Washing your hands ‘wipes the slate clean,’ removing doubts about recent choices. That’s the key finding of a University of Michigan study published in the current (May 7) issue of Science. The study, conducted by U-M psychologists Spike W. S. Lee and Norbert Schwarz, expands on past research by showing that hand-washing does more than remove the guilt of past misdeeds. ‘It’s not just that washing your hands contributes to moral cleanliness as well as physical cleanliness, as seen in earlier research’ said Lee, a doctoral candidate in social psychology. ‘Our studies show that washing also reduces the influence of past behaviors and decisions that have no moral implications whatsoever.’ For the study, Lee and Schwarz, who is affiliated with the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR) and the Ross School of Business in addition to the Department of Psychology, asked undergraduate students to browse through 30 CD covers as part of an alleged consumer survey. Participants picked 10 CDs they would like to own, ranking them by preference. Later, the experimenter offered them a choice between their 5th and 6th ranked CDs as a token of appreciation. Following that choice, participants completed an ostensibly unrelated […]