New psychology research indicates that cleaning oneself helps alleviate the anxiety from stress-inducing events

Washing yourself may reduce the psychological consequences of stressful events, according to new research published in social psychology and personality science, The new findings provide some of the first scientific evidence that self-cleansing is related to a reduction in anxiety.

But why were scientists interested in investigating the link between self-cleaning and stress? “Blame it on my probably subclinical obsessive-compulsive personality,” explained study author Spike W.S. Lee, an associate professor of management and psychology at the University of Toronto and director of the Mind and Body Lab.

“I’ve always been fascinated by the psychology of cleaning behavior. Why do purification rituals exist in religions? Why do cleaning behaviors occur in many non-human species in stressful situations? We have ‘Wipe the slate clean?’ Why are there feelings like that?

Lee and his research team recruited 1,150 adults through Prolific and found a brief video clip of a frightened woman standing on the side of a bungee jump station. The video was earlier shown to create anxiety, tension and restlessness among the viewers. Participants were then randomly assigned to watch a video showing how to properly wash one’s hands, how to draw a circle, or a video on how to peel an egg.

Those who watched the handwashing video later went on to report lower levels of anxiety than those who watched the other two videos. The researchers then replicated the findings in a second experiment involving 1,377 individuals recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing platform.

But the researchers noted that the handwashing video contained an element of self-touch. “Since touch is soothing and calming, what appears to be a cleansing effect may instead be a tactile effect,” he said. With this potential confusion in mind, the researchers conducted a third experiment with 465 participants in which three videos were replaced with mental imagery tasks.

After watching the anxiety-inducing video, participants were asked to either “imagine that you are thoroughly cleaning your arms, face, neck and hair with water,” “imagine that you are washing your arms, face, neck and hair.” touching it.” Feel yourself completely, ”or was instructed not to imagine anything.

Consistent with their hypothesis, Lee and colleagues found that anxiety levels were lower in those who visualized the touch than in those who visualized the touch and those in the control condition.

“When we engage in cleaning behavior, it involves separating residue from our bodies (for example, washing dirt off our hands),” Lee told CyPost. “This basic, physical experience of detaching remnants from our bodies may trigger a more psychological form of detachment, that is, separating the residual effects of past experiences from the present (for example, cleaning the slate). Past experiences were stressful, so psychologically separating them from your present will reduce your stress.”

In their fourth and final experiment, the researchers also found physical evidence to support their hypothesis. In the experiment, 74 students at a large Canadian university underwent two rounds of an anxiety-inducing task while their heart activity was recorded.

Participants were told that researchers were interested in understanding more about physical responses to intellectual and academic tasks. He was instructed to deliver a 5-minute speech explaining why he deserves to be a team lead in a consulting firm. He spoke in front of two judges in white lab coats who “looked stern the whole time, stared blankly, didn’t smile, and showed no sign of approval.”

Participants were then randomly assigned to either actually use or simply test an antiseptic wipe. They completed a 10-minute fill job, then either used or simply checked the sanitizing gel. Afterwards, the participants gave a second speech, which was designed to be slightly less stressful than the first. The judges showed a more positive mood and provided some positive feedback.

Findings from the last experiment indicated that “cleansing behavior resulted in a more adaptive profile of cardiovascular reactivity,” the researchers said.

However, Lee said the study — like all research — contains some caveats. “While we demonstrated the phenomenon in samples with a wide age range, they are only drawn from western populations,” he explained. “Whether this phenomenon is common to other cultures remains to be seen. At the same time, our findings invite future research to examine what other protective effects may result from cleaning behavior in daily life.

Study, “Real cleaning and simulated cleaning reduce the psychological and physiological effects of stressful events”, Spike WS Lee, Kobe Millett, Amir Grinstein, Koen H. Powells, Philip R. Johnson, Alexandra E. Volkov and Ariane J. Van der Waal.