Out, damned spot: Can the “Macbeth Effect” be replicated?

Cooperation and Its Evolution, 2013

I. Introduction: Some Interesting Facts about Morality Psychological research has been discovering a number of puzzling features of morality and moral cognition recently. 2 Zhong & Liljenquist (2006) found that when people are asked to think about an unethical deed or recall one they themselves have committed in the past, issues of physical cleanliness become salient. Zhong & Liljenquist cleverly designate this phenomenon the "Macbeth Effect," and it takes some interesting forms. For instance, reading a story describing an immoral deed increased people's desire for products related to cleansing, like a shower soap, disinfectants, or antiseptic wipes. Moreover, Zhong & Liljenquist found that cleaning one's hands after describing a past unethical deed actually reduced moral emotions such as guilt and shame. So much so that those who did "wash away their sins" were less likely than other participants to help out a 1 My thanks to Brett Calcott, Christine Clavien, Ben Fraser, Richard Joyce, and Kim Sterelny for comments on previous drafts of this paper, as well as the participants in the 2008 Minds and Societies conference at UQAM and the participants in the 2008 Emotion and Commitment conference at ANU for helpful comments on presentations of material. 2 In what follows, I'll call attention only to those findings that are relevant to my argument. For more encompassing overviews of recent work in empirical moral psychology, see Doris & Stich (2005, 2006) and Doris et al. (2010).

Psychology of Language and Communication

The Macbeth effect is a metaphorical association between physical and moral cleanliness - transgression of one’s morality leads to increased desire to clean oneself (Zhong & Liljenquist, 2006). Earlier studies examined psychological associations between bodily and moral purity according to controlled processes, such as rating product desirability. The influence of the Macbeth effect on more automatic processes (stimuli processing speed) was explored in three studies. We examined whether thinking about one’s moral transgression (Studies 1 and 3) or others’ immoral behavior (Study 2) contributed to slower reaction times (RTs) to stimuli related to physical purification. It seems that automatic processes may also be affected by the metaphor “morality is purity”: It is manifested in slower RTs to stimuli associated with bodily cleansing when recalling one’s own past transgressions (Study 3) and in slower responses to words connected with purification of the external world while recallin...

Journal of Experimental Psychopathology, 2018

The Macbeth effect is a proposed phenomenon, whereby feelings of immorality activate a desire to cleanse. Extensions of this theory suggest that cleansing alleviates immoral feelings, thus reducing the urge to engage in compensatory behaviors, such as volunteering. We examined the Macbeth effect and volunteerism in undergraduate students with high levels of obsessive-compulsive disorder contamination concerns (n ¼ 164). Participants underwent an immorality, anxiety, or neutral emotion-induction condition and subsequently cleansed their hands or performed a control task. For participants in the immorality condition, increased ratings of distress were associated with increased accessibility of cleansing words. Furthermore, individuals in the immorality condition who cleansed volunteered for significantly less time than those who did not cleanse. We discuss findings in relation to the literature on the Macbeth effect and mental contamination.

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2012

Purity rituals (such as baptism, mikvah, and ablution) are an important component of many religious practices. These practices not only help protect the faithful from physical contaminants, but also bestow symbolic purity and maintain the sanctity of sacred objects. The present work examines the association between religion and cleanliness, as two representations of personal purity. Religious primes were found to activate cleanliness concepts in a word-stem completion task (Study 1), and increased the subjective value of cleaning products (Study 2). In a final study, cleaning primes increased ratings of religious value. These studies suggest a mutual association between religiousness and cleanliness, and that each may activate the other as goals for personal purity.

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2012

Purity rituals (such as baptism, mikvah, and ablution) are an important component of many religious practices. These practices not only help protect the faithful from physical contaminants, but also bestow symbolic purity and maintain the sanctity of sacred objects. The present work examines the association between religion and cleanliness, as two representations of personal purity. Religious primes were found to activate cleanliness concepts in a word-stem completion task (Study 1), and increased the subjective value of cleaning products (Study 2). In a final study, cleaning primes increased ratings of religious value. These studies suggest a mutual association between religiousness and cleanliness, and that each may activate the other as goals for personal purity.

The issue of cleanliness in its clean/dirty and pure/impure antinomies definitely has a social and cultural dimension. Some daily cleaning practices are indeed quite common actions in every culture and society, even if some differences in the frequency and quality of the practices and in the value attributed to them do exist. In this article, we will discuss how cleaning practices and contamination fears sink their roots in the social context and in cultural practices. In particular, we will explore the connections between one's own sense of cleanliness and attitudes of prejudice and intolerance toward other groups. First, the issue of cleanliness over the centuries and the exaggerations of cleanliness referring to individual psychopathology will be examined. Then, the psychosocial meaning of cleanliness will be considered in revealing the impact of the clean/dirty and pure/impure antinomies on day-to-day social interactions with others.

Frontiers in Psychology

Detecting pathogen threats and avoiding disease is fundamental to human survival. The behavioral immune system (BIS) framework outlines a set of psychological functions that may have evolved for this purpose. Disgust is a core emotion that plays a pivotal role in the BIS, as it activates the behavioral avoidance motives that prevent people from being in contact with pathogens. To date, there has been little agreement on how disgust sensitivity might underlie moral judgments. Here, we investigated moral violations of "purity" (assumed to elicit disgust) and violations of "harm" (assumed to elicit anger). We hypothesized that individual differences in BIS-related traits would be associated with greater disgust (vs. anger) reactivity to, and greater condemnation of Purity (vs. Harm) violations. The study was pre-registered (https://osf.io/57nm8/). Participants (N = 632) rated scenarios concerning moral wrongness or inappropriateness and regarding disgust and anger. To measure individual differences in the activation of the BIS, we used our recently developed Body Odor Disgust Scale (BODS), a BIS-related trait measure that assesses individual differences in feeling disgusted by body odors. In line with our predictions, we found that scores on the BODS relate more strongly to affective reactions to Purity, as compared to Harm, violations. In addition, BODS relates more strongly to Moral condemnation than to perceived Inappropriateness of an action, and to the condemnation of Purity violations as compared to Harm violations. These results suggest that the BIS is involved in moral judgment, although to some extent this role seems to be specific for violations of "moral purity," a response that might be rooted in disease avoidance. Data and scripts to analyze the data are available on the Open Science Framework (OSF) repository: https://osf.io/tk4x5/. Planned analyses are available at https://osf.io/x6g3u/.

Detecting pathogen threats and avoiding disease is fundamental to human survival. The Behavioral Immune System (BIS) framework outlines a set of psychological functions that may have evolved for this purpose. Disgust is a core emotion that plays a pivotal role in the BIS, as it activates the behavioral avoidance motives that prevent people from being in contact with pathogens. To date, there has been little agreement on how disgust sensitivity might underlie moral judgments. Here, we investigated moral violations of “purity” (assumed to elicit disgust) and violations of “harm” (assumed to elicit anger). We hypothesized that individual differences in BIS-related traits would be associated with greater disgust (vs. anger) reactivity to, and greater condemnation of, purity (vs. harm) violations. The study was pre-registered (https://osf.io/57nm8/). Participants (N = 632) had to rate scenarios concerning moral wrongness or inappropriateness and regarding disgust and anger. To measure individual differences in the activation of the BIS, we used our recently developed Body Odor Disgust Scale (BODS), a BIS-related trait measure that assesses individual differences in feeling disgusted by body odors. In accordance with our predictions, we found that scores on the BODS relate more strongly to emotional reactions to Purity, as compared to Harm, violations. In addition, BODS relates more strongly to Moral condemnation than to perceived Inappropriateness of an action, and to the condemnation of Purity violations as compared to Harm violations. These results suggest that the BIS is involved in moral judgment, although to some extent this role sees to be specific for violations of “moral purity”, a concept that might be rooted in disease avoidance. Data and scripts to analyze the data are available on the Open Science Framework (OSF) repository: https://osf.io/tk4x5/. Planned analyses are available at https://osf.io/x6g3u/

Handwashing is one of the easiest and most effective opportunities to enjoy substantial health benefits. Meta-analytic evidence associates handwashing with reduction in risks of diarrhea diseases by 42-47%, severe intestinal infections by 48%, and shigellosis by 59%; extrapolation analyses suggest that handwashing could avert 0.5-1.4 million potential diarrhea deaths (Curtis & Cairncross, 2014). In a randomized controlled trial of 906 households in Karachi, Pakistan, households that were (vs. were not) given handwashing promotion and plain soap showed substantial reductions in childhood incidences of pneumonia (by 50%) and acute lower-respiratory infections (e.g., diarrhea by 53%). Antibacterial soap worked similarly well on these two clinical syndromes that bring about the most childhood deaths around the world, especially in poor communities in developing countries. Similar effects of handwashing promotion on respiratory-tract infections and respiratory illness have been found among children and adults in developed countries including Canada, Australia, and the U.S.