Wojtek
On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 9:12 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> Guardian - March 15, 2010
> <
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/15/green-consumers-more-likely-steal
> >
>
> How going green may make you mean
> Ethical consumers less likely to be kind and more likely to steal, study
> finds
>
> Kate Connolly in Berlin
>
> When Al Gore was caught running up huge energy bills at home at the same
> time as lecturing on the need to save electricity, it turns out that he was
> only reverting to "green" type.
>
> According to a study, when people feel they have been morally virtuous by
> saving the planet through their purchases of organic baby food, for example,
> it leads to the "licensing [of] selfish and morally questionable behaviour",
> otherwise known as "moral balancing" or "compensatory ethics".
>
> Do Green Products Make Us Better People is published in the latest edition
> of the journal Psychological Science. Its authors, Canadian psychologists
> Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong, argue that people who wear what they call the
> "halo of green consumerism" are less likely to be kind to others, and more
> likely to cheat and steal. "Virtuous acts can license subsequent asocial and
> unethical behaviours," they write.
>
> The pair found that those in their study who bought green products appeared
> less willing to share with others a set amount of money than those who
> bought conventional products. When the green consumers were given the chance
> to boost their money by cheating on a computer game and then given the
> opportunity to lie about it – in other words, steal – they did, while the
> conventional consumers did not. Later, in an honour system in which
> participants were asked to take money from an envelope to pay themselves
> their spoils, the greens were six times more likely to steal than the
> conventionals.
>
> Mazar and Zhong said their study showed that just as exposure to pictures
> of exclusive restaurants can improve table manners but may not lead to an
> overall improvement in behaviour, "green products do not necessarily make
> for better people". They added that one motivation for carrying out the
> study was that, despite the "stream of research focusing on identifying the
> 'green consumer'", there was a lack of understanding into "how green
> consumption fits into people's global sense of responsibility and morality
> and [how it] affects behaviours outside the consumption domain".
>
> The pair said their findings surprised them, having thought that just as
> "exposure to the Apple logo increased creativity", according to a recent
> study, "given that green products are manifestations of high ethical
> standards and humanitarian considerations, mere exposure" to them would
> "activate norms of social responsibility and ethical conduct".
>
> Dieter Frey, a social psychologist at the University of Munich, said the
> findings fitted patterns of human behaviour. "At the moment in which you
> have proven your credentials in a particular area, you tend to allow
> yourself to stray elsewhere," he said.
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