Reminders of moral transgression are claimed to increase the urge to physically cleanse.
Zhong and Liljenquist's 2006 study. Replication attempts have largely failed, and it is now a standard example in discussions of the priming literature's collapse rather than a finding to rely on.
In practice
- A firm that installs hand sanitiser outside the ethics training room on the strength of a laboratory result has bought a dispenser.
- The durable observation underneath it is older and less specific: ritual washing appears in penitential practice across many traditions, which is evidence about culture rather than about a laboratory effect.
- Possible explanations
- The proposed explanation is embodied metaphor: moral and physical cleanliness are said to share representations, so a moral threat activates the urge to wash.
- In its favour
- The idea connects to a real linguistic pattern, since the metaphor of moral cleanliness appears across many languages and traditions.
- Against it
- Replication attempts have largely failed, and the effect is now used as a standard illustration of the problems in the social priming literature rather than as a finding to build on.
- Standing
- Replication attempts have largely failed, so the specific effect has not been reproduced.
- Subject
- Psychology & Behavior
- Essay
- A century and a half of measuring the mind