1 00:00:08,50 --> 00:00:10,400 Good day. My name is Nina Mazar. 2 00:00:10,400 --> 00:00:14,926 And today, I want to talk to you about our model pendulum or how the social and 3 00:00:14,926 --> 00:00:19,233 moral actions that we engaging in the here and now do not just happen in a 4 00:00:19,233 --> 00:00:26,580 vacuum, but actually effects our subsequent behaviors and decisions. 5 00:00:26,580 --> 00:00:29,928 So, let's first engage in a short exercise. 6 00:00:29,928 --> 00:00:33,384 I would like you to think about a recent situation where you were tempted to go 7 00:00:33,384 --> 00:00:39,520 against your social and moral beliefs, and where you gave into that temptation. 8 00:00:39,520 --> 00:00:42,258 How did that make you feel? And do you think it changed how you 9 00:00:42,258 --> 00:00:46,896 subsequently behaved? And if so, how, why? 10 00:00:46,896 --> 00:00:52,144 Well, I recently passed by a group of students that was raising money for food 11 00:00:52,144 --> 00:00:56,396 bank. And here, I found myself being tempted to 12 00:00:56,396 --> 00:01:00,149 be selfish because I was thirsty, I was tired. 13 00:01:00,149 --> 00:01:04,53 And I was thinking, oh, I could use the change to buy myself a warm cup of tea 14 00:01:04,53 --> 00:01:08,85 and in that moment, I'm ashamed to say, it just felt like the better idea and I 15 00:01:08,85 --> 00:01:13,870 went with the cup of tea. But once I had the cup of tea and I had a 16 00:01:13,870 --> 00:01:17,469 few sips, you know, I said, I feel bad about myself because that was not the 17 00:01:17,469 --> 00:01:23,108 person how I thought of myself. I have a different self image of myself 18 00:01:23,108 --> 00:01:27,76 and somehow, you know, it didn't feel right, I should have used my change to 19 00:01:27,76 --> 00:01:31,310 actually donate that money to a good cause. 20 00:01:31,310 --> 00:01:35,160 So, without really understanding what was happening, I subsequently found myself 21 00:01:35,160 --> 00:01:39,568 being particularly nice to other people. I would hold the door open for the 22 00:01:39,568 --> 00:01:43,722 people, I would smile at other people, I would engage in small talk. 23 00:01:43,722 --> 00:01:48,825 And what I was basically doing is I was compensating for my previous selfish 24 00:01:48,825 --> 00:01:54,690 behavior to reestablish my positive moral view of myself. 25 00:01:54,690 --> 00:01:57,730 And that's basically what a moral pendulum is. 26 00:01:57,730 --> 00:02:02,830 So, the good news is that we are, in general, motivated to do good things. 27 00:02:02,830 --> 00:02:05,575 And sometimes, when we transgress, you know, that happens once in a while 28 00:02:05,575 --> 00:02:08,480 because there are a lot of temptations around us. 29 00:02:08,480 --> 00:02:11,925 Then, we will be highly motivated to compensate for those transgressions, to 30 00:02:11,925 --> 00:02:14,935 reestablish the positive view of ourselves. 31 00:02:14,935 --> 00:02:23,380 Now unfortunately, the bad news is, a pendulum swings both ways. 32 00:02:23,380 --> 00:02:27,520 So, we are likely, least likely to scrutinize moral implications of our 33 00:02:27,520 --> 00:02:32,800 actions right after our moral self has just experienced a boost. 34 00:02:32,800 --> 00:02:36,86 So, after we have engaged in a virtuous act, a good act, a moral act, so a good 35 00:02:36,86 --> 00:02:41,370 deed, it's highly likely that we feel very, very good about ourselves. 36 00:02:41,370 --> 00:02:44,232 As a consequence, we have earned ourselves some more credits or 37 00:02:44,232 --> 00:02:47,850 credentials that license ourselves to subsequently be more selfish, if we find 38 00:02:47,850 --> 00:02:52,310 ourselves in a situation where we can benefit from them. 39 00:02:52,310 --> 00:02:55,778 And that's basically the question that my co-author, Chen-Bo Zhong and I, that we 40 00:02:55,778 --> 00:02:58,940 wanted to test and we decided that we wanted to test it in the domain of green 41 00:02:58,940 --> 00:03:03,65 consumption. Because over the years, consumers have 42 00:03:03,65 --> 00:03:07,110 become increasingly attentive to social and ethical conservations. 43 00:03:07,110 --> 00:03:09,530 And this includes, actually, my co-author and me. 44 00:03:09,530 --> 00:03:15,11 And so, we thought, well, maybe if people engage in green consumption and we 45 00:03:15,11 --> 00:03:22,100 moralize green consumption, that might lead to a licensing effect. 46 00:03:22,100 --> 00:03:26,30 But before we went out to test that, we actually first ran a very quick survey. 47 00:03:26,30 --> 00:03:31,295 We had half of our students rate how altruistic, how cooperative, how ethical 48 00:03:31,295 --> 00:03:38,170 they thought a person is that purchases conventional products. 49 00:03:38,170 --> 00:03:41,734 And we ask the other half of the students to rate how they thought of a person that 50 00:03:41,734 --> 00:03:45,82 purchases organic and, and, and environment-friendly products on those 51 00:03:45,82 --> 00:03:49,930 same three dimensions. And what did we find? 52 00:03:49,930 --> 00:03:54,1 We actually did find that people thought that people who purchase green products, 53 00:03:54,1 --> 00:03:58,131 environment-friendly products, organic products that they have higher moral and 54 00:03:58,131 --> 00:04:02,335 pro-social value. So, in all three dimensions that we had, 55 00:04:02,335 --> 00:04:05,580 those people were rated higher than people who purchase conventional 56 00:04:05,580 --> 00:04:08,793 products. So, based on, on that observation, we 57 00:04:08,793 --> 00:04:12,185 thought, okay, green consumption might actually lead to a licensing effect 58 00:04:12,185 --> 00:04:17,410 further down the road. And here's how we went out to test it. 59 00:04:17,410 --> 00:04:21,650 So, we designed two online stores. One store that carried mainly 60 00:04:21,650 --> 00:04:26,850 conventional products, one store that carried mainly green products. 61 00:04:26,850 --> 00:04:30,632 Both stores had the same number of products, the same type of products, the 62 00:04:30,632 --> 00:04:34,292 same prices, and we simply randomly assigned half of our students to one 63 00:04:34,292 --> 00:04:40,194 store, the other half to the other store. But the students didn't know that both 64 00:04:40,194 --> 00:04:43,390 stores existed. They only saw this one store. 65 00:04:43,390 --> 00:04:47,359 And within each store type, half of our students were asked to simply browse 66 00:04:47,359 --> 00:04:51,202 through the store and then rate the products based on the design and on the 67 00:04:51,202 --> 00:04:57,587 informativeness of, of their description. While the other half was invited to 68 00:04:57,587 --> 00:05:00,515 purchase items. So, we asked them, choose products that 69 00:05:00,515 --> 00:05:03,740 you would like to purchase and put them in your shopping cart. 70 00:05:03,740 --> 00:05:06,756 You can do this with up to $25 in value, and we told them that 1 in every 25 71 00:05:06,756 --> 00:05:10,240 students would be randomly selected to actually receive the items that they had 72 00:05:10,240 --> 00:05:16,50 in their cart for free from us. So, half of the students basically were 73 00:05:16,50 --> 00:05:21,75 merely exposed to the products, while the other half of students, they actually 74 00:05:21,75 --> 00:05:26,391 made purchasing decisions. So, that was the first part of the 75 00:05:26,391 --> 00:05:29,274 experiment. And then, in the second part of the 76 00:05:29,274 --> 00:05:33,109 experiment, in an ostensibly unrelated task, we told participants that they 77 00:05:33,109 --> 00:05:37,121 would engage in something that has been called the dictator game, actually, a 78 00:05:37,121 --> 00:05:42,920 variation of the dictator game. And what is the dictator game? 79 00:05:42,920 --> 00:05:45,818 Well, imagine you come to the lab and we tell you, you know what, you have been 80 00:05:45,818 --> 00:05:50,150 paired with an anonymous other person that is sitting in a different room. 81 00:05:50,150 --> 00:05:53,261 You will never find out who that other person is and that other person will 82 00:05:53,261 --> 00:05:57,676 never find out who you are. And you know what, randomly you are now, 83 00:05:57,676 --> 00:06:01,966 you have been selected to play the role of the dictator. 84 00:06:01,966 --> 00:06:06,126 And as a dictator, we've given you $6 for real, and you decide how much of the $6 85 00:06:06,126 --> 00:06:13,220 you want to keep for yourself versus give to the other person in the other room. 86 00:06:13,220 --> 00:06:17,230 So, you can decide, there is no right or wrong answer. 87 00:06:17,230 --> 00:06:20,834 And the nice thing about this very simple game is that since there isn't really any 88 00:06:20,834 --> 00:06:24,279 downside to not showing any money, because there are no social consequences, 89 00:06:24,279 --> 00:06:29,160 if you want, you can keep every, everything, so the entire $6. 90 00:06:29,160 --> 00:06:31,890 But if you do care about altruism, you will share. 91 00:06:31,890 --> 00:06:36,730 And so, it's a very nice simple task to measure how, how altruistic people are. 92 00:06:36,730 --> 00:06:40,490 So now, what did we find in our experimental session? 93 00:06:40,490 --> 00:06:43,946 We actually found that people who had just purchased in the green store, they 94 00:06:43,946 --> 00:06:47,672 ended up sharing significantly less money with their anonymous other person than 95 00:06:47,672 --> 00:06:52,870 those participants who had just purchased in the conventional store. 96 00:06:52,870 --> 00:06:56,570 And that fits very nicely with that licensing hypothesis. 97 00:06:56,570 --> 00:06:59,408 So, the idea that those people who had just purchased green products, they felt 98 00:06:59,408 --> 00:07:02,720 very good about themselves. They pat themselves on the back. 99 00:07:02,720 --> 00:07:06,617 They felt morally superior. And that earned themself the license to 100 00:07:06,617 --> 00:07:10,334 subsequently be a bit more selfish because it would not threaten their view 101 00:07:10,334 --> 00:07:16,12 that they had about themselves. Now, remember that we had a variation in 102 00:07:16,12 --> 00:07:20,152 that purchasing task. Only half of our participants actually 103 00:07:20,152 --> 00:07:23,770 were purchasing, right, the other half was only exposed to the products, so they 104 00:07:23,770 --> 00:07:30,0 could not really engage in a good deed. And for those participants who are merely 105 00:07:30,0 --> 00:07:35,250 exposed to the products, we actually did not find any licensing effect whatsoever. 106 00:07:35,250 --> 00:07:39,121 In fact, we actually found the opposite. So, people who were purchasing the green 107 00:07:39,121 --> 00:07:42,605 store, we're sharing significantly more money with the anonymous other person 108 00:07:42,605 --> 00:07:46,500 than those who had purchased in the conventional store. 109 00:07:46,500 --> 00:07:51,220 And that fits very nicely with something that has been coined, the priming effect. 110 00:07:51,220 --> 00:07:55,312 So, a priming effect happens when subtly cues in the environment activate 111 00:07:55,312 --> 00:08:00,95 associated norms, that then lead to corresponding behavior. 112 00:08:00,95 --> 00:08:04,757 So, for my opinion, two of the most or two of the coolest priming experiments 113 00:08:04,757 --> 00:08:11,476 show, for example, how exposure to the upper[UNKNOWN] increases creativity. 114 00:08:11,476 --> 00:08:16,100 And another one shows how exposure to pictures of exclusive upscale restaurants 115 00:08:16,100 --> 00:08:20,730 increase or improves people's eating manners. 116 00:08:20,730 --> 00:08:25,814 And, and I think along similar lines, people who have been exposed to green 117 00:08:25,814 --> 00:08:31,226 products being exposed to the green products activated those higher moral 118 00:08:31,226 --> 00:08:36,310 norms that people seem to have when it comes to green products and that lead 119 00:08:36,310 --> 00:08:45,352 them to behave consistently with those, with those beliefs and norms. 120 00:08:45,352 --> 00:08:49,330 Now, you can say, okay, so what? So, people who purchase in the green 121 00:08:49,330 --> 00:08:54,592 store, they were a bit less altruistic. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, 122 00:08:54,592 --> 00:08:57,515 right? And, you would be right if you're saying 123 00:08:57,515 --> 00:08:59,408 that. But what my co-author and I were 124 00:08:59,408 --> 00:09:02,762 wondering was, well, how strong can the licensing effect actually get? 125 00:09:02,762 --> 00:09:07,784 What did even make people transgress in such a way that they would engage in 126 00:09:07,784 --> 00:09:14,60 clear immoral transgressions, such as lying or even stealing. 127 00:09:14,60 --> 00:09:17,134 And that's what we tested in our second experiment. 128 00:09:17,134 --> 00:09:20,460 So, again, we had our two stores, the conventional store and the green store. 129 00:09:20,460 --> 00:09:24,360 This time, we only ask participants to purchase in either of those two stores, 130 00:09:24,360 --> 00:09:29,664 it was the first part of the experiment. And then, in the second part of the 131 00:09:29,664 --> 00:09:32,360 experiment, the ostensibly unrelated task. 132 00:09:32,360 --> 00:09:39,750 We we asked them to participate in a computer-based visual perception task. 133 00:09:39,750 --> 00:09:42,490 So, how did that visual perception task look like? 134 00:09:42,490 --> 00:09:46,89 Imagine you're sitting in front of the computer, in front of the computer 135 00:09:46,89 --> 00:09:50,720 screen, and you'll see a box or a square on that computer screen. 136 00:09:50,720 --> 00:09:55,27 And that square is divided by one diagonal line, and for one second, you 137 00:09:55,27 --> 00:10:00,440 see 20 dots scattered inside that box, then they disappear. 138 00:10:00,440 --> 00:10:03,320 And you just simply have to say whether there more dots on the left or more dots 139 00:10:03,320 --> 00:10:07,660 on the right side of that diagonal line. And it, imagine further that there are 90 140 00:10:07,660 --> 00:10:10,360 such trials, and on each trial, the pattern of the dots is, is very 141 00:10:10,360 --> 00:10:13,856 different. Now what happens, oh, I actually should 142 00:10:13,856 --> 00:10:17,366 say that people are extremely good at this task, they're very, very accurate, 143 00:10:17,366 --> 00:10:21,249 because of, our visual perception is fairly good. 144 00:10:22,340 --> 00:10:25,891 But now, what happens when we introduce a payment scheme such that every time you 145 00:10:25,891 --> 00:10:30,130 say that there are more dots on the left, you earn half a cent. 146 00:10:30,130 --> 00:10:33,532 Every time you say that there are more dots on the right, you earn 10 times the 147 00:10:33,532 --> 00:10:37,693 amount, 5 cents. So, now I bet, oh, and let's imagine that 148 00:10:37,693 --> 00:10:43,20 the computer pays you regardless if your answer is correct or not. 149 00:10:43,20 --> 00:10:46,140 So now, I bet when you see that there are more dots on the lower pay side, you will 150 00:10:46,140 --> 00:10:49,20 find yourself tempted to just simply say, hey, there are more dots on the 151 00:10:49,20 --> 00:10:55,174 right-hand side, so the higher pay side. And, and so that you earn more money. 152 00:10:55,174 --> 00:10:59,103 And that's what we wanted to see. We wanted to see would people cheat for 153 00:10:59,103 --> 00:11:02,110 more money. What did we find? 154 00:11:02,110 --> 00:11:06,205 Well, consistent with the licensing effect, people who had just purchased in 155 00:11:06,205 --> 00:11:10,363 the green store, well, they actually ended up cheating significantly more for 156 00:11:10,363 --> 00:11:15,410 higher pay than those people in the conventional store. 157 00:11:15,410 --> 00:11:18,258 Actually, in fact, the people in the conventioal store were completely honest. 158 00:11:18,258 --> 00:11:21,737 And, and not only that. So, once the computer task was over, 159 00:11:21,737 --> 00:11:25,580 participants would see on the final screen how much money they earned and 160 00:11:25,580 --> 00:11:29,612 they were instructed to pay themselves out of an envelope with cash that they 161 00:11:29,612 --> 00:11:35,6 would find on their desk. And what we wanted to see is, would 162 00:11:35,6 --> 00:11:38,830 people take out the amount of money that they see on the screen? 163 00:11:38,830 --> 00:11:42,720 Or would they overpay themselves? So, basically steal some money from us. 164 00:11:42,720 --> 00:11:46,271 And again, people who had just purchased in a green store also took out more money 165 00:11:46,271 --> 00:11:51,136 than what they were supposed to. So overall, because of lying and because 166 00:11:51,136 --> 00:11:55,426 of stealing, people in the green store overpaid themselves by about $0.83 more 167 00:11:55,426 --> 00:12:00,10 than those participants in a conventional store. 168 00:12:00,10 --> 00:12:04,400 And that might not seem like a lot, but it is a lot. 169 00:12:04,400 --> 00:12:08,353 When you think about that, if people were completely honest and accurate in that 170 00:12:08,353 --> 00:12:12,810 visual perception task, they would have made only about $2. 171 00:12:12,810 --> 00:12:19,714 So, what's the morale of this research that I just presented to you? 172 00:12:19,714 --> 00:12:23,806 Well, if you're about to say that green people are bad people, that they are 173 00:12:23,806 --> 00:12:29,560 immoral and not social, think again, because that is not the takeaway. 174 00:12:29,560 --> 00:12:34,954 So, it's not the takeaway simply because we did not compare green people to 175 00:12:34,954 --> 00:12:39,576 non-green people. We had the same group of students and we 176 00:12:39,576 --> 00:12:43,615 just randomly assinged them to one store or the other store. 177 00:12:43,615 --> 00:12:48,453 So, the takeaway of our experiment is that if you engage in actions that 178 00:12:48,453 --> 00:12:53,701 produce a sense of moral, of moral glow that make you feel superior that then, 179 00:12:53,701 --> 00:13:00,10 you are more likely to subsequently transgress. 180 00:13:00,10 --> 00:13:03,941 So, you license yourself for, to transgress further down the road. 181 00:13:03,941 --> 00:13:08,760 So, as long we engage in behaviors that we moralize, such as, for example, 182 00:13:08,760 --> 00:13:14,830 purchasing green products, we will find the licensing effect. 183 00:13:14,830 --> 00:13:17,509 But if we do not moralize green consumption, if we were to engage in it 184 00:13:17,509 --> 00:13:20,423 just because it is, it feels like the right thing to do, it is a norm, we don't 185 00:13:20,423 --> 00:13:25,945 pat ourselves on the back. Then, we would not expect the licensing 186 00:13:25,945 --> 00:13:30,120 effect of then we would not expect to find the licensing effect. 187 00:13:30,120 --> 00:13:33,190 The licensing effect requires that you feel a boost to your self-concept. 188 00:13:33,190 --> 00:13:37,320 So, the good news is that many of us wanted a good and that many of us think 189 00:13:37,320 --> 00:13:43,530 of themselves as good pro-social and as moral human beings. 190 00:13:43,530 --> 00:13:46,824 We just need a bit, we just need to be a bit cautious about, when we engage in 191 00:13:46,824 --> 00:13:50,118 good behaviors, that we don't feel superior, and that we don't feel like, 192 00:13:50,118 --> 00:13:55,282 that we have done enough. Because if we feel that way, then we will 193 00:13:55,282 --> 00:13:59,314 be less motivated to continue doing good and we'll be more likely to license 194 00:13:59,314 --> 00:14:03,840 ourselves to transgress further down the road. 195 00:14:03,840 --> 00:14:08,390 And I think even the most ethical ones among us, they can benefit from such kind 196 00:14:08,390 --> 00:14:14,522 of a self-reflection from time to time. And that's basically all I have to tell 197 00:14:14,522 --> 00:14:19,656 you about the moral pendulum. Thank you.