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Can Washing Our Hands Makes Us Feel More Confident and Optimistic?

By HERWriter
 
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do you feel more optimistic and confident after washing your hands? Steve Heap/PhotoSpin

We know washing our hands keeps them clean, helps prevent illness and definitely should be done before eating a meal. Washing our hands can also make us feel better, more confident and more optimistic according to some recent studies.

Washing your hands “wipes the slate clean” and removes doubts about recent choices. This was the main take away from a study performed at University of Michigan, reported Science Daily.

Participants were told to rank a set of CDs from 1 to 10 based on their preference to own the CD. They were then told they could pick either their fifth or sixth choice to own in appreciation for performing the task.

The participants were then divided into two groups and asked about a seemingly unrelated survey about liquid soap. One group examined only the bottle. The other group washed their hands with the soap.

Then both groups were asked to re-rank the CDs. The group that only examined the bottle of soap ranked the CD they chose higher in the second ranking.

The group that had washed their hands with soap did not feel any need to adjust their ranking of the CDs.

“Once participants had washed their hands, they no longer needed to justify their choice when they ranked the CDs the second time around," Norbert Schwarz, one of the study’s psychologist said.

In another study at the University of Cologne in Germany, psychologist Dr. Kai Kaspar examined how physical cleansing affects us after a failure.

In this study, 98 participants were divided into three groups. Two groups were given an impossible task to solve and the third group was not given any task to perform for this first round.

The two groups who could not solve the task were optimistic that they could solve a new task if given a chance in a second round. One of the two groups washed their hands right after and they were more optimistic than the non-hand wash group.

All three groups were then given the second task to perform. The surprise for Kaspar was that the non-hand washing group outperformed both the hand washing group and the third group who had not experienced failure at performing a task. The hand wash group and the third group actually performed about the same.

Kaspar concluded that while washing our hands does increase our optimism and “may eliminate negative feelings after failure, it may also eliminate the motivation to try harder in order to refresh and renew the self-perception of competence.”

So while hand washing makes us feel better about our ability, we may lose some of the competitive push to excel.

The findings of this study were published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

Sources:

University of Michigan. "Wash away your doubts when you wash your hands." ScienceDaily, 7 May 2010. Web. 5 Nov. 2013.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100506141601.htm

Spike W. S. Lee, Norbert Schwarz. Washing Away Postdecisional Dissonance. Science, 2010; 328 (5979): 709 DOI: 10.1126/science.1186799.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/328/5979/709

Washing Your Hands Increases Optimism, But May Lower Your Motivation To Perform Well In The Future. MedicalDaily.com. By Susan Scutti | Oct 25, 2013. Web. 5 Nov. 2013.
http://www.medicaldaily.com/washing-your-hands-increases-optimism-may-lo...

Kaspar, Kai. Washing One’s Hands After Failure Enhances Optimism but Hampers Future Performance. Social and Personality Psychology Science.
http://spp.sagepub.com/content/4/1/69.abstract

Michele is an R.N. freelance writer with a special interest in woman’s healthcare and quality of care issues. Other articles by Michele are at www.helium.com/users/487540/show_articles

Edited by Jody Smith

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We value and respect our HERWriters' experiences, but everyone is different. Many of our writers are speaking from personal experience, and what's worked for them may not work for you. Their articles are not a substitute for medical advice, although we hope you can gain knowledge from their insight.