Do Green Products Make Us Better People?, a paper in the latest edition of the journal Psychological Science, argues that those who wear what the authors call the "halo of green consumerism" are less likely to be kind to others, and more likely to cheat and steal. Faced with various moral choices – whether to stick to the rules in games, for example, or to pay themselves an appropriate wage – the green participants behaved much worse in the experiments than their conventional counterparts. The short answer to the paper's question, then, is: No. Greens are mean.Current copy of the magazine is behind a subscription wall. The authors are Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong. (See below for a link to the research paper.).
The authors, two Canadian psychologists, came up with an intriguing explanation for this. "Virtuous acts," they write, "can license subsequent asocial and unethical behaviour." It's the yin-yang theory of psychology, or "compensatory ethics", to give it its proper name. Buy an organic potato, then go home and beat your wife with The Guardian. Hop smugly into a green hybrid car, then use it to run over little old ladies doing their shopping.
Aditya Chakrabortty reported on the two pscyhologists' work in 2009 in the Guardian:
Psychologists call this "the licensing effect". Another recent study from Stanford University showed that white Americans who supported Obama were much more willing than others to express racist opinions.And he provided a link to the paper. LINK PDF
Favorite quote from the study: "In line with the halo associated with green consumerism, people act more altruistically after mere exposure to green than conventional products. However, people act less altruistically and are more likely to cheat and steal after purchasing green products as opposed to conventional products."
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