The Importance of Cleanliness
As we come to understand more about our subconscious and often irrational decision making processes, one social scientist has isolated cleanliness as a determining factor in how we act.
If I ask you, “How wrong is it to falsify information on your CV in order to get a better job?” you might think that you just go through a rational process, and think of the reasons why this is wrong, or perhaps why it’s not so bad. But we found that when you put people in certain emotional states, for example, if you have them sit at a table that happens to be very sticky, dirty, and disgusting, then people make different decisions. If you sit at a disgusting table, or let’s say you’re smelling a disgusting smell in the room, then you’re more likely to say that falsifying your CV in order to get a better job is really wrong compared to somebody who sits at a clean table, or somebody who doesn’t have a nasty smell around them.
