When we talk about physical cleanliness, what will be come up in our mind would be the medical benefits, which we may get rid of sick if we have a good condition of physical cleanliness. Physical cleanliness is defined as getting rid of the dirt and filth from your body (Can Tran, 2011).While moral purity is defined as our spiritual and mental state are in clean and genuineness condition. In fact, physical cleanliness and moral purity are highly encouraged by religions (Salih Uslu, 2007), they feel that they are purified with physical cleansing. It is suggested that there is a metaphorical association between physical cleanliness and moral purity (Zhong & Liljenquist, 2006). Therefore, it is worth investigating how sensation (physical cleanliness) can influence judgment (moral purity), so as to prove whether there is any correlation relationship between physical cleanliness and moral purity
Research aims
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This project aims at finding out whether physical cleanliness affects moral judgment. In addition, we would like to find out whether a psychological state of cleanliness affects moral judgment. We would look into the differences in moral judgments between females and males and compare our findings with the original findings.
Hypothesis
We assume that there is psychological association between physical cleanliness and morality, which physical and mental cleanliness can shift our moral judgment from pendulum to being morally virtuous (Zhong, 2010)- a cleaner self may render a harsher moral judgment. Besides, we assume that male would license a comparatively lenient moral judgment than the female.
Research Method
In order to find out the relationship of physical cleanliness on moral judgments, we choose to repeat the experiments done by Zhong, Strejcek, and Sivanthanin, researchers at University of Toronto, Canada, and London business School, in 2010. However, we have only repeated two of the experiments of their research (Zhong, C.B., Strejcek, B., & Siva Nathan, N. (2010). A clean self can render harsh moral judgment. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46 (5), 859-862) to find out the relationship. We have invited 51students from the University of Hong Kong (24 males, 28 females) to participate in this study. The independent variable of this research is the physical or mental state of cleanliness of the university students while the dependent variable is the moral judgments of the university students. We have separated those 51 students into 4 groups which 2 groups are doing one experiment. For the first experiment, we provided two condition of physical cleanliness for the two groups (13 females, 11 males), with washed hand (clean physical conditions) and unwashed hand (unclean physical condition), the unwashed hand condition is defined as a control condition. Then they were asked to rate 16 different social issues like casual sex, smoking, obesity, pornography, and adultery on the same moral scale used in the original study done by For Zhong et al. (2010).(-5: very immoral to +5: very moral).
While for the second experiment, we provided two condition of mental cleanliness for another two groups (14 females, 13 males), with primed clean condition and primed dirty condition. For the primed clean condition, participants were asked to visualize and write the statement “My hair feels clean and light. My breath is fresh. My clothes are pristine and like new. My fingernails are freshly clipped and good and my shoes are spotless. I feel so clean” on the paper. For the primed unclean condition, participants are asked to write “My hair feels oily and heavy. My breath stinks. I can see oil stains and dirt all over my clothes. My fingernails are encrusted with dirt and my shoes are covered in mud. I feel so dirty.” Then they were asked to rate 16 different social issues same as the first experiment with the same moral scale (-5: very immoral to +5: very moral).
Research Results
For the first result, the score of the 16 social issues are in the below graph:
According to the graph above, it is found that the majority of the score of social issues under the clean condition are negative value except the issue of homosexuality, masturbation, obesity, premarital sex and profane language. On the other hand, under control condition, just like the result of clean condition, there are 5 social issues with positive scoring which the issue of alcoholic is positive scoring instead of premarital sex. In order to have a further comparison between clean condition and unclean condition (control), average score of those 16 social issues is used. For the clean condition, the average score of the 16 social issues under clean condition is -0.738 while the average score of that under control condition is -0.573. According to the average score of the social issues under two conditions, as under clean condition the average score is lower than that under control condition, it meets our hypothesis that under clean condition, people will render a harsher moral judgment while under unclean condition will render a lenient moral judgment.
For the second experiment, the score of the 16 social issues are in the below graph:
According to the graph above, it is found that the majority of the score of social issues under the primed clean condition are negative value except the issue of homosexuality, masturbation, obesity, premarital sex and profane language. On the other hand, under primed dirty condition, 8 out of 16 social issues are with positive scoring which are the issue of alcoholic, homosexuality, masturbation, obesity, pollution, pornography, premarital sex and profane language. To have a further comparison between primed clean condition and primed dirty condition, average score of those 16 social issues is used. For the primed clean condition, the average score of the 16 social issues under clean condition is -0.856 while the average score of that under control condition is -0.616. By comparing the average score of the social issues under two conditions, we found that under primed clean condition, the average score is lower than that under primed dirty condition. So, it meets our hypothesis that mental cleanliness has a correlation relationship with morality which can it shift our moral judgment from pendulum to being morally virtuous, people with cleaner mental state and perception will render a harsher moral judgment.
Furthermore, our group has looked into the differences in moral judgments between females and males under different cleanliness condition. We combine all 4 cleanliness condition score and find out the average score of male and female, the average score of social issues for male is -0.23 while that of the female is -1.16. Since the average score of the male is much higher than the female, it meets our hypothesis that male would license a comparatively lenient moral judgment than the female. This may due to different perception and values towards those issues and the biological differences between male and female.
In addition, our group has also made a comparison between our findings with the original findings. We found that almost all scorings of the 16 social issues in the original research are negative values with average score of -1.56. While our research scorings contain some positive values with average score of-0.70. When comparing the average score of two researches, we found that the scoring of our research is much higher than that of the original research, this may imply that the students of the University of Hong Kong license a comparatively lenient moral judgment than that of the students of University of Toronto. One of the reasons for this scenario is that there is cultural difference between the US and Hong Kong which affect their values towards different social issues.
Conclusion
In the two experiments we have conducted, the scoring results has implied that there is correlation relationship between physical cleanliness and morality, which people with cleaner physical or mental condition will license a harsher moral judgment.
Critical Evaluation
There are some limitations in our experiment. Firstly, there are actually other variables and factors which may affect moral judgments like age, gender, religions, nationality, education background, family background, social context, personal values and views (Haidt, 2001). Since we did not take these factors into account throughout our experiments, the results may not valid enough to support the conclusion. It is worthwhile looking into their relations like for education, we can conduct the experiment with primary and secondary school or even with doctor education background which different results may be found. While religions and nationality should also be important factors in moral judgment as the culture and belief are not the same between different nationality and religions, a future investigation on these may lead to new findings.
Secondly, compared with the result done by Zhong (2010), our study is rather limited in scope as there were a total of 323 participants being interviewed in the original study while our study only consist of 51 participants, 51 is not a significant number. So, the sampling size should be as large as possible to increase the preciseness.
Thirdly, there are interruptions between primed clean or dirty as the condition of visualizing a primed cleanliness condition between people are not the same. While the time gap between washing hands and filling out the questionnaire are different for every person, they may have met someone else which may affect their state of both physical and mental cleanliness, these may affect the preciseness of the result. It is suggested that in the future study we should consider the immediacy which we have to ask the participants to fill in the questionnaire as fast as possible after the condition of cleanliness is applied. Besides, place where questionnaires are filled in and the time taken to complete questionnaire can also lead to a better management of the controlled variables and preciseness.
Finally, a more in-depth analysis can also be conducted. Since one’s pre-existing perception and views towards an issue may be different (Zhong, 2010), even if he is given a dirty condition, he may still license a harsh moral judgment. Therefore, the result will be reversed so it is suggested that measuring the original view towards the issue and the effect of different cleanliness affect moral judgment can be investigated.
Personal experience
As this is the first time for me to do a psychological experiment, it is quite challenging to me as psychological experiment expect to use a lot of data and theory to support our experimental results. It was my conviction that different condition of physical cleanliness should not affect our moral judgment as I believe our moral judgment should be independent. To my surprise, it is entirely opposing my thinking. I changed my mind afterwards and started to think that psychology is a kind of sciences based on the statistic and research, I started to interest in knowing more about myself through psychological and biological angle.
