Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Cursing Out Loud, Pets in Stores: Which Public Behaviors Do You Find Rude?

Around a third of Americans (34%) say they almost always or often see people behaving rudely when they go out in public these days. But what’s considered rude by one person may be seen as acceptable by another.

Which kinds of public behavior do you see as rude or acceptable?

Recently, we asked a representative sample of 9,609 U.S. adults about eight behaviors they might encounter while out and about. We found that Americans’ views of these behaviors vary, especially by age.

Answer the following questions to find out how your views of various public behaviors compare with the attitudes of people your age, as well as people in other age groups.



Bad words, spoken and written



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To learn more about Americans’ views of behavior in public, read our blog post.

Illustrations by Pew Research Center and CSA Images via Getty

How we did this

Pew Research Center created this interactive so you can find out how your views of various public behaviors compare with those of other Americans. All data comes from a survey conducted Nov. 12-17, 2024, among 9,609 U.S. adults.

Everyone who took part in the survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), a group of people recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses who have agreed to take surveys regularly. This kind of recruitment gives nearly all U.S. adults a chance of selection. Interviews were conducted either online or by telephone with a live interviewer. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other factors. Read more about the ATP’s methodology.

Adults who selected “Don’t know” or who refused to answer are not shown in this analysis.

Here are the questions used for this analysis, the topline and the survey methodology.

Acknowledgments

Editorial

John Gramlich, Associate Director
Drew DeSilver, Senior Writer
Anna Jackson, Editorial Specialist
Rebecca Leppert, Editorial Specialist
Mia Hennen, Editorial Assistant

Communications and web publishing

Kelly Browning, User Experience Manager
Shannon Greenwood, Digital Production Manager
Chris Baronavski, Lead Engineer
Alissa Scheller, Senior Information Graphics Designer
Beshay Sakla, Associate Digital Producer

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