RUNNING HEAD: DEVIOUS EXPERIMENTER: MAKING CLEANLINESS ABSTRACT

Devious Experimenter: Making Cleanliness Abstract

Lyssa Dougan

PS_350

Dr. Giesler

March 9th, 2018

RUNNING HEAD: DEVIOUS EXPERIMENTER: MAKING CLEANLINESS ABSTRACT 1

In their 2008 study “With a Clean Conscious: Cleanliness Reduces the Severity of Moral

Judgements,” researchers Simone Schnall, Jennifer Benton, and Sophie Harvey attempted to

discover if activating concepts of cleanliness affected people’s judgments of morally

questionable situations. Researchers were interested in this area of study because several cultures

directly equate cleanliness with moral and spiritual purity. Many religions ask that followers

participate in physical washing ceremonies. According to Haidt and colleagues (2008), this idea

of purity stems from peoples need to feel protected from potentially harmful substances, such as

germs and bacteria. From this idea, comes disgust. Disgust started out as a form of protection

from such things as rotten food, bad smells, or poison, but now has a much more complex social

and moral implication (Rozin, Haidt, and McCauley, 2000). Because of this complex social

implication, people often report immoral actions as “disgusting” or “abominable”. And

interestingly, enough, brain and neural structures have now become implicated in experiencing

physical and moral disgust (Moll et al., 2005).

Furthermore, feelings of disgust can be experimentally induced and then attached to

moral judgments, which means that people can be led to believe that a particular moral action is

wrong (Wheatley & Haidt, 2005). The feelings of disgust were induced using bad smells,

particularly disgusting movie scenes, or recalling a particularly disgusting experience. These

feelings of disgust also aid in increasing the severity of judgments about moral situations (Haidt,

2001). If people felt disgusted, and then were given a moral dilemma to judge, the judgment

would be more severe. Strangely, sadness, an equally negative emotion, did not induce the same

experience. Links between physical and moral links have also been found. When people were

forced to think about moral transgressions, people tended to think about “clean” words, and they

expressed a desire to “cleanse,” or perform “self-cleaning” behavior (Zhong and Liljenquist

RUNNING HEAD: DEVIOUS EXPERIMENTER: MAKING CLEANLINESS ABSTRACT 2

2006). Finally, researchers found that these concepts of cleanliness can be primed subtly, which

caused researchers to wonder how priming for such ideas could affect moral judgments.

In the first experiment, the researchers created two conditions. The first was the

“cleanliness priming” condition. Researchers primed participants with words associated with

cleanliness, which activates the cognitive concepts of cleanliness. The second condition would

be the “neutral” or “control” condition, in which the participants received no priming. The

priming task was a scrambled sentence task, in which participants were given forty sets of four

words. When they underlined three words in a set, they could make a sentence. For the “neutral

word” condition, these forty sets contained neutral words only. For the “cleanliness priming

condition,” half of the forty sets contained words associated with cleanliness, such as “pure,”

“washed,” “clean.” The other half of the forty sets contained only neutral words. Once both

groups had finished their “priming” task, they were asked to rate their emotions, as well as rate

six moral stories. The researchers hypothesized in the ratings of moral dilemmas of “cleanliness

priming” condition would be less severe, when compared to ratings in the “neutral word”

condition.

Forty undergraduates from the University of Plymouth participated in this study as a part

of a course requirement. For the experiment, subjects came in separately, and researchers gave

them a scrambled sentence task. Again, subjects assigned to the cleanliness condition received

twenty sets that contained words associated with cleanness. After the priming session, the

participants were asked to rate six moral dilemmas on a scale from zero (0) to nine (9). Zero (0)

indicated that participants believed the predicaments to be perfectly okay, whereas nine (9) stated

that they thought it was incredibly wrong. The six dilemmas contained stories titled “Dog”

(which is about eating one’s dead dog). “Trolley” involved killing one worker to save five.
RUNNING HEAD: DEVIOUS EXPERIMENTER: MAKING CLEANLINESS ABSTRACT 3

“Wallet” saw someone kept the money they found in someone else’s wallet. “Plane Crash” was

about killing terminally ill plane crash survivor to avoid starvation. “Resume” was about putting

false information on a resume. “Kitten” had some using a kitten to become sexually aroused. The

participants were also asked to indicated how relaxed, angry, happy, sad, afraid, depressed,

disgusted, upset, and confused they were. They rated these emotions using a 10.5 cm visual

scale. The scale measured how participants felt in half centimeters, so raw scores ranged from 1-

21.

A one way ANOVA test was conducted with priming as a factor. There were no group

differences on any of the emotional ratings, indicating that priming did not cause any particular

mood. Researchers computed a mean score composite for all of the moral stories. Then a one

way ANOVA with priming as a factor was conducted. As the researchers expected, participants

rated the ethical dilemmas lower after the cleanliness priming. The results were also analyzed

individually, and researchers saw that all six items followed a similar pattern of rating, with a

significant difference in the “Kitten” condition. These results indicate that participants saw moral

transgressions as less wrong when concepts of cleanliness were activated, which demonstrates a

connection between cognitive and moral purity, showing that such ideas can affect moral

judgments, regardless of logic.

While experiment one showed that activating cognitive concepts of cleanliness

decreased the severity of moral judgments, there are other essential components to purity,

especially of a physical nature, like physically ridding one’s body of contaminants. As already

stated, feelings of disgust can make moral judgments more severe, especially if they are

embodied or cognitively activated. Researchers believe that disgust is a particularly bodied

emotion, because of its ties to nausea and the physical process of cleaning oneself. Because of
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this, and the fact that there is already a tie between physical cleanliness and moral purity,

researchers believed that having someone engage in a self-cleaning activity could alleviate any

feelings of disgust that were present. The aim of experiment two was to test if giving participants

the opportunity to cleanse themselves reduced the effects of disgust, which involved two

conditions. The first, entitled the “hand washing” condition, allowed the participants to wash

their hand, while the other, the “no hand washing condition,” did not. After being shown a video

intended to create feelings of disgust, the participants were asked to rate the six moral dilemmas

from the last experiment, as well as rate their emotions on the same scale. The researchers

hypothesized that those in the “hand washing condition” would make less severe judgments on

moral dilemmas than those who did not wash their hands.

Forty-four undergraduates from the University of Plymouth participated and excluded

one participant from the study for refusing to wash their hands. Participants were again tested

separately, except this time two rooms were used. In the first room, participants were shown a

“disgusting” scene from the movie Trainspotting, this movie has previously been used to induce

feelings of disgust. After viewing the clip, experimenters told participants that they had to move

to the second room because the next participant was coming in to watch the clip. In the second

room, the participants rated their emotions and the moral dilemmas. Participants in the

handwashing condition, however, were told that the second room was a staff room that needed to

be kept neat and tidy, and they were required to wash their hands. To make the cover story more

plausible, researchers covered the table with a tablecloth and had a vase full of artificial flowers

sitting in the middle. After participants in the handwashing condition washed their hands, they

sat down at the table and rated the six moral dilemmas from experiment one, on the same scale.

Researchers, to ensure the film induced feelings of disgust equally, asked participants to reflect
RUNNING HEAD: DEVIOUS EXPERIMENTER: MAKING CLEANLINESS ABSTRACT 5

on how they felt while watching the movie clip, then indicate their emotions on the same 10.5

cm visual scale from experiment one.

A repeated measures ANOVA was carried out on all nine emotions, and there were no

overall differences for conditions, as well as no interaction between condition and emotion. A

simple comparison of data showed that disgust ratings were higher than other mood ratings, and

means showed disgust was felt more strongly compared to other moods, including other negative

moods like anger or sadness. Participants felt equally disgusted after watching the movie, and

reported such, saying they felt strongly disgusted.

Researchers also computed the mean of all six moral stories and predicted the

“handwashing” condition participants would make less severe judgments. One way ANOVA

with conditions as a factor showed significant differences between conditions. Analysis showed

handwashing participants made less severe judgments when compared to scores of the “no

handwashing” condition. Significant differences were found specifically between the “Trolley”

and “Wallet” dilemmas, as well as a marginal effect for “Resume.” The findings of experiment

two indicate that those who washed their hands were less severe in their moral judgments.

Emotional ratings also suggested that both conditions felt disgusted strongly after watching film

clip. However, researchers did not collect new ratings of disgust after handwashing, in fear of

making the cleansing manipulation salient. Researchers pursue, however, because of their

framework and magnitude of the effect, that washing hands reduced feelings of disgust, which

reduced the severity of moral judgments. There was a confounding variable as well, however.

Study protocol demanded the use of the words “neat” and “tidy,” which could have amplified the

effect, meaning that researchers are not aware as to whether handwashing alone is the only

reason for reduction in the severity of moral judgments.

RUNNING HEAD: DEVIOUS EXPERIMENTER: MAKING CLEANLINESS ABSTRACT 6

Both experiments contributed evidence to the idea that activating concepts of

cleanliness can help lessen the severity of moral judgments. Priming participants in experiment

one with cleanliness words and allowing participants to wash their hands in experiment two led

both groups to make less severe decisions compared to those who did not. Both experiments

effects had medium to large effect sizes. The findings support the notion that purity often acts as

a necessary insight when thinking about moral dilemmas. Manipulations in this study showed

how cleanliness could influence how morally wrong participants consider hypothetical

situations. Both experiments showed that the concept of purity plays an extraordinarily important

role in morality, so much so that moral judgments are less severe when the person feels clean.

Cleanliness can lead people into regarding moral actions as pure and good.

Understanding how concepts of purity and feelings of disgust are related is

extraordinarily essential. People experience disgust's effect on moral judgments every day. For

example, if someone who is against the LGBTQ+ community sees a gay couple walking down

the streets, their possible feelings of disgust could make their moral judgments more severe. In

turn, this couple could get harassed by this person, because of these harsh judgments. These

findings help understand why people react to certain situations in such varied ways. By

acknowledging how emotions play a role in moral judgments, awareness spreads and people start

to step in and help alleviate cases such as the one above. Understanding the fundamental human

principle of why a human thinks the way they do is vitally important.

Now, to my devious experimenting. I want to manipulate the results of experiment one,

in which they primed participants with synonyms to clean. In the forty sets of scramble

sentences, researchers placed synonyms to clean in about 20 of those sets to prime their

participants. In my replication, I propose replacing words such “pure” or “washed” with more
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abstractly clean words, like “virgin” or “vestal” or “celibate.” According to societal norms, these

words are still considered innocent, pure, and clean, but much more abstractly so. The words are

just a different operationalization of the term “clean,” meaning that upon a quick glance,

reviewers should have no problem with my replication.

However, if my way of thinking is correct, these words should, at the very least nullify

the experiment’s results. People associate these words with cleanliness, but that association is

significantly abstract. People do not immediately associate virgin with clean. Instead, people’s

minds usually go directly to sex. At the very least, these changes nullify the results should,

because words like “virgin” and “vestal” are abstractly associated with cleanliness, they do not

immediately bring up such concepts, so they become neutral words. Therefore cognitive ideas of

purity are not activated. As seen in the neutral condition for experiment one, this means that their

ratings would not be affected, nullifying the results. However, I predict that because of the words

association with sex, and sex’s taboo nature in society, the words will elicit feelings of disgust.

Previous research has shown that emotions of disgust then increase the severity of moral

judgments, meaning those primed with these words will rate the ethical dilemmas higher than

those who do not.