A recent study at Rice University, Pennsylvania State University and Arizona State University found that while feelings of disgust can increase behaviors like lying and cheating, cleanliness can help people return to ethical behavior, according to an article on the Infection Control Today website.

“When people feel disgusted, they tend to remove themselves from a situation. The instinct is to protect oneself. People become focused on ‘self’ and they’re less likely to think about other people,”  Vikas Mittal,  J. Hugh Liedtke Professor of Marketing at Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business, said in the article. 

Researchers also found that cleansing behaviors mitigate the self-serving effects of disgust. “If you can create conditions where people’s disgust is mitigated, you should not see this (unethical) effect,” Mittal said. 

“At the basic level, if you have environments that are cleaner, if you have workplaces that are cleaner, people should be less likely to feel disgusted,” Mittal said. 

Read the article.