This is slightly old news, but I wanted to include it anyway. A study appearing in Psychological Science informs us that one’s perception of cleanliness can affect moral judgement.

That is to say, the perception of cleanliness, whether it be in oneself (say, after having taken a shower), or in ‘the accused’ can generate less severe moral judgement.

In the experiment, they had university students exposed (or not) to suggestions of cleanliness; then, they were asked to pass judgement on a series of moral dilemmas, including keeping money found inside a wallet, putting false information on a resume, and killing a terminally ill plane crash survivor in order to avoid starvation.

The second experiment saw the students watch a ‘disgusting’ film clip before rating the same moral dilemmas. However, half the group were asked to first wash their hands.

The findings from both experiments demonstrated that those who were subject to the cognitive feeling of cleanliness exercised less severe moral judgment than their counterparts.

Although intuitively obvious, the extension of this is that a person who appears ‘clean’ will attract less severe moral remonstration for anything untoward they do. This should serve as a warning to those who revel in excessively grungy fashion styles or deliberately poor personal hygiene – life is going to be harder for you. That is all.

This was brought to my attention by Eurekalert!