Clean People Are Less Judgmental

Jeanna Bryner, Senior Writer, LiveScience.com

A vigorous hand wash or shower could cause a person to

be less judgmental.

A new study, set for publication in the December issue of

the journal Psychological Science, reveals that when a

person feels physically clean, he or she cuts others more

moral slack.

The findings add to past research that has shown a link

between physical warmth and generosity as well as 

physical chill and social isolation. Other past research

has shown that sins seem to nudge people to clean

themselves, a phenomenon the researchers dubbed the

"Macbeth effect" after the dramatized murderess who tried

scrubbing her hands to clean off imaginary blood.

"When we exercise moral judgment, we believe we are

making a conscious, rational decision, but this research

shows that we are subconsciously influenced by how

clean or 'pure' we feel," said lead researcher of the new

study Simone Schnall, a psychologist at the University of

Plymouth in England. "Take for example the situation of a

jury member or voting in an election - if the jury member

had washed their hands prior to delivering their verdict,

they may judge the crime less harshly."

She added, "Similarly, someone may find it easier to

overlook a political misdemeanor had they performed an

action that made them feel 'clean' prior to casting their

vote."

The results come from two experiments with university

students. In the first one, 40 students had to complete 40

scrambled sentence tasks, each involving four words. By

underlining any three words, a sentence could be formed.

One group of students worked on sentences that included

some "clean" words, such as "pure," "washed,"

"immaculate" and "pristine," while another group read

neutral words.

The participants then rated a series of moral dilemmas on

a scale ranging from "perfectly OK" to "extremely wrong."

The dilemmas included keeping money found inside a

wallet, putting false information on a resume, killing a

terminally ill plane crash survivor in order to avoid

starvation and using a kitten for sexual arousal.

The students who read the clean-word sentences judged

such transgressions to be less wrong compared with the

other students in the experiment.

In the second experiment, students watched a three-

minute clip from the dark drug film "Trainspotting," which

had been shown to elicit feelings of disgust. Then, half of

the students washed their hands while the others didn't.

The students rated the same six moral vignettes as had

students in the first experiment. The hand-washers gave

less severe ratings to the vignettes than did those who

didn't wash their hands.

Schnall said the students who had washed their hands or

read about cleanliness likely misinterpreted their

physically pure feelings as being about the moral vignette.

Her past research showed the same link between disgust

and moral judgments. 

"If I feel disgusted because I sit at a dirty desk, and I think

about how wrong it is to not return a lost wallet, then I

mistakenly think the feeling of disgust is about 'oh that's a

disgusting thing to do,' whereas in reality it's coming from

the desk," Schnall told LiveScience.

She added, "If I feel clean because I've washed my

hands, I think 'well it's not such a bad thing to do,' but

that's only because my physical sensation is of the sort."

She hopes to test out the finding with real-life scenarios

to see how well it applies.

·           Video: Overcleanliness and Childhood Allergies 

·           10 Things You Didn't Know About You 

·           Top 10 Mysteries of the Mind 

轉貼自︰

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20081201/sc_livescience/cleanpeoplearelessjudgmental;_ylt=Akaw6NW8bX2qXSt3N8V4uqkbr7sF