The majority of Americans believe that the state of moral values in the country is deteriorating, a new Gallup poll said.

According to Gallup's annual Values and Beliefs poll released recently, 72 percent of Americans continue to believe that the state of moral values in the United States is "getting worse," while only 22 percent show certain optimism.

Apart from the their perception of the direction in which morals are headed, 45 percent of Americans call the current state of moral values in the country as "poor," with less than one in five rating the state of values as either "excellent" or "good."

"Americans' views of the state of moral values haven't changed much over the past 13 years," said Gallup, adding that Americans are as likely as they were in 2002, when the poll first started, to consider moral values in the United States to be poor and to say they are heading for further decay.

Americans' pessimistic views about the nation's state of moral values reflect a belief that there is a deteriorating collective moral character, the poll said, noting that their views have less to do with greater acceptance of same-sex marriage or having babies out of wedlock and other hot-button issues, and more to do with matters of basic civility and respect for each other.

The telephone survey was conducted between May 6 and May 10, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.