In her online column this week, Newsweek science writer Sharon Begley reports on a soon-to-be-published study whose findings should make even the greenest shopper among us engage in some deep self-reflection.

The study (which received a bit of press last fall, and will be published soon in the journal Psychological Science) found, to put it in Newsweek’s blunt words, “that people are more likely to cheat and steal after buying green products.” (The full study can be read online here.)

Now, before anybody starts harping on the two-facedness of environmentalists, let me point out that such hypocrisy has been observed experimentally among people engaged in all sorts of virtuous behaviors — whenever, as Begley puts it, “our internal moral cup runneth over."

Or, as the University of Toronto authors of the study, Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhang, put it: “Virtuous acts can license subsequent asocial and unethical behaviors.”

Indeed, in a study published several years ago, people who participated in an act of gender fairness were found to be more likely to feel OK about engaging in an act of gender discrimination later.

The study’s specifics
For this current study, researchers asked university students to browse in one of two online grocery stores. One store carried mostly “green” (including organic) products; the other was stocked with more conventional items.

As Begley points out, having the students look at green products instigated the “priming effect, in which subtle cues shape our behavior.” This well-known psychological phenonmenon explains why in other studies people have been found to improve their table manners after viewing pictures of upscale restaurants and to increase their creativity after seeing the Apple (but not the IBM!) logo.  

Some of the students were then asked to spend $25 in one or the other of the stores. (They were told which one to shop in.)

Two more experiments followed. And here’s where things got interesting. First, students were asked to play the “dictator game.” They were given $6 and told they could divide the money with an unseen partner in any way that they wanted. However, they could keep the money only if their silent partner agreed with the proposed split.

Students who had looked at — but not been able to buy — green products were more generous with splitting the money than those who had actually bought green products.

The researchers then nudged the students' ethics a bit further, with, as Begley puts it, even “more alarming” results:

The usual caveats
Does this study mean we should all become cynics and sneer contemptuously at green (or other) virtuous behavior, knowing that asocial behavior may follow? Of course not. This study, like all others, has its limitations. It involved only 156 participants (all college students), for example, and it took place in an artificial setting. As Begley points out, playing the dictator game is not the same as helping a blind person across the street or volunteering in a soup kitchen.

Still, the study — and all the other research on compensatory ethics — raises some discouraging thoughts.

“If someone has just bought free-trade, shade-grown coffee, is he more likely to shove you out of his way?” asks Begley. “If she’s just lugged her e-waste to the recycling center, is she more likely to cut in line at the bank?”

Maybe. But let's hope not.