Washing Away Your Sins: Threatened Morality and Physical Cleansing

By Chen-Bo Zhong, Katie A. Liljenquist. Science, 2006

1,072 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/370182cf1edc314b079027b2f3063197495d0b5b

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Citations in the corpus

Understanding Priming Effects in Social Psychology: What is “Social Priming” and How does it Occur? (2014, background): “…(a) what types of behaviors and outcomes could be primed (e.g., Bargh, Gollwitzer, Lee-Chai, Barndollar, & Trötschel, 2001; Hassin, Ferguson, Shidlovski, & Gross, 2007) and (b) from what aspects of the environment these primes could arise (e.g., Williams & Bargh, 2008; Zhong & Liljenquist, 2006).”
Embodiment of cognition and emotion (2015, methodology): “In an experiment by Zhong and Liljenquist (2006), participants were asked to write about a past moral transgression and then either cleaned their hands with wipes or did not.”
A metaphor-enriched social cognition. (2010, background): “Focusing on cleanliness as a dependent variable, Zhong and Liljenquist (2006) found that participants who were asked to recall their own past transgressions (e.g., adultery, cheating on a Evaluations of positive/negative words were faster when presented in high/low vertical position, respectively.”
Self-Serving Justifications (2015, background): “Wiping their hands reduced their sense of guilt (Zhong & Liljenquist, 2006).”
Warm It Up with Love: The Effect of Physical Coldness on Liking of Romance Movies (2012, background): “For example, Zhong and Liljenquist (2006) showed that asking participants to recall their past unethical behaviors activated a goal of physical cleanliness, and hence they were more likely to choose cleansing products.”
Emotions as Moral Amplifiers: An Appraisal Tendency Approach to the Influences of Distinct Emotions upon Moral Judgment (2011, background): “…research, participants who washed their hands after watching a disgusting video— an action that lessens disgust—were subsequently less likely to criticize others’ transgressions, relative to participants who did not wash their hands (Schnall, & Harvey, 2008; see also Zhong & Liljenquist, 2006).”
The Ethical Mirage: A Temporal Explanation as to Why We Are Not as Ethical as We Think We Are (2010, background): “Zhong and Liljenquist (2006), for example, argue that a threat to one’s moral purity creates a motivation to cleanse oneself.”
Disgust as a disease-avoidance mechanism. (2009, background): “…more likely to complete word fragments with cleaning-related words, more likely to take a gift of an antiseptic wipe over a pencil, and less likely to volunteer to help another student (to appease their conscience) if they had washed their hands prior to being asked (Zhong & Liljenquist, 2006).”
Bringing ethics into focus: How regulatory focus and risk preferences influence (Un)ethical behavior (2011, background): “This theory suggests that when individuals violate their own values, they are likely to engage in moral cleansing that reaffirms core values and loyalties (for empirical support of this theory, see Zhong & Liljenquist, 2006).”
Explaining Embodied Cognition Results (2012, background): “The conceptual metaphor Morality is Purity predicts this (Zhong & Liljenquist, 2006).”
MORAL CLEANSING AND MORAL LICENSES: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE (2013, background): “When past actions make people feel confident about their moral behaviour, their moral self-regard could be high enough to allow them to engage in morally dubious behaviour in the present (Zhong and Liljenquist 2006; Merritt et al. 2010).”