title: Cognitions about bodily purity attenuate stress perception.
abstract: Based on the assumption that physical purity is associated with a clean slate impression, we examined how cognitions about bodily cleanliness modulate stress perception. Participants visualized themselves in a clean or dirty state before reporting the frequency of stress-related situations experienced in the past. In Study 1 (n = 519) and Study 2 (n = 647) cleanliness versus dirtiness cognitions reliably reduced stress perception. Further results and a mediation analysis revealed that this novel effect was not simply driven by participants' cognitive engagement in stress recall. Moreover, we found that participants' temporal engagement in the recall of past stressful events negatively correlated with the amount of perceived stress, indicating an ease-of-retrieval phenomenon. However, a direct manipulation of the number of recalled stressful events in Study 3 (n = 792) showed the opposite effect: few versus many recalled events increased the perceived frequency of past stress-related situations. Overall, these novel results indicate an interesting avenue for future research on cognitively oriented stress reduction interventions, add to the literature on purity-related clean slate effects, and may help to better understand washing rituals in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorders.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Cologne, Richard-Strauss-Str. 2, 50931, Cologne, Germany.
authors.forename: Kai
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kaspar
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Cologne, Richard-Strauss-Str. 2, 50931, Cologne, Germany.|Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Sarah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Cames
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001828:Body Image; D005260:Female; D005858:Germany; D006801:Humans; D006920:Hygiene; D007092:Imagination; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D012649:Self Concept; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult