Looking for the cleanest possible way to increase charitable donations? Spray citrus-scented Windex. According to new research, “people are more likely to engage in moral behavior when they are in a clean-scented room,” says lead author Katie Liljenquist, an assistant professor of organizational leadership at Brigham Young University.
A few years ago Liljenquist and her coauthor discovered that moral “purity” is more than a metaphor. “When people recall an unethical behavior, they feel literally dirty,” Liljenquist says, and try to “wash away their sins” with an antiseptic wipe. So the researchers set out to see if the reverse is true as well: Does a clean smell make people clean up their acts?
To find out, they prepared a baseline and a virtuous-smelling space. For the scented condition Liljenquist would run into the center of the room and spritz a little lemon Windex just before the participant arrived. Participants then either played a one-shot anonymous trust game or filled out a survey requesting donations to and volunteers for Habitat for Humanity.
Game players learned that their (imaginary) partner had just very trustingly turned over his or her entire $4 to the participant. The money would be tripled because of the partner’s brave move. The participants then had to decide how much of the resulting $12 to share with the partner, who was now completely at their mercy. Windex-influenced people were “more fair and generous in returning an even share of the money,” Liljenquist says.
Among survey completers in the unscented room, 6 percent indicated they were willing to donate funds to Habitat for Humanity. That figure shot up to 22 percent in the clean-scented room. Windex also made participants more interested in volunteering. “It works, which is very refreshing,” says Liljenquist. “This research shows there may be a very subtle, cheap, unobtrusive way to promote more virtuous behavior.”
Alan Hirsch isn’t surprised. An expert in olfaction at the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago, he says that spicy odors make people learn faster, jasmine increases their bowling score, and Nike shoes seem to be worth $10.33 more in the presence of a floral odor. “The part of the brain that we think smells is actually part of the limbic system, or the emotional brain. So the quickest way to change somebody’s mood state or behavior—quicker than with any other sensory modality—is with smell.”
If you put this principle to work at the office, as a bonus your spick-and-span lobby will make visitors judge your employees to be more ethical. Just don’t advertise the new air freshener’s moral power. “To effectively exercise mind control, you can’t make it explicit,” Liljenquist warns, “or people have the tendency to react against it.”
Katie Liljenquist, Chen-Bo Zhong, and Adam D. Galinsky, “The Smell of Virtue: Clean Scents Promote Reciprocity and Charity,” Psychological Science 21, 2010.
Read more stories by Jessica Ruvinsky.