Study Suggests that Certain Smells Promote Good Behavior

Katie Liljenquist of Brigham Young University led a study that suggests that clean-smelling environments subtly encourage people to avoid abberant behavior. From Science Daily:

The study titled “The Smell of Virtue” was unusually simple and conclusive. Participants engaged in several tasks, the only difference being that some worked in unscented rooms, while others worked in rooms freshly spritzed with Windex.

The first experiment evaluated fairness.

As a test of whether clean scents would enhance reciprocity, participants played a classic “trust game.” Subjects received $12 of real money (allegedly sent by an anonymous partner in another room). They had to decide how much of it to either keep or return to their partners who had trusted them to divide it fairly. Subjects in clean-scented rooms were less likely to exploit the trust of their partners, returning a significantly higher share of the money.

Link via Instapundit | Image: flickr user rq?