A new peer-reviewed study suggests that people who view greed more positively are more likely to choose personal financial gain when that gain conflicts with environmental sustainability. Across four studies involving 817 participants, researchers found consistent links between positive beliefs about greed, moral disengagement and self-interested choices in financially costly environmental tradeoffs.
Greed beliefs shifted after a simple prompt
The clearest causal evidence came from Study 1, an online experiment involving 210 adults in the United States. Participants were randomly assigned either to think about ways greed can be useful or to consider what they typically do during an average day.
Participants then imagined that they had invested a substantial portion of their savings in a company facing financial difficulties. Keeping their shares would allow them to recover losses and earn further profits, but the company’s profit-boosting action would harm the environment. Selling the shares would avoid supporting the environmentally harmful action but would mean losing the investment and future profits.
The greed prompt significantly increased positive beliefs about greed. Average scores were 4.63 in the greed condition compared with 3.97 in the control condition, a moderate standardized difference of d = 0.54. Logistic regression also showed that participants exposed to the greed prompt were significantly more likely to keep the shares, with b = -0.97, SE = 0.33, z = -2.95 and p = 0.003.
Across the full Study 1 sample, 137 participants chose to keep their shares and 73 chose to sell. Those who kept their shares also reported more positive beliefs about greed, averaging 4.49 compared with 3.89 among sellers. A mediation analysis estimated that about 26% of the total effect of the experimental manipulation on the tradeoff choice was mediated by participants’ positive beliefs about greed.
Moral disengagement was linked to self-interested choices
Study 2 included 215 participants and examined moral disengagement alongside beliefs about greed, pride and guilt. Moral disengagement refers to psychological processes that can weaken the self-regulation normally associated with moral standards.
Participants who kept the environmentally harmful investment reported higher positive beliefs about greed, with an average score of 4.14 compared with 3.26 among sellers. They also reported higher moral disengagement, averaging 2.31 compared with 1.99. The standardized differences were d = 0.79 for greed beliefs and d = 0.33 for moral disengagement.
Pride differed particularly strongly. Sellers reported average pride of 7.68 compared with 3.91 among those who kept the shares, corresponding to d = 1.39. Moral disengagement moderated this pride difference. The interaction was statistically significant, b = -1.44, SE = 0.39, p = 0.0003, although the additional explained variance from the interaction was modest at 3.9%.
Participants treated the decision as a moral issue
Study 3 involved 214 participants and tested whether people actually regarded the investment decision as a moral choice. Participants rated its moral significance at an average of 4.95 on the study’s scale, significantly above the midpoint of 4.00, with d = 0.50.
The researchers also compared decisions made for oneself with recommendations made for a hypothetical other person. They found no significant association between the self-versus-other condition and the keep-or-sell decision. Sellers again reported lower positive beliefs about greed, greater pride and lower guilt than keepers. The standardized differences were d = 0.53, 0.69 and 0.56, respectively.
Moral disengagement appeared to precede the choice
Study 4 was designed to examine whether moral disengagement emerges mainly after an environmentally harmful decision as a justification, or whether it is already present beforehand. Participants completed measures at two time points separated by at least 15 days. A total of 178 participants were retained at the second time point, with 123 choosing to keep the shares and 55 choosing to sell.
Moral disengagement remained statistically stable from before to after the decision. The main effect of time was not significant, F(1, 176) = 0.74, p = 0.392, and the interaction between time and decision was also not significant, F(1, 176) = 1.80, p = 0.182. Participants who kept their shares showed higher moral disengagement at both time points.
The authors interpret this pattern as evidence that moral disengagement may function more as a pre-existing orientation that facilitates self-interested choices than as a justification constructed only after an unsustainable decision. However, because moral disengagement itself was not experimentally manipulated, this part of the evidence does not establish a causal relationship.
Why the findings matter
The findings suggest that environmental decisions involving meaningful financial sacrifice may depend partly on how people morally frame self-interest. The experimental result is particularly relevant because a relatively simple prompt that emphasized the usefulness of greed changed both reported beliefs and subsequent choices in a hypothetical investment scenario.
For sustainability communication, the results suggest that presenting environmentally consequential financial decisions as moral choices may help some people remain attentive to environmental costs. Greater transparency about the environmental consequences of corporate actions could also make it harder to treat investment decisions as purely financial calculations.
The study does not show that moral messaging will necessarily change real investment behaviour. Instead, it identifies psychological factors that appear to shape how people respond when personal financial interests and environmental outcomes are placed in direct conflict.
Important limitations
All four studies used the same core hypothetical investment scenario, which limits how confidently the findings can be generalized to everyday purchasing, household behaviour or actual investment decisions. The studies also used samples of roughly 200 participants each, making them better suited to detecting larger main effects than small interaction or mediation effects.
Studies 2 to 4 were primarily correlational for the relationships involving moral disengagement, so these associations should not be interpreted as proof that moral disengagement causes environmentally harmful choices. The studies were not preregistered, and the authors note that future work should use preregistration, larger samples, varied decision scenarios and real behavioural measures.
The results are also most directly relevant to high-cost environmental tradeoffs. Lower-cost or habitual behaviours, such as recycling or routine consumer choices, may involve different psychological processes.
Source Information
Study: Moral disengagement facilitates self-interested choices in environmental tradeoffs
Authors: Enis Yakut and Sean M. Laurent
Journal: Communications Sustainability
Published: 24 September 2026
Study design: Four studies involving 817 participants, including a randomized online experiment and longitudinal measurement
