Not so green after all

“The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

In what ways do people deceive themselves and others? How conscious are deceivers of their deceptions? Of course, the most obvious types of deception involve criminals who consciously deceive others for personal gain. Less easy to understand are those who try to fool themselves and everyone else.

After the death of his father, Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, quickly married her brother-in-law. How quickly did Gertrude remarry? The food at the wedding banquet could have been leftovers from the funeral, Hamlet said. Afterward, while watching a play where a faithful widow adamantly refuses to marry soon after her husband’s death, Gertrude says, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” In Shakespeare’s time protest did not mean to deny but to declare or to vow. When people overdo their vows, come on too strong or go overboard in their assertions about their virtues, we share the same suspicions expressed by Emerson and Shakespeare’s Gertrude.

Freud also described behaviors that involve both the deception of one’s self and others. Reaction formation is a term that describes the behavior of a person who is doing exactly the opposite of what he feels because he believes his true feelings are wrong. Usually the person goes to an extreme to convince himself and others he could not possibly have an unacceptable (to that person) feeling. Examples found on PRWeb include people who are angry with a colleague, but make a point of being excessively nice. Or “a mother who has a child she does not want (may) become very protective of the child, an alcoholic extols the virtues of abstinence, or a man who is gay has a number of conspicuous heterosexual affairs and openly criticizes gays.” Clearly deceptions that deceive one’s self and others are complex.

To seem rather than to be

More common to all of us may be the tendency to do and say what is politically correct to those whom we admire or hope to impress. A recent study showed that many people who forcefully extol the virtues of buying green and saving the planet, do not always buy green in the privacy of their own homes. The researchers found “that being green may be the new status symbol ... (so) people’s desire for social status motivates them to purchase products that benefit the planet. But behind closed doors, we’re more likely to invest in products that are self-indulgent, and not necessarily earth-friendly” (The Monitor on Psychology, May, 2010).

This is not a criticism of the environmental movement, researchers explain. Instead, it is a reflection of human nature for people to want to appear in the best light. There is nothing sinister in this behavior although people are aware that they are being inconsistent.

Leaders of the green movement might take advantage of human nature more successfully by adding competition to being green. For example, the authors suggest, have contests to select the greenest family in a neighborhood. But if the winners brag about their virtues, beware!

West is a professor at Lynchburg College. His book, ‘The Shelbys,’ has been translated into Indonesian and Czech. Readers may write to West in care of The News & Advance, P.O. Box 10129, Lynchburg, VA 24506.