October 30, 2009 at 13:24The aroma of freshness affects the brain cleaner than a drug
Do your employees lie, use the Internet for personal purposes, weave intrigues at work? Everything is clear, most likely, this morning they forgot to spray the office with an air freshener.
According to recent studies , people can be encouraged to moral behavior by such a simple thing as the smell of freshness. The brain reaction is unconscious, uncontrolled and quite reliable.
During the experiment, volunteers performed a number of tasks on honesty (the classic game of sharing money) and morality (a survey on participation in the volunteer program). Half of the subjects acted in a normal room, and the other half acted in a Windex sprayed with a freshener. The results have diverged dramatically. For example, when dividing the amount of $ 12 in a fresh room, the average amount of money given was $ 5.33, and in a regular room - only $ 2.81. As for volunteering, the injected experimental subjects expressed a desire for 4.21 points on a seven-point scale, and untreated ones for 3.29 points. 22% wanted to donate money among those who inhaled the aroma of freshness, and only 6% in an ordinary room.
Importantly, none of the volunteers smelled a freshener. This is an essential detail - a person should not know about the effect of the drug, then his reaction will not be blocked by rational mechanisms.
The experiments were conducted by a group of researchers led by one of the leading teachers of the School of Management at Brigham Young University (Utah), the results will be published in the next issue of Psychological Science.
According to recent studies , people can be encouraged to moral behavior by such a simple thing as the smell of freshness. The brain reaction is unconscious, uncontrolled and quite reliable.
During the experiment, volunteers performed a number of tasks on honesty (the classic game of sharing money) and morality (a survey on participation in the volunteer program). Half of the subjects acted in a normal room, and the other half acted in a Windex sprayed with a freshener. The results have diverged dramatically. For example, when dividing the amount of $ 12 in a fresh room, the average amount of money given was $ 5.33, and in a regular room - only $ 2.81. As for volunteering, the injected experimental subjects expressed a desire for 4.21 points on a seven-point scale, and untreated ones for 3.29 points. 22% wanted to donate money among those who inhaled the aroma of freshness, and only 6% in an ordinary room.
Importantly, none of the volunteers smelled a freshener. This is an essential detail - a person should not know about the effect of the drug, then his reaction will not be blocked by rational mechanisms.
The experiments were conducted by a group of researchers led by one of the leading teachers of the School of Management at Brigham Young University (Utah), the results will be published in the next issue of Psychological Science.