“The Smell of Virtue” study

I recently had the opportunity to read an article about a research done by the Kellogg School of Management at North-western University. It basically claims that the scent of a room actually influences our behaviour. Therefore, clean odours will improve our behaviour making us more fair and ethical.

The study was divided in two different experiments. The first one evaluated people’s fairness. Subjects were given $12 and they needed to decided how much money to keep for themselves and how much to give to their partners. People in clean rooms gave an average of $5,33 to their partners and subjects on the normal rooms gave an average of $2,81. A big difference, isn’t it?

The second experiment evaluated the charitable disposition of people. It determined that subjects on clean-smelling rooms were more likely to be interested in volunteering and donations than subjects on normal rooms. (22% compared to 6%).

Amazing! Clean places make us nicer people! What are you waiting for? Take that broom and start cleaning your worries up!

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