Word: liljenquist
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...Macbeth principle of morality, says Katie Liljenquist, professor of organizational leadership at Brigham Young University's Marriott School of Management and lead author of the new study, to be published in Psychological Science. "There is a strong link between moral and physical purity that people associate at a core level. People feel contaminated by immoral choices and try to wash away their sins," says Liljenquist. "To some degree, washing actually is effective in alleviating guilt. What we wondered was whether you could regulate ethical behavior through cleanliness. We found that we could." (See pictures of the largest fine-fragrance perfumery...
...scientists insist they didn't overdo it with the Windex, just a few spritzes - so we can rule out brain-cell death or intoxication-induced generosity as reasons why those receivers gave back so much of the booty. Rather, Liljenquist says, "a moral awareness was awakened in a clean-smelling environment." (Read "Overrated Optimism: The Peril of Positive Thinking...
...Liljenquist says the real-life implications of the study could be as simple as an office investing more in janitorial supplies than in expensive and intrusive surveillance equipment to keep workers in line. Other olfactory researchers suggest, however, that perhaps it wasn't the clean smell that made people more virtuous in the new study, but rather the smell of citrus; that is, people may have behaved better because they smelled something they liked, rather than something "clean." "It could be simply that a positive smell creates a positive mood, which encourages positive behavior. You cannot conclude it is cleanliness...
...their part, Liljenquist and Galinsky say they controlled for the good-mood effect by giving participants in the second experiment a mood-screening questionnaire. They also say their results are consistent with existing literature on cleanliness and morality. For instance, in one of Liljenquist's earlier studies, she found, among other things, that cleaning hands after writing about a moral transgression made people feel less guilty about it. Other researchers have also tackled the issue of morality and smell, but from the opposite end of the spectrum. A paper published last year in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin revealed...
...fart spray is a commercially available product. Incidentally, according to a psychologist who has worked with it in experiments, it is nearly impossible to rid upholstery of it. Citrus-scented Windex certainly makes for a nicer lab environment, which perhaps has something to do with Liljenquist's continued interest in this line of study. "Research on how to stay on the moral high ground and promote virtue," she says, "is something I find refreshing...