The gesture of washing your hands allows you to make a “clean slate”to theeliminate doubtsabout decisionsthat we have taken recently, according to a study by the University of Michigan (USA) published inScience.
“It’s not just that hand washing contributes tomoral cleanlinessas much as thephysical hygieneas we demonstrated in previous research, “explained Spike WS Lee, co-author of the work.” Our results show that hand washing also reduces the influence of past behaviors and decisions that have no moral implication. “
In a curiousexperimentLee and his colleagues asked a group of students to review thirty compact disc (CD) covers as part of an alleged consumer survey. Participants chose 10 discs that they would like to own, ranking them by degree of preference. The participants then completed a survey of a product that was ostensibly unrelated: a liquid soap. Half of the participants barely examined the bottle before responding, while the others tasted the soap by washing their hands. The participants were then asked to sort the compact discs again.
People who had only examined the soap bottle showed doubts about their decision, changing their judgment in many cases. “Butonce participants washed their hands they no longer needed to justify their choicewhen they rated the discs for the second time, “said Schwarz.
According to the authors, the results show that in the same way that washing our hands can free us from the “guilt” of immoral behavior in the past, it can alsoease the burden of recent decisions, reducing the need to justify them.
