Word: statuses
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Sure, buying a green product like one of those long-life compact fluorescent bulbs means giving up the understated softness of a regular incandescent. But you also gain something precious when you buy a compact fluorescent: status. When your friends see the bulb screwed into the socket of your lamp, many of them will think you're a better, more socially conscious person (which you may well be). And as the aphorist Publilius Syrus wrote a couple thousand years ago, "A good reputation is more valuable than money...
Evolutionary psychologists have a cynical term for cooperative, procommunity behaviors like buying a Prius or shopping at Whole Foods or carrying a public-radio tote bag: competitive altruism. Cynical, but accurate. As several studies (like this one) have shown, altruistic people achieve higher status, and are much more likely to behave altruistically in situations where their actions are public than when they will go unnoticed. Competitive altruism explains why soldiers jump onto grenades during war (their clans will reap the rewards) and why vain CEOs build hospital wings (they enjoy the social renown that they could never acquire from closing...
...weeks ago, at the Association for Psychological Science convention in San Francisco, Griskevicius presented new research that furthers the competitive-altruism theory. Traditionally, economists have presumed that if people are seeking status, they will simply buy the most luxurious product they can afford. But Griskevicius and his colleagues - Joshua Taylor of the University of New Mexico and Bram Van den Bergh of the Rotterdam School of Management - theorized that when given an eco-friendly alternative, competitive altruism would compel people to forgo luxury for environmental status. To test the theory, they conducted several experiments...
...dishwashers; in each case, the participants could pick a more luxurious nongreen item (a high-end Sub-Zero dishwasher with a no-spot drying system, for instance) or an eco-friendly item (a dishwasher with a short running time made with recycled components). Those who read the status-priming story were far more likely to pick the green product than the luxury product. They were also more likely to pick the green product than another control group that read neither of the priming stories. (Watch an interview with Ford CEO Alan Mulally...
...course, transparency is a double-edged sword, no matter your sexual orientation. "I got brutally dumped recently," Harreld told me. "And I changed my relationship status to respect her wishes. But I didn't know that making that change would appear in everyone's feed and I certainly didn't want it to. Everyone saw that my relationship was over and commented on it." Ouch. Painfully inconvenient regardless of your sexual identity. As they say, "It's complicated...