Going green makes you mean! - Progressive Rock Music Forum

Equality 7-2521 wrote:

Dean wrote:

Both the article and the study are 4 years old. There were doubts about the methods used in the study at the time of publication (as the article mentions, unfortunately the links are dead).

Reading through the study paper itself (and not the newspaper conclusions), it seems like very naive "set of experiments" to me. The original study just goes to show why psychology and sociology are not real sciences as it fails to remember that correlation does not imply causation.

That's a bit harsh. The standards in the fields are unfortunately low, but it's hard to say that psychology isn't a science.

yeah, I went a tad OTT there and my crass generalisation was indeed harsh. However, I think this particular study is specious and perhaps displays a degree of bias confirmation. To be taken seriously as a science it needs to raise the standards.

Blacksword wrote:

someone_else wrote:

I don't know if "green consumers" are less kind to others and more likely to cheat and steal, but I do suspect that they are susceptible to being hoaxed.

Don't open that ca of worms..

The discussion is around 'moral balancing' not the gulliblity or otherwise of greenies.

'Moral balancing' isn't trading-off a one act with a morally opposite one, it is the 'golden mean' between two extremes. In the case of going green, moral balancing would be choosing mid-priced farm-assured instead of the expensive free-range or cheap battery-farmed. Conversely trading-off buying the ethically questionable fois gras by subsequently purchasing ethically wholesome free-range eggs would not be a moral balance (it is debatable whether that is even guilt-easing). Moral balancing is something that is applied before, not after, the act.

It's probably worth mentioning that "green consumer" as used in this study is too vague and not defined. There is also more to going green than just consumerism, but since consumerism was the only measure of "green" used in the study that's the only part of it I'm referring to here.

Green-consumerism does not necessarily involve any morality at all: for example 'organic' is a green choice but not a moral choice. In that respect it is a selfish choice because it is perceived that 'organic' is better for the consumer, the organic-only green consumer has made a personal choice that affects no one but themselves. Green choices that are moral would be those that are concerned with ethics in relation to the well-being of the animal or the producer, examples of those would be free-range and fair-trade. However even those can be selfish choices based upon the perception that they are also better products for the consumer, in fact that is exactly how they are marketed - they taste better, they are healthier, they are better for you. In contrast non-green products are depicted as unhealthy, full of nasty chemicals and bad for you. It could be argued that green-consumerism is purely about "self" and thus green-consumers are inherently self-centred and 'mean'.

The problem with psychological studies is they are subject to psychology themselves, that is the nature of the 'science'; both the participants and those conducting the study are part of any experiments conducted. Assessing morality in a lab experiment (if such a thing is ever possible) cannot avoid hoaxing and gullibility since the experiments carry a level of inherent duplicity within them: the participants were randomly assigned to "green" and "conventional"; they were told the tasks were unrelated; they were told "they had been randomly paired with another person in a different room, when there was none" and that "they had been randomly assigned to the initiator’s role (even though they all played that role)". Also, the "dictator game" used in the study is more a measure of maturity than morality and is related to self-image and how they perceive that image is seen by others.

Edited by Dean - August 05 2014 at 13:46