The effect of physical cleansing on moral activities

Abstract

Research suggests that physical cleansing leads individuals to perceive themselves as morally purer, thereby influencing their moral activities, but findings are inconsistent. Some researchers have found that individuals act more morally after physical cleansing, whereas others have observed the reverse effect. Building on embodied cognition theory, which holds that cognition is developed from physical experience and that this experience in turn guides their responses, we hypothesized that physical cleansing would have a general impact on individuals' moral activities by highlighting themselves. In contrast to previous research, we did not expect that physical cleansing would directly make people more (im)moral. Two experiments were conducted to test our hypotheses. In experiment 1, participants who had bathed showed reduced susceptibility to external moral priming (morality-related descriptions of themselves) than did control participants. Experiment 2 showed that physical cleansing (but not the control condition) amplified the interplay among participants' moral activities, depending on the order of immoral behavior and intention measurement. Taken together, these results suggest that physical cleansing strengthens the connection between individuals' morality and bodily experiences, weakening the effect of external priming (experiment 1) and enhancing the influence of moral activities performed by themselves (experiment 2). Although further research is required to provide direct evidence for these findings, our study contributes to the integration of inconsistencies in previous findings by suggesting a new perspective for the understanding of the embodied effect of physical cleansing.