Lying creates desire to wash mouth

WASHINGTON - Apparently your mom was right when she threatened to wash your mouth with soap if you lied. According to a study, lying creates a desire to clean the “dirty” body part.

“The references to ‘dirty hands’ or ‘dirty mouths’ in everyday language suggest that people think about abstract issues of moral purity in terms of more concrete experiences with physical purity,” said Spike W.S. Lee, University of Michigan doctoral candidate in psychology.

He conducted the study with his colleague Norbert Schwarz, reports the journal Psychological Science.

For the study, Lee and Schwarz asked 87 students to play the role of lawyers competing with a colleague - Chris - for a promotion, said a Michigan release.

Each was asked to imagine they found an important document that Chris had lost and that returning the document would help his career and hurt their own career.

Each participant was instructed to leave Chris a message by either voice mail or e-mail, telling him who they were and either lying that they could not find his document or telling the truth that they had found the document.

Next, participants rated the desirability of several products as part of a supposed marketing survey and reported how much they were willing to pay for each product. The products included mouthwash and hand sanitizer.

Study participants who lied on the phone, leaving an untrue and malevolent voice-mail, felt a stronger desire for mouthwash and were willing to pay more for it than those who lied on e-mail.

And conversely, those who lied on e-mail felt a stronger desire for hand sanitizer and were willing to pay more for that.

On the other hand, saying nice and ethical things made it less appealing to clean the body part involved in conveying the message.

“This study shows how ‘concrete’ the metaphorical links are between abstract and concrete domains of life. Not only do people want to clean after a dirty deed, they want to clean the specific body part involved,” Schwarz said.