Ahh, the Sweet Smell of Goodness

If you are hoping to make the world a better place, you might want to stock up on citrus-scented Windex. Apparently, the fresh smell brings out the best in people. In fact, researchers have found a dramatic improvement in ethical behavior when people spend time in a room freshly spritzed with the citrus-scented cleaner.

The study, titled, "The Smell of Virtue," was unusually simple and conclusive. Participants engaged in several tasks, with just one difference--some worked in an unscented room, while others worked in the Windexed room. As a test of whether clean scents would enhance fairness, subjects played a classic “trust game.”  They received $12 in cash, supposedly from a person trusting them to divide it fairly. Subjects in clean-scented rooms returned on average, $5.33 compared to subjects in the unscented room who gave back $2.81.

Another experiment evaluated whether clean scents affected charitable behavior. Those in the fresh-scented room once again demonstrated that the smell of cleanliness is next to godliness. When asked to rate their interest in volunteering for a Habitat for Humanity project, on a scale of one to seven, they averaged 4.21, which was significantly higher than those in the scent-less room, whose interest scored 3.29. They were also much more willing to ante up for the same cause. In fact, 22 percent of participants under the influence of Windex said they’d like to donate money, compared to only 6 percent of those who breathed unscented air.

Katie Liljenquist, assistant professor of organizational leadership at BYU’s Marriott School of Management, is the lead author of the study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science. Co-authors are Chen-Bo Zhong of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and Adam Galinsky of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.  Zhong and Liljenquist have previously demonstrated a link between morality and physical cleanliness. while this study examined the influence of the physical environment on morality, with the citrus-scent conveying cleanliness.