Right after writing a post on cynical explanations of human behaviour I read Yvain over at Less Wrong:
“Interesting new study out on moral behavior. The one sentence summary of the most interesting part is that people who did one good deed were less likely to do another good deed in the near future. They had, quite literally, done their good deed for the day.
In the first part of the study, they showed that people exposed to environmentally friendly, “green” products were more likely to behave nicely. Subjects were asked to rate products in an online store; unbeknownst to them, half were in a condition where the products were environmentally friendly, and the other half in a condition where the products were not. Then they played a Dictator Game. Subjects who had seen environmentally friendly products shared more of their money.
In the second part, instead of just rating the products, they were told to select $25 worth of products to buy from the store. One in twenty five subjects would actually receive the products they’d purchased. Then they, too, played the Dictator Game. Subjects who had bought environmentally friendly products shared less of their money.”
…
This does not prove that environmentalists are actually bad people – remember that whether a subject purchased green products or normal products was completely randomized. It does suggest that people who have done one nice thing feel less of an obligation to do another.
This meshes nicely with a self-signalling conception of morality. If part of the point of behaving morally is to convince yourself that you’re a good person, then once you’re convinced, behaving morally loses a lot of its value.”
The implication is that when someone chooses to do something ‘good’, it will often simply crowd out something else good they would have done later. If people are buying green cleaning products, they may also be slacking on household cleaning.
How then can we increase aggregate do-goodery? Giving people more opportunities to do good will not work. In fact giving people opportunities to do insubstantial feel-good things, like giving ‘gold coin’ donations or not using plastic bags, may ultimately be harmful as they provide satisfying alternatives to more effective but costly actions. Instead we need to raise the standards people feel they need to meet in order to consider themselves halfway decent people. Next time someone performs a token act of goodness in front of you, give them a look as if to say ‘is that all’.
Tagged: altruism, psychology
