TY - JOUR
T1 - Actual Cleaning and Simulated Cleaning Attenuate Psychological and Physiological Effects of Stressful Events
AU - Lee, Spike W.S.
AU - Millet, Kobe
AU - Grinstein, Amir
AU - Pauwels, Koen H.
AU - Johnston, Phillip R.
AU - Volkov, Alexandra E.
AU - van der Wal, Arianne J.
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: S.W.S.L. acknowledges support by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Insight Grant no. 435-2017-0127; Insight Development Grant no. 430-2021-00060), Ontario Ministry of Research, Innovation and Science (Early Researcher Award—Round 13), Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (Theme-Group Fellowship 2015), and University of Toronto (Connaught New Researcher Award 2014–2015; Rotman Small-Scale Matching Research Grant 2017) while preparing this article.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2022.
PY - 2022/1/1
Y1 - 2022/1/1
N2 - The human mind harbors various mechanisms for coping with stress, but what role does physical behavior play? Inspired by ethological observations of autogrooming activity across species, we offer a general hypothesis: cleaning attenuates effects of stressful events. Preregistered behavioral and psychophysiological experiments (N = 3,066 in United Kingdom, United States, and Canada) found that (a) concrete visual simulation of cleaning behavior alleviated residual anxiety from a stress-inducing physical scene, an effect distinct from touch, and (b) actual cleaning behavior enhanced adaptive cardiovascular reactivity to a highly stressful context of social performance/evaluation, which provides the first physiological evidence for the attenuation of stress-related effects by cleaning. Overall, actual cleaning and simulated cleaning attenuate effects of physical or psychological stressors, even when they have nothing to do with contamination or disease and would not be resolved by cleaning. Daily cleaning behavior may facilitate coping with stressors like physical risks and psychological threats to the self.
AB - The human mind harbors various mechanisms for coping with stress, but what role does physical behavior play? Inspired by ethological observations of autogrooming activity across species, we offer a general hypothesis: cleaning attenuates effects of stressful events. Preregistered behavioral and psychophysiological experiments (N = 3,066 in United Kingdom, United States, and Canada) found that (a) concrete visual simulation of cleaning behavior alleviated residual anxiety from a stress-inducing physical scene, an effect distinct from touch, and (b) actual cleaning behavior enhanced adaptive cardiovascular reactivity to a highly stressful context of social performance/evaluation, which provides the first physiological evidence for the attenuation of stress-related effects by cleaning. Overall, actual cleaning and simulated cleaning attenuate effects of physical or psychological stressors, even when they have nothing to do with contamination or disease and would not be resolved by cleaning. Daily cleaning behavior may facilitate coping with stressors like physical risks and psychological threats to the self.
KW - cardiovascular reactivity
KW - cleaning
KW - mental simulation
KW - self
KW - stress
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85133893671&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/19485506221099428
DO - 10.1177/19485506221099428
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85133893671
JO - Social Psychological and Personality Science
JF - Social Psychological and Personality Science
SN - 1948-5506
ER -
