Tom Zeller Jr. of the New York Times writes about a recent study concluding that “Green” consumers have a greater propensity than others to commit theft:
The Guardian newspaper picked this up recently, and it also makes an appearance in the most recent issue of Conservation magazine: people who buy green products may be, on the whole, more likely to steal and cheat when given the chance.
This claim comes by way of two researchers at the University of Toronto, who were probing a more widely known psychological phenomenon in which people who pat themselves on the back for a good deed often feel entitled to a bit of selfishness later on.
I love the soft language. It’s not that Green consumers show a higher propensity to steal and cheat, it’s just that they are “less trustworthy.” It’s not that they are more likely to commit theft, it’s that they “may be, on the whole, more likely to steal and cheat when given the chance.” I know, it’s tough reading—that was more qualifiers than a Palin interview.
“Green products do not necessarily make for better people,” the Toronto researchers told The Guardian. They also said that while much time and treasure has been spent trying to identify green consumers, relatively little research has gone into “how green consumption fits into people’s global sense of responsibility and morality.”
Green products do not necessarily make for better people? Who or what are they rebutting with such a statement? Then the statement about, “how green consumption fits into people’s global sense of responsibility and morality,” a rather presumptuous statement on behalf of others—what, or rather, whose monolithic “morality” are they referring to? The thing that is skewed about the study, and the article, is that what it calls “green” consumers are just those that wear it on their shirtsleeve. But one knows many hundreds of people who are environmentally sensitive in their everyday lives, who don’t drive Hybrids and Subaru’s with the requisite ten or so glib bumper stickers. And yet, the article tends to affirm, especially in its subtle defensiveness, that such individuals are the only such “green” consumers. What gives? Why don’t liberals understand the scientific method if it does not suit their ideological preconceptions? Are there class considerations underlying the assumption that those the article refers to as being “green” are only those who can afford to do so as some central, public identity? Can working class people share in that same identity, or are they systematically excluded from such mobility?
It seems very reminiscent of a different study which concluded that abstinence education was more effective than other methods for preventing teen pregnancy. Unlike the “green” study, the abstinence study’s writers themselves went to extensive lengths to use soft-language and disqualifying predictions against their own evidentiary conclusion that abstinence-only education is, in fact, a far more empirically effective instrument for controlling the problem of teenage pregnancy.
Is this science? Does science need to appeal to political dogma to give its meta-theoretical conclusions coherence? Or are those conclusions limited to the sphere of evidence and methodological inquiry from which they were derived? If so, does this allow or disallow qualitative speculation as to why “green” consumers are more likely to cheat and commit theft? Or, did the study single out the subset “green consumers” for a truth that applies to this class of consumer’s (wealthy, narcissistic, uninformed) more generally?
