With a Clean Conscience
Cleanliness Reduces the
Severity of Moral Judgments
S.Schnall, J.Benton & S.Harvey (2008)
Becky, Joanna, Julia, Mairi & Tim
Introduction
“Many cultures equate physical cleanliness with
moral and spiritual purity” (p.1119)
• Including religious rituals: Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism are
some of the many religions that carry out cleansing rituals
before particular activities such as worship.
• Some researchers have suggested that we may have an innate
desire to cleanse our bodies when feeling ‘disgust’ aimed not
only to rid our bodies of potentially harmful substances, but
also social and moral harm. (Haidt & Joseph, 2008).
• From this idea, it has since been suggested that when people
find situations or actions morally wrong, they will feel disgust.
• Mulims carry out wudhu
cleansing rituals before
praying.
•Students in Japan cleansing
themselves before entering Shinjo
Shrine.
• Some recent experiments have provided evidence
supporting the theory that cleanliness reduces the severity of
moral judgements.
• For example, Schnall et al (2008) found when participants
recalled a disgusting experience, or watched a video which
induced the feeling of disgust, they rated moral judgements
as more severe.
• Zhong and Liljenquist (2006) found that participants were
more likely to use cleansing words after recalling a past
moral transgression and appeared to want to engage in
cleansing behaviour.
• The current study assessed this theory further by exploring
whether physically cleaning oneself after feeling ‘disgust’
could reduce the severity of moral judgements.
• Research has shown that participants can be primed in
subtle ways to feel emotions such as disgust (Holland et al,
2005) and therefore the current study used two priming
methods, with the prediction that cleanliness priming
would reduce the severity of moral judgements.
Experiment 1 Methods
• Participants
• Forty University of Plymouth undergraduate students (30 female, 10
male, mean age = 20 years) participated as part of a course requirement.
• Procedure
• First participants completed a scrambled sentences task involving 40
sets of four words each. By underlying any three words in a set a
sentence could be formed.
• In the neutral condition all the sets of words were neutral with regard to
cleanliness and purity. However in the cleanliness condition half of the
sets contained words related to cleanliness and purity e.g. pure, pristine
and immaculate, and the other sets contained only neutral words.
• Immediately after the priming task, participants rated six moral
dilemmas, e.g. whether to switch the tracks of a trolley to kill one
workman instead of five. Participants rated how wrong each action was
from 0 (perfectly ok) to 9 (extremely wrong.)
• Participants subsequently indicating their feelings of relaxation, anger,
happiness, sadness, fear, depression, disgust, upset and confusion, on a
scale from “don’t feel at all” to “feel very strongly.”
Experiment 1 Results and Discussion
• Results
• To test whether the priming had an effect on the emotion ratings as
assessed at the end of the experiment, ratings were analysed by one
way ANOVAS with priming (cleanliness vs. neutral) as a factor. No
group differences were found on any of the emotion ratings, thus it
appears that the cleanliness priming did not induce any specific
mood.
• To test whether priming the participants with cleanliness reduced the
severity of moral judgements; a one way ANOVA was conducted
with priming as a factor. As predicted participants gave lower ratings
after the cleanliness priming than they did after the neutral priming.
• Discussion
• The first experiment demonstrated that participants found moral
transgressions to be less bad after concepts of cleanliness were
cognitively activated. This finding indicates the connection between
cognitive and moral purity and shows that intuitive concepts can
have an influence on moral judgements independently of deliberate
reasoning processes.
Experiment 2
• Another central component of purity is the physical
behaviour of cleansing one’s body from experienced
contaminants.
• Disgust – the feeling indicating absence of physical purity
might be an especially embodied emotion because of its
connection to nausea etc.
• Aim – to test whether the effect that disgust can have on
making more severe moral judgements could be reduced
when participants were given an opportunity to physically
cleanse themselves after the experience of disgust.
Method & Procedure
• 44 undergraduate students
– 32 female, 12 male.
• Participants watched a 3 minute disgusting film clip
from the film Trainspotting.
• ½ participants were asked to wash their hands with soap
before completing the moral dilemmas test while
remaining participants went straight onto completing the
test.
• All participants completed the same 6 vignettes used in
experiment 1.
• To ensure the film induced comparable levels of disgust
in both conditions participants were asked to think back
to how they felt immediately after watching the film and
indicate their feelings at the time using the same emotion
rating scales as in experiment 1.
Experiment 2: Results and Discussion
- Emotional ratings and subsequent moral judgements were
assessed.
- ANOVA testing carried out on 9 emotional ratings.
- Focussed specifically on disgust which was found to be felt more
strongly than other emotions
- Disgust levels were equal in the hand washing and non hand
washing conditions prior to assessing moral judgements.
- Found that Participants in the hand washing condition had less
severe moral judgements than those in the non-hand washing
condition.
Trolley and Wallet results above were significant.
This suggested that the act of physically cleansing oneself had
reduced the participants level of disgust and therefore made their
moral judgements less severe.
Limitations:
- Raised question of the effect of priming the cognitive construct
of cleanliness. Saying words such as clean and tidy when
prompting to wash hands.
- This cognitive priming could have amplified the effect noted.
CONCLUSION
Activating intuitions (both conceptually and physically) about
cleanliness reduces severity of moral judgments
-- effects substantial
Purity can serve as a basic intuition
Supports Haidt’s (2001) social intuitionist model
-- moral judgments do not have to
involve specific
emotional processes
Further than personal morality - Zhong & Liljenquist (2006)
‘Purity’ is not just a metaphor