The Effects Of Physical Cleaning On The Degree Of Individual's Environmental Protection

Physical cleanliness not only prevents individual's body from being attacked by bacteria,but also has impacts on individual's psychological experience and behavior.Focusing on the environmental problems,this paper explores the impacts of physical cleanliness on the degree of individual's environmental protection and discusses the specific psychological mechanism(morality)through three series of studies.Taking college students in Nanjing as subjects,study 1 and study 2 explored the influence of physical cleanliness on individual's environmental protection from the cognitive and practical level respectively.Study 3 further explores the mediating role of morality on individual's environmental behavior.The degree of individual's environmental protection is mainly divided into two levels:one is the judgment of others environmental and non-environmental behavior,the other is individual's personal environmental behavioral intention.In Study 1,body cleanliness was initiated by copying related sentences,and the subjects were randomly divided into clean group,dirty group and control group.Results indicated that the operation of clean-starting type is effective.At the same time,subjects in the clean group,compared with the control and dirty group,reported more significantly severe judgments on the non-environmental behavior when they judged the behaviors of others,and there was no significant difference in the judgment of others environmental behavior.In study 2,physical cleanliness of subjects was initiated by washing hands with antiseptic wipes physically.Subjects were divided into two groups:the clean group and the control group.Significant differences were found between the two groups on physical cleanliness for manipulation check.Besides,compared with the control group,subjects in the clean group showed a significant and stricter tendency in judging others'non-environmental behavior,but no significant difference was found in the judgment of environmental behavior.For the donation intention of public welfare environmental protection projects,the clean group also showed significant stronger willingness to donate than the control group.Based on study 1 and study 2,study 3 was to further explore the mechanism of physical cleaning that influences environmental behavior.The cognitive starting material was used,and subjects were randomly divided into clean group,dirty group and control group.Results indicated that subjects in clean group scored significantly higher on self-rated morality than other groups.Besides,morality played a mediating role in the impact of physical cleanliness on individual's environmental behavior.To sum up,this paper explores the impact of physical cleanliness on the individual's environmental protection,and probes into its specific psychological mechanism using three series of studies.Morality plays a mediating role in the impact of physical cleaning on individual's environmental behavioral intention.These findings have important theoretical and practical significance.On the one hand,it enriches the original researches on physical cleanliness,and extends it to the field of environmental protection.On the other hand,it inspires individuals to keep their own cleanliness,so as to provide motivation for environmental protection,and also provide some reference and guidance for the policy-making,propaganda and education of the government.