Physical cleansing may help to absolve moral feelings
Physical cleansing may have the ability psychologically to partially absolve or resolve moral feelings that come from committing unethical deeds, said Katie Liljenquist, assistant professor in the Marriot School of Business at Brigham Young University.
Speaking as part of the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business dean’s convocation on Wednesday, Feb. 13, Liljenquist said she and her colleagues are actively conducting research in what she terms the “Macbeth Effect,” looking to see if there is something to the actions in which Lady Macbeth engaged in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth.”
In the story, Lady Macbeth begins having delusions of blood on her hands after conspiring for the murder of the king so her husband can become the king, Liljenquist said. Because of these delusions, Lady Macbeth becomes obsessed with trying to wash the blood off her hands, Liljenquist said. This led Liljenquist to investigate whether people actually feel morally cleansed after showering, cleaning their hands or performing some other cleansing act.
“We’re very flexible in how we can respond to threats to our moral self-image, and so obviously direct restitution is a clear answer – if we’ve stolen something we can go back and return it to someone – but many times that is either embarrassing or not convenient or may not even be feasible to engage in restitution after an unethical act, so there are all these indirect means,” Liljenquist said. “Being able to physically cleanse yourself may actually remove some of the moral stains that are created.”
To test her Macbeth Effect hypotheses, Liljenquist said she ran a series of studies, the results of which seemed to support it.
In one study, Liljenquist had subjects recall a time they had either done something ethical or unethical and write about that experience. She then performed some word completion tests with the subjects with words that could be completed with a cleansing word, such as W_ _ H (wash) and S_ _P (soap). She said her hypothesis was those people who had recalled something unethical in their past would be more likely to complete these words with a cleansing word than those people who recalled an ethical experience from their past.
“If people, after thinking about something unethical, do feel contaminated, it should actually activate these cleansing concepts,” Liljenquist said. “And in fact, that’s what we found, that people who had recalled unethical scenarios were much more likely to complete these words as cleansing-related terms.”
In a similar sort of test, Liljenquist said she had subjects recall something ethical or unethical in their past, and then at the end of the study, she offered the subjects a gift – a choice between hand sanitation wipes or a pencil, which had been tested as being equally desirable. She said she found those who had recalled an unethical deed from their past were “significantly more likely to choose the hand sanitizer.”
Liljenquist said while these tests showed there was some correlation between feeling contaminated and the need to be clean, it did not show whether or not cleansing actually helped absolve the moral feelings attached to unethical actions.
To prove her theory if people can absolve those feelings by cleansing, Liljenquist said she had subjects write a time where they did something unethical on a computer. Half the subjects were then told the lab directors recommended they use hand sanitizer before moving on to the paper test portion of the study, while the other half did not have any chance to cleanse themselves after writing something unethical.
“First of all, is this going to change their experience of guilt? If after you wash yourself, and if it really is effective, you shouldn’t feel moral emotions like disgust, guilt, embarrassment, shame and anger as strongly as people who didn’t have the opportunity to cleanse themselves,” Liljenquist said.
Next, Liljenquist said she told the subjects, who were students at Northwestern University, there was another graduate student in the department who was doing research but did not have money to pay the study subjects and said anyone who was interested in participating could sign up with her.
“The hypothesis here is that people who had the chance to cleanse themselves after recalling something unethical from their past should, one, not feel the same degree or intensity of moral emotions, and two, their volunteerism should drop because they’re not feeling guilty. They have no particular motive that’s compelling them to make up for the past with a good deed.” Liljenquist said.
Her theory was correct.
“When you looked specifically at the moral emotions, people who had the opportunity to cleanse have a rejection of those moral emotions. So they’re not feeling those pangs of guilt – the cleansing is effective for them. We had over 70 percent of the students who didn’t have a chance to cleanse themselves come up and sign up on the paper and volunteer for (the) study. That dropped in half for people who had a chance to cleanse themselves. They don’t feel guilty, they don’t need to do a virtuous act to cleanse their conscience because they’ve already had a chance to cleanse their conscious through hand wipes.”
In another study, Liljenquist said she wanted to see if even being in a clean environment would produce increased ethical behavior in people. She said she had two labs – one clean and the other dirty – where subjects would participate in an activity where they were given $12 and told there was a person in another room who had donated $4 and the study had tripled the money. She said she told the participants they had the chance to decide what to do with the money from there – give half of it back to the other person or divide it in some other way.
She said the subjects who participated in this study in the clean lab gave back an average $6.07, while the subjects in the dirty lab gave back around $4.
Liljenquist said while these studies provide interesting insights into human behavior, they may also have important implications to society at large, citing that if by merely living in a clean environment elicits more ethical behavior, city sanitations may influence lower crime rates.
“Companies invest a ton of money in surveillance cameras, all sorts of things to deter employee theft, shoplifting. Could it be just as effective if you have lemon-scented air freshener? Could it reduce the rate of theft?” Liljenquist said. “So there’s all these subtle ways to influence human behavior that are very cost effective and totally unobtrusive. People are unaware of them, but they really promote better behavior.”
-seth.h@aggiemail.usu.edu