To Wash Your Body, or Purify Your Soul: Physical Cleansing Would Strengthen the Sense of High Moral Character

Zhixiong Yan, Daoqun Ding, Liangshi Yan

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DOI: 10.4236/psych.2011.29149                

Abstract

Physical cleansing, such as bathing or washing hands, is at the core of many religious rituals, suggesting that physical cleansing ceremonies can purify the soul. The present research examines the association between physical and moral purity by the semantic priming paradigm on which the participants made a lexical decision task. There is an interaction effect between the prime word (cleaning related vs. non-cleaning related) and target word (moral related word vs. non-word) which shows a significant priming effect. Thus, we think that physical cleansing would not only associate with moral transgression in memory stage, but also the sense of high moral character in perception stage.

Keywords

Physical Cleansing, Moral Purity, Moral Disgust, Priming Effect

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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