We have been taught to wash our hands since childhood, and the skill persists throughout our lives. Not to fanaticism, of course: the majority turn to soap and water as needed - before eating, after visiting public places, in a word, as it gets dirty. But there is another reason why a person can periodically turn into a raccoon-striped raccoon: psychological. It is called the Lady Macbeth effect, or Pontius Pilate's syndrome.
Shakespearean tragedy character and procurator of Judea
The title of this article is a quote from Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth. The main character is the royal commander Macbeth, who one fine day three witches-sisters gave one prediction of the future from each. In the third, he was promised that one day he would become king, and when the witches disappeared, the king's messenger appeared before Macbeth, announcing that he had been given a new title (as stated in the first prediction). Naturally, the commander had thoughts about the throne, which he said in a letter to his wife. And she, without thinking twice, developed her own plan, and when the king stopped at the Macbeth castle to rest, she killed him with her own hands, despite her husband's hesitation and his doubts about the correctness of such a decision. As a result, the man was in a state of shock, and was unable to hide the traces of the crime:this, too, was taken up by his lady, throwing a dagger to the servants. As a result, the king is dead, the heirs fled, and Macbeth was on the throne. True, the ghosts of those on whose heads the newly-minted king ascended the throne appeared to him, but this is a completely different story. Lady Macbeth herself constantly said terrible things, and all the time she washed her hands - she saw blood on them, and by incessant washing tried to get rid of her.
Another example well known to many is the phrase of Pontius Pilate, which became winged. "I wash hands". The fact is that such a psychological phenomenon really exists: this is the connection between physical purity and mental purity, which many people feel with a sense of shame for any unseemly act through the need to wash away this “sin”.
Mania?
There is a term to define the pathological fear of microbes: this obsessive fear, expressed in excessively frequent hand washing, is called verminophobia. This is not only water and soap for the body: people suffering from verminophobia are constantly cleaning their home, the environment in which is already close to sterile, and on pain of death they cannot be forced to touch something outside this microbial space. If this happens, the toggle switch switches to the position “Brr! Disgusting! " and all kinds of antibacterial and disinfecting gels, wipes, sprays and other "near-sterile" products are used, the manufacturers of which make fortunes for lovers of absolute purity.
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Most often, such a desire to destroy all microbes around is in no way connected with real circumstances, that is, their number does not exceed the relative norm under which we all live, and does not cause the danger of infection with any disease. However, those who, in the face of an evil microbe, fall into outright panic, think differently, and therefore verminophobia is considered a kind of ailment.
Macbeth effect
It was not only Shakespeare's lady who tried to wash away the "damned spots": it was experimentally proved that this effect really exists, and has nothing to do with the fear of microbes. The experiment was conducted and described in detail by two American psychologists, Zhong Chenbo and Katie Lilienquist. During the study, the participants were divided into two groups. the first was given the task of recalling some of their actions that made them frankly proud of their behavior. The second group had the opposite goal: they had to remember something that causes shame, be it cheating, lying, or something else. The result was a request from the organizers: it was necessary to insert the missing letters into the words W_ _ H, SH_ _ER and S_ _P. In the first group, the majority answered as follows: WISH, SHAKER, STOP (“desire”, “shaker”, “stop”), in the second - WASH, SHOWER, SOAP (“wash”, “shower”, “soap”). See the difference? Positive memories formed words of a neutral character, while emotions, inspired by unseemly pictures from the past, prompted the participants to “wash” words. They conducted another experiment of a similar plan, but there the result was a small gift from the organizers: an antiseptic or a fountain pen. The first group with a "sense of guilt" by the absolute majority chose antiseptics, the second - in approximately equal amounts.
What is noteworthy: the Macbeth effect, most likely, has a rather clear localization: if the subject spoke about his unseemly act orally, then most often he chose hygiene products specifically for the oral cavity. If it was a written "confession," then a hand sanitizer was chosen among other options.
It is also interesting that the majority of representatives of the first group have a distortion in the perception of the choice made: along with washing their hands, people accepted their act, retroactively attributing to it a positive effect.
Let's go back to verminophobia. Another psychologist from the United States, Stanley Rahman, is sure that a pathological desire to wash hands could have arisen due to the violence, humiliation or betrayal of a loved one experienced in childhood. If a sufferer of this phobia meets the one who caused this injury, or even just remembers him, then hand washing becomes a subconscious ritual of cleansing not so much the physical as the mental body. I also noticed the following: if I have to talk with a person who, for some reason, is not very pleasant to me, then the result of such communication is an obsessive desire to wash my hands with a generous portion of laundry soap. To be sure, 72% - no Safeguard compares.
It was Rahman who introduced such a concept as “mental pollution”:
It is a persistent feeling of internal pollution caused by a psychological or mental disorder. And the point here is not ordinary dirt or dust, which you want to immediately wash off, but in the influence of an unsympathetic person.
Strange as it may seem, but in relation to the treatment of verminophobia, the principle of "knocking out a wedge by a wedge" operates. In order to heal alarmists, the most popular way is to force them to contact the cause of the fear, for example, regularly touch some dirty objects (trash cans, railings in the subway, etc.). However, Rahman is not sure of the effectiveness of this method: a quarter of patients are not going to continue the course of treatment after the first "wedge", and a third of those who have touched the required number of urns do not feel any improvement. Moreover, the need to wash your hands is not always associated with microbes: if it does not arise because of the fear of microbes, but, for example, because of violence, then at least touching all the trash cans in the world will not help.
In general, Rahman believes that here it is necessary to carry out treatment only at the mental level, because the cause of the disease is not physical, but mental dirt. Now the psychologist, in collaboration with a group of his colleagues, is developing methods according to the programs of which such treatment will be possible.
Reverse action
The German journal Social Psychological and Personality Science once published a study by local psychologists about the same topic. Experts from Germany are confident that a mentally healthy but tired or distressed person is quite capable of improving his emotional balance with the same hand washing. This process increases the level of optimism and builds self-confidence, helping to get rid of the negative residue left after some kind of failure.
There were not very many participants in the study - only 98 people (they could have invited two more for even counting), who were divided into three groups. Each group received their task, and the first two were given a test that they definitely could not cope with, and the organizers knew about it very well. When the time allotted for the task was running out, the first group was asked to wash their hands, and then all three groups were offered another test, much simpler than the previous one.
The results were very interesting. Despite the fact that the first group approached the second task more optimistically than the others, the second and third did the best. The researchers concluded that hand washing really helps to get rid of negativity, but at the same time it reduces motivation and the desire to achieve the set goal, "cuts" the amount of effort put into this.
It is possible that this is due to the subconscious mindset “finished the job - wash your hands,” that is, the person, having washed his hands, unconsciously “finishes” the work, despite the fact that it has not yet begun. Apparently, before some big and time-consuming business, you should listen to the opinion of German psychologists and take note of this: if you are confident in your abilities, but a little (or not a little) worried, just wash your hands, this will help calm down and easily complete planned stage.