Cleaner Homes, Kinder People
A report caught my eye on the Science Daily website sometime back and I had intended to put together something on the subject of how smells influence our state of minds. Its little late, but here it is. Smells and scents have been used by supermarkets for years. Think how that fresh, in store baked bread makes you feel, you just want to buy some bread don’t you? Then you feel hungry and voila, you buy more! Well its now been proven that smells can make us more considerate and generous!
Clean Smells Promote Kindness
Is it because teenage boys live in smelly bedrooms, with the windows, doors and curtains closed that makes them grumpy and communicate in words of one syllable or less?! Well there could be some truth in that, Brigham Young University professor, Katie Liljentquist, led a study that found that clean scents lead to more ethical behaviour. Liljenquist said with a smile. “Could be that getting our kids to clean up their rooms might help them clean up their acts, too.”, although she gave no advice as to how we might get them to clean up anything.
In the trials, a citrus scent was used to create a fresh smell, whilst another room was left “normal”. The results were quite remarkable; both groups were given a quantity of money from a “mystery partner” They had to decide how much of it to either keep or return to their partners who had trusted them to divide it fairly. Subjects in clean-scented rooms were less likely to exploit the trust of their partners, returning a significantly higher share of the money.
Clean Smells Make You Charitable
A second test was set up where subjects were asked if they were willing to donate to a fictitious charity and those questioned in the citrus scented room were three times more likely to volunteer or donate!
Cleanliness & Morality
The report concluded that were are subconsciously influenced and that morality and cleanliness can go hand-in-hand, the spaces we live and work in, influence how we behave. Clean and fresh smelling rooms make us more generous and honest.
Further studies are being conducted into how cleanliness influences how react to people and organisations. Time for that spring clean!
Read the full Science Daily Article here
Main Website
I trust you would not have reservations if I posted a part of this site on my univeristy blog?
Great site. A lot of useful information here. I’m sending it to some friends!