Overestimating One's “Green” Behavior: Better‐Than‐Average Bias May Function to Reduce Perceived Personal Threat from Climate Change

Abstract

The actions of others, and what others approve of, can be a powerful tool for promoting proenvironmental behavior. A potential barrier to the utility of social norms, however, are cognitive biases in how people perceive themselves and others, including the better‐than‐average effect. This effect describes the tendency for people to think they are exceptional, especially when compared with their peers. To investigate the role of the better‐than‐average effect in proenvironmental behavior, we administered questions as part of a larger online survey of 5,219 nationally representative Australians. Participants were asked to report whether they engaged in a list of 21 proenvironmental behaviors, and then asked to estimate how their engagement compared with that of the average Australian. Over half of our participants self‐enhanced; they overestimated their engagement in proenvironmental behaviors relative to others. Self‐enhancement was related to reduced perceptions of personal harm from climate change, more favorable assessments of coping ability, less guilt, and lower moral and ethical duty to take action to prevent climate change. These relationships held when participants skeptical about anthropogenic climate change were removed from analyses. We discuss the implications of the findings for the use of social norms in promoting proenvironmental behavior.

The influence of moral disengagement on responses to climate change

“…For example, exonerative comparisons can allow people to morally justify their own behaviour by assuming that they are at least better than many of their peers. Indeed, we have found elsewhere that people tend to perceive their own engagement in pro-environmental behaviour to be as good as, or better than, those of their peers (Leviston & Uren, 2020). This uniqueness bias may only partially excuse one's behaviour, however; cognitive reconstrual of the meaning and impacts of one's behaviour may be more effective.…”

I Am Better Than Others: Waste Management Policies and Self-Enhancement Bias

“…However, to our knowledge, there are a few studies on self-enhancement bias related to pro-environmental behaviors [56]. Bergquist [57] found that people perceive themselves as more pro-environmental than others in terms of conserving energy, recycling, and so on.…”

“…Nevertheless, little direct evidence indicates whether self-enhancement bias exists for the domain of waste separation in the context of mandatory and voluntary policies. According to prior studies [56,57], we predicted that people assess themselves as more likely to sort waste than others in both mandatory and voluntary conditions and to hold a more positive attitude toward waste separation than others.…”

Sustainable Consumption: The Psychology of Individual Choice, Identity, and Behavior

“…Another feature of social life is social comparison and the importance of both descriptive and injunctive norms. Leviston and Uren (2020) focus on people's beliefs about their and others' pro-environmental behaviors. Few of their participants reported that they thought they did fewer pro-environmental behaviors than average-clear evidence of the well-known "better-than-average" effect (e.g., Brown, 2012).…”