More tolerant thanks to cleanliness

A study in the UK showed that people tend to be more generous if they feel physically clean before assessing the behavior of others.

Photo: carrolltonac.com

Experts from Lancaster University and Plymouth University (UK) argue that judges who wash their hands before impeaching the accused can charge a lower sentence than when they did not wash their hands. Pre-voting voters tend to ignore the bad behavior of candidates.

"When judging someone morally, we always believe that we make rational, reasonable decisions based on a variety of arguments. But our research shows that we are influenced by feeling. clean during the assessment process, said Simone Schnall, Plymouth University psychologist.

To explore the link between physical cleanliness and human thinking in assessing the behavior of others, the team conducted two tests with students. In the first test, 40 students were asked to complete 40 unfinished sentences by underlining or circle three of the four given words below each sentence. A group only meets words that bring a clean feeling like "pure", "pure", "bath", "pristine", while the remaining students meet neutral words.

After all students completed their assignments, the team asked them to evaluate some bad behaviors such as taking money in a wallet picked up on the road, putting fake information in resumes, killing animals. to have fun, cheat your friends to satisfy your lover's interests. The rating scale is divided into many steps, of which the highest is "extremely inhumane", the lowest is "completely acceptable".

The results showed that the evaluation score of the students who met the words "clean" was much lower than the rest.

In the second test, the students watched a 3-minute trailer in Trainspotting, a film about the deadly and deadlocked life of drug addicts. When the film ended, the team invited 20 students to the toilet to wash their hands, while the remaining 20 did not. After that, the experts asked students to evaluate 6 characters in the film based on the scale of the first test. The results showed that the group of handwashing students had lower scores than the others.

A previous study also demonstrated a warm feeling at the hands that made people more generous and generous. Another test showed that we often wash our hands after doing bad deeds, such as stealing or killing people.