25 years of asking since 2000. Whatever is producing it is not a feature of one year or one news cycle.

Gallup's own explanation

It is worth quoting the pollster rather than inventing a mechanism, because they have an obvious view.

Their account is that the two judgements are made from different information. For local crime, people draw on direct experience, friends, family and local news — sources that act as a reality check. For national crime, people depend on mass and social media, which Gallup says "often highlight violent, unusual or geographically dispersed crimes." They add that national perceptions are further shaped by targeted media that "can often amplify or downplay the seriousness of crime in order to promote desired narratives."

There is a second finding that makes the point sharply. In 2025, 65% of Republicans and 37% of Democrats rated national crime as serious — a 28-point split. On local crime, the two groups were within two points of each other: 11% and 9%.

Read that carefully, because it is doing more work than it looks. The same people who disagree enormously about the country agree almost exactly about their own street. Political identity shapes the judgement you make from media. It does not shape the judgement you make from your own front door.

The name for the pattern

Psychology's usual shorthand for this is the availability heuristic: we estimate how common something is by how easily examples come to mind. That is a description of a mental shortcut, not a study result, and it is worth flagging as such — but as a description it fits what the survey found.

Examples of national crime arrive pre-selected for how striking they are. That is what makes something newsworthy in the first place: it is unusual. Examples of local crime arrive through a filter that has no such preference — your neighbour mentioning a break-in, or not mentioning one.

So when you try to answer "is crime bad in the country?", your mind reaches for what it can retrieve, and what it can retrieve is a set of vivid, unrepresentative cases from a population of 340 million people. When you answer "is crime bad here?", it reaches for a thin, boring, and much more representative sample: your own year.

The second sample is smaller. It is also better.

Where else this shows up

Once you know the shape, the shape appears in places with no news coverage at all.

Your industry. You will rate "the market" as brutal and your own last three months as fine. The market is made of anecdotes you heard; your three months are data you lived.

Other people's relationships. You know the headline events of thirty relationships and the daily texture of one. The thirty are stored as their most dramatic moments — that is the only part that gets told.

Your own past. Ask someone how their twenties went and they will often say "a mess", then, if pushed for specific years, describe several that were fine. The summary is built from the salient bits; the year-by-year account is built from the whole.

Parenting and school. Parents routinely report that "children today" are struggling while rating their own child's school as good. Same structure, same two sources.

None of this means the worried judgement is wrong. Sometimes the country really is worse than your street. The point is narrower: the two judgements are built from different materials, and only one of them is built from anything you checked.

What to actually do with this

Four things, all of which take under a minute.

1. Ask which sample you're using. When you catch yourself concluding that something is getting worse, ask: is this from things that happened to me, or things I was shown? Both are legitimate inputs. Only one of them was selected for how striking it is.

2. Ask the local version of the question. Whatever the sweeping worry is, ask the small version. Not "is the industry collapsing" but "what happened in my last five conversations". Not "is everyone's health failing" but "how did this week go". The local answer is usually less dramatic — and it is the one with evidence behind it.

3. Notice when disagreement stops. If you and someone who sees the world completely differently arrive at the same answer about the concrete, local version of a question, that agreement is informative. In the Gallup data it was the one place the political gap essentially vanished.

4. Date your impressions. Ask yourself when you last checked a belief against anything. A lot of "things are getting worse" turns out to be an impression formed at a particular moment and never revisited — which is exactly what the 2025 numbers falling back to early-2000s levels illustrates. The mood updated later than the data did.

Two honest caveats

This is one country's survey. Gallup polls US adults. I could not verify an equivalent UK time series for this piece, so nothing here should be read as a claim about Britain, however plausible the same pattern sounds.

Perception gaps do not make concerns invalid. A person who thinks national crime is serious may be responding to something real in their own information environment, and self-reported survey answers are opinions rather than counts of events. The finding here is about a difference between two answers from the same person, which is a much narrower — and much sturdier — claim than "people are wrong."

And the usual Mind Decoded rule applies: this describes a pattern in how judgements get made. It is not a diagnosis of anyone, including you.

Which lens are you actually using?

Most of us run the national-scale worry on some subjects and the local-scale reality check on others, without ever noticing which is which. The quiz below takes six questions to show you where your own gap sits — and what to check first.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Why do people think crime is rising when they say their own area is fine? A: Because the two answers come from different sources. Gallup found that in October 2025, 49% of Americans rated national crime as extremely or very serious while only 12% said the same locally. Their explanation is that local judgements draw on direct experience, friends, family and local news, while national judgements come from mass and social media, which highlight violent, unusual or geographically dispersed events.

Q: How big is the gap between national and local crime perceptions? A: Gallup measured a 37-percentage-point gap in October 2025 — 49% rating national crime as extremely or very serious against 12% locally. That is smaller than usual: across 25 years of asking since 2000, the gap has averaged about 43 points. The consistency matters more than any single year's figure, because it suggests a structural feature of how the two questions get answered rather than a reaction to particular events.

Q: Is this the availability heuristic? A: The availability heuristic — judging how common something is by how easily examples come to mind — is the usual name for this shape of thinking, and it fits what the survey shows. It is worth being precise, though: that is a descriptive concept, not a finding from this survey. What Gallup actually measured is the size of the gap and its stability over time, plus their own account that different information sources produce the two answers.

Q: Does this mean things are actually fine? A: No, and Mind Decoded would not claim it. The finding is about a difference between two answers from the same person in the same survey, not about whether either answer is correct. Survey responses are opinions, not event counts. What the data supports is that scale changes the answer — and that the answer you give about your own surroundings rests on evidence you have actually seen.

Q: Does politics affect this? A: In the national answers, substantially. In 2025 Gallup found 65% of Republicans and 37% of Democrats rated national crime as serious. In the local answers it almost disappeared: 11% and 9%. The pattern is symmetrical rather than a point about either group — it suggests political identity shapes conclusions drawn from media coverage more than it shapes conclusions drawn from direct experience.

Q: How do I stop doom-scrolling from warping my sense of the world? A: The practical move is not to consume less but to ask which sample a conclusion came from. When a sweeping judgement forms, deliberately ask the small, local, checkable version of the same question — what happened to me, this month, that I can actually name. That does not make the large question go away, but it stops the vivid sample from being the only one you ever run.

Q: Why does this feel worse in autumn? A: Honestly, I cannot cite a verified figure for a seasonal effect on this particular perception gap, so I will not claim one. What can be said is that people commonly report a mood shift as evenings shorten, and that the late-September news cycle restarts after summer. Whether either actually moves the national-versus-local gap is not something this survey measures.

Connect

Questions or thoughts? Reach out anytime.

Email

subscribe to our newsletter

hello@minddecoded.com

© 2026. All rights reserved.

Terms of Service Privacy Policy Disclaimer