On this green St. Paddy’s day, finally, something that explains some of the operators of, and commenters on, some other blogs. Now, if I can just find some fair trade carbon credits to offset my corned beef and cabbage…
From the Guardian:
How going green may make you mean
Ethical consumers less likely to be kind and more likely to steal, study finds
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”.
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Complete article at the Guardian
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Here is the original press release from the University of Toronto and link to the study:
Buying green can be license for bad behavior, study finds
Those lyin’, cheatin’ green consumers.
Just being around green products can make us behave more altruistically, a new study to be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science has found.
But buying those same products can have the opposite effect. Researchers found that buying green can lead people into less altruistic behaviour, and even make them more likely to steal and lie than after buying conventional products. Buying products that claim to be made with low environmental impact can set up “moral credentials” in people’s minds that give license to selfish or questionable behavior.
“This was not done to point the finger at consumers who buy green products. The message is bigger,” says Nina Mazar, a marketing professor at University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and a self-admitted green consumer. “At the end of the day, if we do one moral thing, IT doesn’t necessarily mean we will be morally better in other things as well.”
Mazar, along with her co-author Chen-Bo Zhong, an assistant professor of organizational behaviour at the Rotman School, conducted three experiments. The first found that people perceived green consumers to be more cooperative, altruistic and ethical than those who purchased conventional products. The second experiment showed that participants merely exposed to products from a green store shared more money in a subsequent experimental game, but those who actually made purchases in that store shared less. The final experiment revealed that participants who bought items in the green store showed evidence of lying and stealing money in a subsequent lab game.
But are people conscious of this moral green washing going on when they buy green products and, more importantly, the license they might feel to break ethical standards? Professors Mazar and Zhong don’t know – and look forward to exploring that in further research.
The complete study is available at: http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/newthinking/greenproducts.pdf .
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Smokey (12:03:07): Specially when the whole world is changing “greens” into other colored currencies asap. 🙂
In internet blogs on climate, the warmers generally seem to prefer making vile comments about skeptics rather than discussing scientific evidence. If you show them a list of scientists who are skeptics they immediately attack them as shills of the oil industry without even one shred of proof. Sometimes their comments degenerate to the point of just plain venom-spitting hatred.
So it’s no surprise to find out they aren’t nice people.
Someone above mentioned greens being vegans which provides an excellent lead-in to this slightly off-topic post:
Our governor has proclaimed this Saturday 3/20/2010 to be a meatless day:
“Now, Therefore, be it Resolved, That I, Jennifer M. Granholm, governor of the state of Michigan, do hereby proclaim March 20, 2010, Michigan Meatout Day in Michigan. In observance of this day, I encourage the residents of this state to choose not to eat meat. Eating a healthy diet can be fun. Explore the different recipes that can be created by using fresh ingredients and by having a sense of adventure.” http://www.michigan.gov/gov/0,1607,7-168-25488-232493–,00.html
Being the civic minded person that I am I’ve decided to take my wife out to dinner that day at the local steak house.
Now the Beatles split in 1970. However I seem to recall some reference to green meanies on one of their albums. May have been the double EP Magical Mystery Tour
DaveE.
regeya (12:52:14) :
Sounds to me like you’re doing it for the right reasons, not as some for the moral superiority aspect.
I am quite poor & do many similar things.
Some recycling however is pointless, (read plastic which is better burned efficiently).
DaveE.
savethesharks (21:29:04) :
I have met some of these people. And they do not have “green” souls. You can see it in their eyes. Hey…but who am I to judge? I am not surprised by this study, for, as “green” as I am [hence my name], but also as disassociated with the radical political agendas of most environmentalist movements, I have met these people, and they are not nice.
And we are seeing the same look rising now with the skeptics. Monckton is spouting big whoppers like biofuels have caused prices to double and food riots around the world.
Cries that Mann is a “criminal” are written with the same hand that have Hansen criminalizing coal barons. And now we have the shocking story of an Argentine couple who signed “an apparent suicide pact over fears of global warming.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1254619/Baby-girl-survives-shot-chest-parents-global-warming-suicide-pact.html?ITO=1490#ixzz0gw4V50ru
Virtual rubbish all around. Alarmist and skeptic are the fodder of not-so-clever deceptionists writing here and now!
Steve Goddard (23:01:40) :
“When you read the hateful rhetoric of many AGW bloggers, you see the same syndrome – a contempt for human beings. Probably indicating an underlying contempt for themselves.”
I said exactly the same thing to my wife. These very public acts of “altruism” typically are really acts of self-loathing. It is that lack of self esteem that allows folks to behave very badly indeed.
M
Wow.
This has become a ‘greenie bashing’ thread, and the study (valid or not, and I agree with the commenter criticising the validity) has nothing whatsoever to do with being green or not.
Just read it before brining your prejudices out to wave in the wind, why not?
its bacon and cabbage, me boy
regeya (12:52:14) :
I guess I offended someone with my last question, so I’ll rephrase it, but it’s based on the overwhelming number of anti-green comments in this thread…
Don’t let the anti-greenists prevent you from doing what you know best. Skepticism expressed here is mostly focused on the non-science of anthropogenic global warming. Last I heard, human activities expressed as UHI represent about .00056C of warming. There is no atmospheric data proving man-made CO2 has caused warming. End of AGW.
Energy reduction, recycling, picking up trash, driving a fuel efficient car, are all logical ways to save money and resources. I’m buying a GM VOLT made in the USA when they’re available. And I don’t want to keep sending $450B annually to buy foreign oil. I don’t give a flying eff what you call me. I want domestic energy independence and I make efforts daily to get it.
Stick around kid. You might teach these old coots a thing or two.
regeya (12:52:14) :
In a word, no. I think that your actions mirror our host’s and mine and many others here, for the most part.
Basically what many of us are responding to is the difference between living in the world in a way that is consistent with our values vs. doing some expensive and largely meaningless things that are asserted to have some manner of “altruistic value”.
M
regeya, “being Green” is more about “saving the planet” than saving money. In fact, most things purported to be “green” actually cost more, or save only infinitesimally small amounts of money. The important thing is that it appear that you are “saving the planet”, thus giving you Brownie points, or bragging rights when with like-minded people. It all comes down to motivation.
Take “Earth Hour”. Please. That is an event just dripping with hypocrisy, perfect for Greenies. It is all about feeling good about oneself, having nothing to do with the environment. About all it does is to raise the level of smug, to possibly toxic levels.
Oh my God, this is too hilarious. Sorry folks, I couldn’t wait to read all comments before firing this one off. Apologies if I am repeating somebody… You just can’t make this stuff up!
Unfortunately, the study muddies the water, by widening the potential motives of AGW-leaning climatologists’ to fudge, cherry pick and generally bully skeptics, to either the paper’s claim of, “…subsequent asocial and unethical behaviours,” and/or the original thesis of megalomania.
regeya (12:52:14) :
“[…] are any of you willing to say that, because I drive a hybrid, use a push reel mower, turn off lights when I leave a room, use lower-power appliances, recycle my aluminum cans, recycle my cardboard and paper, reuse rather than buy new, all in an effort to save money and be an intelligent factor in the free market, I’m a bad person? […]”
Nahhh… what you’re doing is fine by me, particularly your motivation. I do many of the same things myself at home and a part of my job at work is to reduce energy usage wherever feasible.
I’m not fond of being preached at by sanctimonius hypocrites that want ME to conserve but use energy like there is no tomorrow (a certain ex Vice President springs to mind).
I believe that in the 1500s the Catholic Church would sell sin-offset credits. They were called indulgences.
That was to blue meanies.
Disappointed (14:46:53) : ” And we are seeing the same look rising now with the skeptics. Monckton is spouting big whoppers like biofuels have caused prices to double and food riots around the world. Cries that Mann is a “criminal” are written with the same hand that have Hansen criminalizing coal barons.”
Nah….not quite.
Not evenly or equally distributed. Granted….there are overreactions on both sides….however:
Monckton’s point is a very VALID one: Namely, all of this wasted energy on biofuel [which is actually more sketchy than hydrocarbons] have been the cause of the spike in world food prices and the reason that there are people in Haiti who actually have had to eat mud for nutrition.
Ever eat a mud pie? Not too tasty. [Although I confess as a kid trying to make mud biscuits].
Monkton has a point…and it is point with moral implications.
In regards to Mann…well….you tell me.
You give me your assessment if his fraudulent doctorings of science…and if they have not contributed to the negative net effect of the breach of trust in science today…not to mention the sham policies which Monckton is talking about.
1/3 of the world’s population today does not have electricity….so you would rather hold them in the stone age??
As to Hansen…any USA taxpayer-funded [ie public servant] “scientist” who is galavanting around in his own sovereignty…and disrupting others’, using Third Reich imagery…has forfeited his right to say anything.
So….you are correct about the smoke and mirrors on both political sides of the debate.
But they are NOT equal….and not positively weighted in the direction of Mann and Hansen.
Res ipsa loquiter.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Grumpy Old Man (07:40:00) :
The albatross cannot get airborne again if it lands on flat calm water, because it is too heavy to overcome the drag. It needs big waves so that it can break free at a wave-crest and gain enough airspeed as it flies down into the trough to be able to soar above the next wave. The doldrums on or about the equator produce flat calm water, so the albatross won’t fly over it.
An albatross can take off from calm water quite nicely — they flail those huge webbed feet until they build up enough speed to *run* across the water’s surface. But they’re *soaring* birds, so when they have their “druthers,” they’ll hang around where they can find thermals — and they’ll climb to amazing altitudes to glide across areas of downdrafts.
Watch a sailplane in flight and you’re watching an aircraft designer’s interpretation of an albatross designed to hold a pilot.
Roger Knights (21:07:34) :
So I’m colour blind 😉
DaveE.
H.R. (16:20:37) :
regeya (12:52:14) :
“[…] are any of you willing to say that, because I drive a hybrid, use a push reel mower, turn off lights when I leave a room, use lower-power appliances, recycle my aluminum cans, recycle my cardboard and paper, reuse rather than buy new, all in an effort to save money and be an intelligent factor in the free market, I’m a bad person? […]“
Nahhh… what you’re doing is fine by me, particularly your motivation. I do many of the same things myself at home and a part of my job at work is to reduce energy usage wherever feasible.
I’m not fond of being preached at by sanctimonius hypocrites that want ME to conserve but use energy like there is no tomorrow (a certain ex Vice President springs to mind).
Absolutely! Fewer preachers/dictators; more education and personal responsibility. You can be ‘greener’ without being ‘green’.
I’ve always suspected this sort of thing. People that obtain reinforcement of their morality by simply ascribing to something like “Save the Planet” or “Corporations are Greedy” or “Free Tibet” or whatever, get said reinforcement automatically without doing much of anything. No actual personal responsibility just advertise to anybody who will listen that you are for this and that cause to obtain absolution. When you are morally superior without any effort that leads to all sorts of bad actions rationalized by an artificially inflated sense of personal morality.
About all it does is to raise the level of smug, to possibly toxic levels.
We need to be careful that it doesn’t mix with the smug storm caused by George Clooney’s speech at the Oscars.
Regeya; perhaps we should differentiate.
You and I and the like minded others above can be the light greens, and the AGW crowd can be the dark greens.
regeya (10:48:30) :
“@Jimbo: your suicide pact example is what is known as a straw man argument. My guess is that, if they hadn’t had a suicide pact over global warming, they’d have picked another suitably crazy reason to kill themselves.”
You are probably correct. My point was what must all the alarmism be doing to children’s psychology? If it’s scaring kids then how will they think when they become insecure teenagers or rabid, middle aged greens. I remember being scared out of my mind in the 1970s about the end of the world due to nuclear war.
regeya (10:48:30) :
“@Jimbo: your suicide pact example is what is known as a straw man argument. My guess is that, if they hadn’t had a suicide pact over global warming, they’d have picked another suitably crazy reason to kill themselves.”
Furthermore, this really bears thinking about:
Suicide cults (does cult sound familiar?) Dozens of people persuaded by an individual to kill themselves. Now multiply that by over 150 governments telling billions of people that our children will meet their maker unless Co2 is reduced now! Think about it for a while, the kids aged 7 years still have 10 more years to get to 17 and who knows what will happen. I don’t know and you don’t know.
– Peoples Temple
– Solar Temple
– Heaven’s Gate
– Branch Davidians