Cleanliness can compromise moral judgement

Monday, December 1, 2008 - 11:49 in Psychology & Sociology

New research in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science has found that the physical notion of cleanliness significantly reduces the severity of moral judgements, showing that intuition, rather than deliberate reasoning can influence our perception of what is right and wrong. Lead researcher, Simone Schnall explains the relevance of the findings to everyday life; 'When we exercise moral judgement, we believe we are making a conscious, rational decision, but this research shows that we are subconsciously influenced by how clean or 'pure' we feel...

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