Pseudo Moralists

Going green licence to lie, cheat, steal?

October 18, 2009

Jim Rankin

With apologies to Kermit the frog, turns out it can also be sleazy being green.

People who buy goods perceived to be morally good are more likely to go on to lie, cheat and steal, according to a study by researchers at University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management.

Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong, inspired by a shared interest in green living and an appreciation of how the human mind can justify bad behaviour, found that people who are simply exposed to green products behave more altruistically than people who purchase the products.

Before any green-bashing begins, the authors stress that the point of the study was not to finger green consumers, but to demonstrate that buying anything seen as morally good may make you feel better but may also give you a licence to behave badly – and, as this study found, in ways completely unrelated to the "good" behaviour.

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