Environmentalism as a trait: Gauging people's prosocial personality in terms of environmental engagement.

Autor/inn/en	Kaiser, Florian G.; Byrka, Katarzyna
Titel	Environmentalism as a trait: Gauging people's prosocial personality in terms of environmental engagement.
Quelle	In: International journal of psychology, 46 (2011) 1, S. 71-79Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Link als defekt meldenVerfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	online; gedruckt; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0020-7594; 1464-066X
DOI	10.1080/00207594.2010.516830
Schlagwörter	Sozialer Wert; Meinung; Persönlichkeitsmerkmal; Prosoziales Verhalten; Verhalten; Umweltschutz; Kooperation; Wert
Abstract	According to Hardin (1968), environmental deterioration stems from self-interest undermining people's resource conservation in the collective interest. Not surprisingly, selfless prosocial motives, such as personal feelings of moral obligation, have often been recognized as a key force behind people's environmentalism. In the present research, the authors anticipated that environmentalists - people with an inclination for proenvironmental engagement - would possess a propensity to generally act prosocially. In an extension of previous work, it was expected that a well-established self-report measure of past conservation behavior would predict people's active participation in a psychological experiment. Based on subjects' degree of environmental engagement, originally established in 2003, a sample of 502 persons were recontacted in 2005. Of these 502 (68.5% low, 31.5% high in environmentalism), 131 showed up for the announced experiment. Among those participants, results revealed that environmentalists' prosocial personalities were additionally reflected in their social value orientations. 90 percent of the environmentalists turned out to be prosocials, whereas only 65% of the less environmentally engaged subjects were prosocials. Overall, the present findings lend credit to a notion of environmentalism as an indicator of even subtle quantitative differences in a person's prosocial trait level. By and large, environmentalists acted more prosocially even in mundane activities unrelated to environmental conservation. Additional evidence comes from the commons dilemma experiment in which the participants took part in. There, more cooperation was generally found comparatively with others for the collective good from people high in environmentalism. These findings represent circumstantial evidence for a prosocial propensity dimension along which people differ, and which is also reflected in people's proenvironmental behavioral performance. If, however, environmentalism has to be regarded as indicative of a prosocial trait rather than a state-like motive, high hopes for moral norms and other prosocial motives in environmental conservation do not seem warranted. (ZPID).
Erfasst von	Leibniz-Institut für Psychologie, Trier
Update	2012/2