The actions of others, and what others approve of, can be a powerful tool for promoting proenvironmental behavior. A potential barrier to the utility of social norms, however, are cognitive biases in how people perceive themselves and others, including the better-than-average effect. This effect describes the tendency for people to think they are exceptional, especially when compared with their peers. To investigate the role of the better-than-average effect in proenvironmental behavior, we administered questions as part of a larger online survey of 5,219 nationally representative Australians. Participants were asked to report whether they engaged in a list of 21 proenvironmental behaviors, and then asked to estimate how their engagement compared with that of the average Australian. Over half of our participants self-enhanced; they overestimated their engagement in proenvironmental behaviors relative to others. Self-enhancement was related to reduced perceptions of personal harm from climate change, more favorable assessments of coping ability, less guilt, and lower moral and ethical duty to take action to prevent climate change. These relationships held when participants skeptical about anthropogenic climate change were removed from analyses. We discuss the

中文翻译：

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高估一个人的“绿色”行为：高于平均水平的偏见可能会降低气候变化带来的个人威胁

他人的行为以及他人的认可可以成为促进环保行为的有力工具。然而，社会规范效用的一个潜在障碍是人们如何看待自己和他人的认知偏见，包括优于平均水平的影响。这种效应描述了人们认为自己与众不同的倾向，尤其是与同龄人相比时。为了调查优于平均水平的效应在亲环境行为中的作用，我们将问题作为对 5,219 名具有全国代表性的澳大利亚人进行的大型在线调查的一部分进行管理。参与者被要求报告他们是否参与了一份包含 21 种亲环境行为的清单，然后被要求估计他们的参与与普通澳大利亚人的参与相比如何。超过一半的参与者自我增强；相对于其他人，他们高估了自己对环保行为的参与。自我提升与减少对气候变化造成的个人伤害的看法、更有利的应对能力评估、更少的内疚以及采取行动防止气候变化的道德和伦理责任降低有关。当参与者对人为气候变化持怀疑态度时，这些关系就成立了。我们讨论