People who own more than one hemp shopping bag and flush only after going number two are actually worse human beings than the rest of us, the Guardian reports.
“According to a study, when people feel they have been morally virtuous by saving the planet through their purchases of organic baby food, for example, it leads to the ‘licensing [of] selfish and morally questionable behaviour,’ otherwise known as ‘moral balancing’ or ‘compensatory ethics.'”
Titled, “Do Green Products Make Us Better People?”, the study found that “when the green consumers were given the chance to boost their money by cheating on a computer game and then given the opportunity to lie about it – in other words, steal – they did, while the conventional consumers did not. Later, in an honour system in which participants were asked to take money from an envelope to pay themselves their spoils, the greens were six times more likely to steal than the conventionals.”