A good life requires a healthy habitat in which to live, but the evidence shows that a relatively high focus on extrinsic compared to intrinsic values is associated with holding attitudes and behaving in ways that contribute to environmental degradation.
For example, the priority placed on materialistic (extrinsic) values by U.S. and U.K. adolescents is associated with engaging less frequently in ecologically friendly behaviors such as buying second hand, recycling, riding a bicycle, reusing paper, and so on.
Findings from one study of 400 North American adults showed that those who cared more about extrinsic relative to intrinsic values had substantially higher “ecological footprints,” and thus used more of Earth’s limited resources to meet their housing, food, and transportation lifestyle choices.
Individuals high in extrinsic values also act in greedier, more ecologically destructive, and less sustain‒ able ways when they play forest‒management simulation games in the laboratory, compared to their more intrinsic‒ ally oriented counterparts.
Experimental manipulations against support a causal role for values in these processes.
In one study with Belgian education students (Vansteenkiste, Simons, Lens, Sheldon, & Deci, 2004), recycling was framed either as being beneficial to one’s community (i.e., intrinsic values) or as likely to save money (i.e., extrinsic values).
Individuals who had the behavior framed in an extrinsic fashion were substantially less likely to take advantage of later opportunities to learn more about recycling than were those who had the behavior framed in an intrinsic fashion.
Other studies with U.S. college students and U.K. adults have found that brief reminders of intrinsic (versus extrinsic) values improve people’s expressed attitudes toward the importance of making political and lifestyle changes to combat environmental destruction.
In sum, whereas extrinsic values conduce toward environnmental lifestyles and attitudes that undermine the ability of future humans and other species to live a good life, intrinsic values are associated with more ecologically sustainable approach‒ es to living a good life.