Wash away your troubles with soap

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Cleaning your hands removes more than dirt, it also removes residues of the past, such as guilt and doubt, a new University of Michigan study finds. Spike W.S. Lee, a graduate student in the Department of Psychology, and Norbert Schwarz, a research professor at the Institute for Social Research, say religious rites like baptism make psychological sense. "Cleansing is about the removal of residues," Lee said. By washing the hands, taking a shower, or even thinking of doing so, "people can rid themselves of a sense of immorality, lucky or unlucky feelings, or doubt about a decision. The bodily experience of removing physical residues can provide the basis of removing more abstract mental residues." In reviewing other studies, the authors found that people asked to judge the moral wrongdoing of others saw them as worse when exposed to an unkempt room or bad odor than when sitting in a clean room. In another study, participants asked to think of a moral wrongdoing of their own felt less guilty after using an antiseptic hand wipe; they were also less likely to volunteer for a good deed to assuage that guilt. Even imagining yourself either "clean and fresh" or "dirty and stinky" affects your judgments of others' acts, such as masturbation or abortion, the research showed.