Washing Away Your Sins: Threatened Morality and Physical Cleansing
@article{Zhong2006WashingAY, title={Washing Away Your Sins: Threatened Morality and Physical Cleansing}, author={Chen-Bo Zhong and Katie A. Liljenquist}, journal={Science}, year={2006}, volume={313}, pages={1451 - 1452} }
Physical cleansing has been a focal element in religious ceremonies for thousands of years. The prevalence of this practice suggests a psychological association between bodily purity and moral purity. In three studies, we explored what we call the “Macbeth effect”—that is, a threat to one's moral purity induces the need to cleanse oneself. This effect revealed itself through an increased mental accessibility of cleansing-related concepts, a greater desire for cleansing products, and a greater…
903 Citations
To Wash Your Body, or Purify Your Soul: Physical Cleansing Would Strengthen the Sense of High Moral Character
- Psychology
- 2011
Physical cleansing, such as bathing or washing hands, is at the core of many religious rituals, suggesting that physical cleansing ceremonies can purify the soul. The present research examines the…
Washing away your sins will set your mind free: physical cleansing modulates the effect of threatened morality on executive control
- PsychologyCognition & emotion
- 2017
It is concluded that threatened morality has a detrimental effect on executive control, specifically on conflict monitoring and response inhibition, and that physical cleansing “frees” this system, counteracting the detrimental effects of morality threats.
Physical Cleansing Biases Recognition Performance for (Im)moral Social Issues
- Psychology
- 2016
IntroductionThe Link between Physical and Moral PurityPrevious research showed that the impact of physical cleansing goes beyond the reduction of physical contamination. The notion of a direct link…
The paradox of moral cleansing: When physical cleansing leads to increased contamination concerns.
- PsychologyJournal of behavior therapy and experimental psychiatry
- 2018
The Effect of Physical Cleaning on Threatened Morality in Individuals With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
- Psychology
- 2014
The association between morality and physical cleansing has been demonstrated in a series of studies by Zhong and Liljenquist. We predicted that this association would be especially prominent in…
Wiping your conscience clean
- PsychologyJournal of Experimental Psychopathology
- 2018
The Macbeth effect is a proposed phenomenon, whereby feelings of immorality activate a desire to cleanse. Extensions of this theory suggest that cleansing alleviates immoral feelings, thus reducing…
A cultural look at moral purity: wiping the face clean
- PsychologyFront. Psychol.
- 2015
Data show that face-cleaning reduces guilt and regret most effectively against a salient East Asian cultural background, and this suggests an organizing principle that informs the vigorous debate between embodied and amodal perspectives.
What does your purity matter to me ? ”
- Psychology
- 2014
The results of four studies suggest that contamination concerns involved in prejudice towards male homosexuals may be expressed in the increased need for physical cleansing after an imagined contact…
References
SHOWING 1-10 OF 22 REFERENCES
The psychology of the unthinkable: taboo trade-offs, forbidden base rates, and heretical counterfactuals.
- PsychologyJournal of personality and social psychology
- 2000
Although the results fit the sacred-value-protection model (SVPM) better than rival formulations, the SVPM must draw on cross-cultural taxonomies of relational schemata to specify normative boundaries on thought.
Handbook of experimental existential psychology
- Psychology
- 2004
Part 1: Introduction. Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Koole, Experimental Existential Psychology: Exploring the Human Confrontation with Reality. Part 2: Existential Realities. Solomon, Greenberg,…
The Camphor Flame
- Sociology
- 1992
Popular Hinduism is shaped, above all, by worship of a multitude of powerful divine beings--a superabundance indicated by the proverbial total of 330 million gods and goddesses. The fluid…
Varieties of disgust faces and the structure of disgust.
- PsychologyJournal of personality and social psychology
- 1994
The results support a theory of disgust that posits its origin as a response to bad tastes and maps its evolution onto a moral emotion.
The Moral Affiliations of Disgust: A Functional MRI Study
- PsychologyCognitive and behavioral neurology : official journal of the Society for Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology
- 2005
Results indicated that emotional stimuli may evoke pure disgust with or without indignation, and these different aspects of the experience of disgust could be elicited by a set of written statements, and pure disgust and indignation recruited both overlapping and distinct brain regions, mainly in the frontal and temporal lobes.
Symbolic Self-Completion, Attempted Influence, and Self-Deprecation
- Psychology, Education
- 1981
A concept of symbolic self-completion states that people define themselves as musicians, athletes, etc. by use of indicators of attainment in those activity realms, such as possessing a prestige job,…
Cogn. Behav. Neurol
- Cogn. Behav. Neurol
- 2005
Handbook of Expenmental Existential Psychology
- Handbook of Expenmental Existential Psychology
- 2004
P y s z c z y n s k i ,E d s
- Handbook of Experimental Existential Psychology
- 2004