Robin Hanson, an economist who writes overcomingbias.com, reports the results of a recent Swedish survey.

The survey:

The survey was mailed to 2,450 randomly selected adults above the age of 18 years in Sweden during the spring of 2004; the overall response rate was 45%.

The main answer distribution:

How bad an action is, from an ethical point of view, depends primarily on:
5.3% How bad the consequences of the action are for myself
62.7% How bad the consequences of the action are for other people and for society  17.5% The extent to which the action infringes upon someone else’s natural rights
10.6% The extent to which the action violates what is natural
3.7% The extent to which the action violates Christianity according to the New Testament in the Bible
0.3% The extent to which the action violates the rules given by any other religion (such as Islam or Buddhism)

It would be interesting to see the full report of the survey and results, although I’m not sure that I’m interested enough to pay for a copy. The choices seem too limited from an ethicist’s point of view. The first two options force a choice between radical egoism and radical altruism, but most people are neither. The options don’t discriminate between various kinds of consequentialism in that none specify any particular consequences, such as happiness or welfare. It’s also difficult to know how a Kantian should respond. So, it could be that the majority of people don’t fit into any of those categories, but feel for various reasons that the second is the one that is closest to their position.