When former US vice president 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 behavior,” otherwise known as “moral balancing” or “compensatory ethics.”
“Do Green Products Make Us Better People?” was published in the latest edition of the journal Psychological Science. Its authors, Canadian psychologists Nina Mazar and Zhong Chen-bo, 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 behaviors,” they wrote.
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 honor 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 “green products do not necessarily make for better people.”
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