“… one would think that if that many think humans cause the problem they’d also think humans are corrupted.”
Bingo.
All I can figure is that many believe SOME people are evil while others are not. Thus, problems are caused by the evil people, not by good people who believe and act the way I do.

This post seems to assume that the statement “human nature is basically evil” and “humans are corrupted” are identical. Maybe they are in some theological discussions, but to the average person on the street “basically evil” sounds a lot worse than “corrupted”. The “evil” vocabulary makes it sounds like humans are demons, which is more severe than recognizing that we are sinful.
And one might even argue that “basically evil” doesn’t quite match the “cracked Eikons” Biblical imagery, which one might see as more like “created to be very good, but went astray”.
If they had used the word “corrupted” rather than “evil” in the survey question, I bet they would have seen a higher percentage of “orthodox” answers.

Maybe the terminology is confusing? I, for instance, would not say that “human nature is basically evil”, while I would hold to something like original sin. There is a mile of difference between “basically evil” and “basically good but thoroughly corrupted”.
The correspondence of basic religious conservatism with support for the death penalty is unsurprising, though it remains shameful.

I basically agree with the posts above (esp. that the terms are distinct enough to explain the different responses). One further observation:
Those who believe the devil made me do it think we should punish criminals more harshly (81% vs. 59%).
There seems to be a disconnect here. If the devil is the “responsible agent,” why punish the criminal more harshly?
I think that there’s a reality behind these belief statements that we haven’t gotten to just on the matter of the particular responses demonstrated here.

I’m with AHH…
Isn’t the doctrine of original sin about how human nature is fundamentally good?
We are corrupted goodness, not absolute evil…

I agree with what others have said about the distinction between evil and cracked eikons. Also, I side with Dorothy Day, and the idea that we can create systems that make it easier for people to be good. Certainly, Nazi Germany made it difficult for people to be good.

Does the devil really make us do anything? He may only know what buttons to push to get our sin going, we take over from there. I notice in the garden all three of the participants in the fall were punished. They were all accomplices in God’s eyes, each having guilt in their own way.
Who actually brought sin into the world? Did Adam and Eve have the capacity to be evil, before the serpent showed up? I think from the very moment they were created they were corruptible. It is the very thing that gives us free will.

There seems to be a disconnect here. If the devil is the “responsible agent,” why punish the criminal more harshly?
Because “the devil makes you do it” reflects a sub-rational attitude about crime, in which criminals do bad things for incomprehensible reasons. The threat of punishment isn’t a deterrent, so all we can do is get them out of the community. Therefore it doesn’t especially matter if the punishment fits the crime; the point is to prevent the next crime, which will invariably follow because these are bad people.
This is most visible in American society’s attitude toward sex offenders. Nobody wants to hear about why anyone becomes a rapist. We’re very satisfied with the explanation that people commit sex crimes because they’re just wrong in the head, and there’s no helping them, so it’s best for everyone if those people either die or rot in jail. (As opposed to people who, say, cheat on their taxes, or scam other people out of a few million bucks in the financial markets. We understand their reasons just fine.)

Without being given at least the “potential” to be bad, human beings could never really be truly good, or join God in the creation of anything truly beautiful. Maybe the presence of evil actually shows that goodness really isn’t forced on us – that we are genuinely free to be good by choice in cooperation with God’s actions on earth.

I kinda like Tolkien’s take on humanity. Humans are described as “weak” as opposed to “evil”. They are easily seduced by the need for control/power. Many crimes, even sexual ones, are not motivated by desire/lust for pleasure, but the need to exert power and control.
For Tolkein, whilst being culpable, humans are also to be pitied. For we are weak, and easily seduced. The same relationship seems to be played out with Gollum to, now that I think about it.

Oh, did anyone besides me notice that thnically the split was “african americans” and “whites”.. are there only two ethnic categories in the USA?
Whatever happened to the indigenous peoples? What about people of asian descent…? interesting study boundaries…