Throughout our language, the vocabulary of physical cleanliness is also used to describe moral cleanliness. We describe saints as pure and thieves as dirty; consciences can be clean and sins can be washed away. But more and more, psychological studies tell us that these concepts are entwined in a very real way. The act of cleaning, or even just thinking about the concept of cleanliness, can influence a person’s moral compass, swinging it towards a less judgmental direction.

This isn’t the first time that I’ve blogged about this. Two years ago, Chen-Bo Zhong and Katie Liljenquist found that volunteers who dredged up a past misdeed were more likely to think of words related to cleaning or show a physical preference