Do we notice the dirty mouth after telling a lie?

A new study published in the journalPsychological Sciencereveals that, indeed,telling a lie makes us want to physically clean our mouths. To prove this, Norbert Schwarz and Spike WS Lee of the University of Michigan (USA) asked 87 students to play the role of lawyers in competition with a colleague, Chris, imagining a situation in which they found an important document that Chris had lost and that returning the document would help Chris’s career to the detriment of his own. Each participant was asked to leave Chris a message either by voice recording or by email, telling him the truth in some cases and lying in others. The participants then rated the degree to which they wanted various products as part of a so-called marketing survey and asked how much they were willing to pay for each product. The products included amouthwashand asoap for hands.

The scientists found that the paParticipants who had lied on the phone, leaving a fake recorded message, they felt astronger desire for mouthwashand they offered to pay for it more than the rest. And in turn, those who had told a lie in the email by writing the same lie, felt a stronger desire for hand soap and were willing to pay more for it.

“References to ‘dirty hands’ and ‘dirty mouths’ in everyday languageindicate that people think about the abstract aspects ofmoral cleanlinessin terms of more concrete experiences withphysical cleanliness“, clarifies Lee.” It is not only that people want to clean themselves after a ‘dirty’ act, but that they want to wash the specific part of the body involved in that act, “emphasizes his partner Schwarz.