Wash Away Immorality and Double Standards—Psychological Mechanisms by Which Cleansing Affects Moral Judgment under Different Subjects

Embodied cognitive and conceptual metaphor theories state that physical cleansing can influence people’s moral judgments. However, the mechanism of cleansing affecting moral judgment is still not clear. Therefore, this research introduced the moral subject as a moderator of the process of cleansing affecting moral judgment and the moral self-image as a mediator to reveal the psychological mechanism by which physical cleansing affects moral judgment (“Macbeth effect”). Study 1 used the method of reading a third-person story to initiate a sense of immorality, washing hands with hand sanitizers for cleansing, to explore the moral judgment impact on different personal stories; Study 2 used the method of recalling of own immoral events to initiate immoral feelings, washing hands directly for cleansing. Both two studies failed to validate embodied cleaning effect. The findings suggest that physical cleansing does not affect moral judgment, nor does it affect the moral self-image, and cannot explore the moderating role of moral subject.