Cleanliness linked to moral judgment, U of T study finds
August 31, 2010
Debra Black
STAFF REPORTER
A University of Toronto researcher has found in a new study a connection between cleanliness – real or imagined – and an ability to pass harsh moral judgments on issues and people.
Chen-Bo Zhong, an assistant professor of organizational behaviour at University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, has been examining the links between morality and cleanliness for a number of years.
“When people think themselves as immoral, they perceive themselves as dirty or impure which is why they need to feel physically clean,” explained Zhong in an interview with the Star as he discussed his recent research in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
“This study is trying to show what will happen when people feel clean. We argue it makes them feel morally superior, untainted and pure. We basically tested the prediction when people feel clean they feel morally superior and allow themselves to make harsher judgments about others.”
And Zhong’s prediction turned out to be right on the money.
In the first experiment, 58 undergrads were invited into a lab. Half were asked to clean their hands with an antiseptic wipe. Afterwards all the students were asked to rate the morality of six issues: smoking, illegal drug use, pornography, profane language, littering and adultery. They used an 11 point rating scale, which went from very moral to very immoral.
In that experiment, the students, who used antiseptic wipes, were harsher in their judgments than the others, saying the issues were more morally wrong.
In a second experiment, 323 working adults were asked to rank 16 issues, including abortion, homosexuality and masturbation, as moral or immoral.
Those subjects were asked to visualize themselves as clean or dirty by reading a short passage. In that experiment the adults, who imagined themselves as clean, were harsher in their judgments.
In the third experiment, 136 undergraduates were asked to read the same text and imagine themselves as clean or dirty.
But this time they were asked to rank their personal characteristics, such as intelligence, morality, creativity and attractiveness in relation to others.
In that experiment the students, who imagined themselves in a physically clean state, saw themselves as “more moral in comparison to their peers,” said Zhong. “It didn’t affect any other characteristic. It just increased their sense of moral self.”
So what does this have to do with business and behaviour studies at the Rotman School of Management?
Quite a lot, said Zhong. The research goes a long way to understanding morality and ethical behaviour. It is important to understand the motives as well as the consequences of moral behaviour, he said.
“It’s not (that) they’re thinking they should or should not cheat. It’s about how they feel; they intuitively make sense of unethical behaviour or morality.
“I think cleanliness is a window for us to see through and think about our desires of purity, not just in the physical sense but moral sense. When we feel clean, we feel superior and on a high moral ground.
“But does that give us the right to look down on others and pass judgments on things that are not necessarily moral or immoral?”
Featured Sponsored Listings