Moral disengagement facilitates self-interested choices in environmental tradeoffs

Despite widespread concern about environmental sustainability, people frequently choose financially beneficial but environmentally harmful options over costlier but more sustainable alternatives. Across four studies (total N = 817), we show that positive beliefs about greed and moral disengagement consistently predict self-interested, environmentally unsustainable choices in financially costly tradeoff situations. Moral disengagement does not operate primarily as a means of maintaining a positive moral self-image after making an unsustainable decision. Instead, preexisting moral disengagement provides a pathway for self-interested choices, resulting in greater pride and lesser guilt relative to those who choose the environment over self-interest. The perceived morality of tradeoff decisions operated similarly but did not fully explain emotional reactions. These findings suggest that moral disengagement, rather than explicit moral evaluation, plays a central role in shaping environmentally consequential decisions and the emotions that follow, offering insight into the psychological processes that sustain unsustainable behavior. Preexisting moral disengagement facilitates self-interested choices in financially costly environmental tradeoffs, according to four experimental and correlational studies.