Apparently, clean smells promote moral behavior.
From ScienceDaily:
People are unconsciously fairer and more generous when they are in clean-smelling environments, according to a soon-to-be published study led by a Brigham Young University professor. The research found a dramatic improvement in ethical behavior with just a few spritzes of citrus-scented Windex.
Of course, I immediately set to wondering if it is really the clean smell, or some strange undocumented side effect of an industrial era chemical additive in the Windex affecting some area of the brain (while giving you scrotal cancer at the same time).
I guess this is the reason “science” has been bothering me lately. How is the behavior linked to the smell and not some chemical in the Windex? Does lemon juice work just as well as Windex? Did they even try another type of “clean” smell? I guess we’ll have to wait for the paper to come out to find out. My hunch is that they didn’t, and there is no real way to know if it really was the smell, or some kind of chemical “high” causing the behavioral change.
Tags: culture, psychology
