Buy Local, Act EvilCan organic produce and natural shampoo turn you into a heartless jerk?
Posted Monday, Dec. 7, 2009, at 6:24 PM ET
As the owner of several energy-efficient light bulbs and a recycled umbrella, I'm familiar with the critiques of "ethical consumption." In some cases, it's not clear that ostensibly green products are better for the environment. There's also the risk that these lifestyle choices will make us complacent, sapping the drive to call senators and chain ourselves to coal plants. Tweaking your shopping list, the argument goes, is at best woefully insufficient and maybe even counterproductive.
But new research by Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong at the University of Toronto levels an even graver charge: that virtuous shopping can actually lead to immoral behavior. In their study (described in a paper now in press at Psychological Science), subjects who made simulated eco-friendly purchases ended up less likely to exhibit altruism in a laboratory game and more likely to cheat and steal.
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StumbleUponIn an experiment, participants were randomly assigned to select items they wanted to buy in one of two online stores. One store sold predominantly green products, the other mostly conventional items. Then, in a supposedly unrelated game, all of the participants were allocated $6, to share as they saw fit with an anonymous (and unbeknownst to them, imaginary) recipient. Subjects who had chosen items from the green store coughed up less money, on average, than their counterparts. In a second experiment, participants were again assigned to shop in either a green or conventional store. Then they performed a computer task that involved earning small sums of cash. The setup offered the opportunity to cheat and steal with impunity. The eco-shoppers were more likely to do both.
It would be foolish to draw conclusions about the real world from just one paper and from such an artificial scenario. But the findings add to a growing body of research into a phenomenon known among social psychologists as "moral credentials" or "moral licensing." Historically, psychologists viewed moral development as a steady progression toward more sophisticated decision-making. But an emerging school of thought stresses the capriciousness of moral responses. Several studies propose that the state of our self-image can directly influence our choices from moment to moment. When people have the chance to demonstrate their goodness, even in the most token of ways, they then feel free to relax their ethical standards.
In 2001, Benoit Monin and Dale Miller of Princeton published a pioneering study of this licensing tendency. The study investigated whether showing a lack of bias in one situation would free subjects to express prejudice later on. They found that people who had designated a woman as the best candidate for a gender-neutral job were then more likely to recommend a man for a stereotypically masculine job. Another experiment yielded similar results with regard to race.
Newer work has focused on morality more broadly. Earlier this year, researchers at Northwestern reported that subjects who wrote self-flattering stories later pledged to give less money to charity than those who wrote stories that were self-critical or about someone else. In another recent study, participants who recalled their own righteous deeds were less inclined to donate blood, volunteer, or engage in other "prosocial" acts. They were also more likely to cheat on a math assignment.
Why might this happen? According to Monin, now a professor at Stanford, there are two theories. One is that when we've established our rectitude, we interpret ensuing behavior in a different light: I just proved I'm a good person, so what I'm doing now must be okay. This reasoning, of course, works best in ambiguous situations, not with egregious sins. For example, in Monin's experiments, it seems plausible that after participants have displayed a lack of prejudice, they see their next judgment call as based on sound analysis. (Indeed, it's possible that the subjects are not expressing prejudice but simply feel liberated from the pressure to be politically correct.)
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I can't access the paper, but does it say what the price difference is between the conventional & green products? In my experience, green usually cost more and it would make sense that if those who purchased green products paid more, then they'd be less willing to share their $6 in the first experiment. You could argue the same for the second experiment to some extent as well-they resorted to cheating to make more money to purchase more expensive products.
Is there anyone who can access the scientific paper and find this out?
-- fleece
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In the study all of the comparable conventional and green products were priced the same. (Tide and Seventh Generation Liquid Laundry Detergent were both listed at $8) Participants selected their items knowing their was a 1/25 chance they would be rewarded with their selections. I think this bring up another caveat--since green products typically do cost more, selecting green products can be perceived as maximizing the value you might receive, so some of the participants identified as "green" in this study could just be greedy, and they were trying to get as much as they could for themselves during all parts of the experiment (eg., not sharing or cheating on the later parts). I have not read the study thoroughly enough to see if this is addressed. The pre-published paper can be found at the author's website.
-- rapple37
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Part of the problem here is the fact that a person's moral and ethical code could simply have different priorities than those that would be accepted by the researchers - so they misunderstood their test subjects.
Most people, when you ask them about the legendary character "Robin Hood", will respond that Robin was a hero... an unquestionably "good" character. Of course, Robin and his band of merry men were likely real characters that ambushed and killed wealthy merchants in order to loot them... but we as a society forgive that "wrong" because he was distributing (at least some of) the stolen loot to the impoverished masses.
The organics people in this study are similar. People who care about the "organics" label don't really understand the science or the cost/benefit... but they have this fervent belief that buying organic is an over-arching "good" thing. This "good" is simply more important than the "wrong" of choosing not to share money with other people, or cheating against a nameless big corporation (these are usually defined as "evil" entities by organics people).
But to state that: because organics people are willing to steal from "big evil entities" and distribute that money back into the unquestioned "goodness" of the source of organics stuff; that doing a "good deed" gives you some form of "ethical credit" completely misses the point. Both of these actions are good deeds. Refusing to share is also in a way a good deed - insofar as it generates more money to afford the extremely expensive organics stuff.
They're hoarding money to spend on organics, and that's a good thing... In their own mind they're just another hero taking from the bad and giving to the good.
That said, in the real world there is no environmental good that comes from organic farming. Buying stuff like CFL's actually save money over buying the heat bulbs, and improving insulation pays for itself very quickly, so that wouldn't require theft in order to support the goodness... You'd have to go into extremely expensive alternative energy technologies like PV solar panels in order to get to a real world example where some of this "Robin Hood" moral calculations could at least be said to result in an honest "good" result.
-- Tundrayeti
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