The issue of cleanliness in its clean/dirty and pure/impure antinomies definitely has a social and cultural dimension. Some daily cleaning practices are indeed quite common actions in every culture and society, even if some differences in the frequency and quality of the practices and in the value attributed to them do exist. In this article, we will discuss how cleaning practices and contamination fears sink their roots in the social context and in cultural practices. In particular, we will explore the connections between one's own sense of cleanliness and attitudes of prejudice and intolerance toward other groups. First, the issue of cleanliness over the centuries and the exaggerations of cleanliness referring to individual psychopathology will be examined. Then, the psychosocial meaning of cleanliness will be considered in revealing the impact of the clean/dirty and pure/impure antinomies on day-to-day social interactions with others.
AlexanderM. G.BrewerM. B.HerrmannR. K. (1999) Images and affect: A functional analysis of out-group stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology77: 78–93.
2.
AllportG. W.RossJ. M. (1967) Personal religious orientation and prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology5: 432–443.
3.
AshenburgK. (2007) The dirt on clean. An unsanitized history, New York, Farrar: Straus & Giroux.
4.
BatsonC. D.StocksE. L. (2005) Religion and prejudice. In: J. F.DovidioP. S.GlickL. A.Rudman (eds) On the nature of prejudice: Fifty years after Allport, Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, pp. 413–428.
5.
BilligM. (2002) Henri Tajfel's ‘cognitive aspects of prejudice’ and the psychology of bigotry. British Journal of Social Psychology41: 171–188.
6.
BrownR. (1995) Prejudice: Its social psychology, Oxford: Blackwell.
7.
CamporesiP. (1995) Il governo del corpo. [The government of the body], Milano: Garzanti.
8.
CipollaC. M. (1981) Fighting the plague in seventeenth-century Italy, Madison, WIS: University of Wisconsin Press.
9.
CipollaC. M. (1989) Miasmi e umori. [Miasms and fluids], Bologna: Il Mulino.
10.
CorbinA. (1982) Le miasme et la jonquille: L'odorat et l'imaginaire social XVIIIe-XIXe siècles, Paris: Aubier Montaigne.
11.
CoveyH. C. (1998) Social perceptions of people with disabilities in history, Springfield, IL: Thomas.
12.
De SilvaP.MarksM. (1999) The role of traumatic experiences in the genesis of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Behaviour Research and Therapy37: 941–951.
13.
DouglasM. (1966) Purity and danger: An analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo, New York: Praeger.
14.
EkmanP. (1992) An argument for basic emotions. Cognition & Emotion6: 169–200.
15.
EliasN. (1978) The civilizing process: The history of manners, Oxford: Blackwell.
16.
EssesV.VeenvlietS.HodsonG.MihicL. (2008) Justice, morality, and the dehumanization of refugees. Social Justice Research21: 4–25.
17.
FairbrotherN.NewthS. J.RachmanS. (2005) Mental pollution: Feelings of dirtiness without physical contact. Behaviour Research and Therapy43: 121–130.
18.
FairbrotherN.RachmanS. (2004) Feelings of mental pollution subsequent to sexual assault. Behaviour Research and Therapy42: 173–189.
19.
FaulknerJ.SchallerM.ParkJ. H.DuncanL. A. (2004) Evolved disease-avoidance mechanisms and contemporary xenophobic attitudes. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations7: 333–353.
20.
FerrièreM. (2002) Histoire des peurs alimentaires du Moyen-Âge à nos jours. [History of food fears from the Middle Ages to the present], Paris: Seuil.
21.
GershunyB. S.BaerL.RadomskyA. S.WilsonK. A.JenikeM. A. (2003) Connections among symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder: A case series. Behaviour Research and Therapy41: 1029–1041.
22.
GoldhagenD. J. (1996) Hitler's willing executioners, New York: Random House.
23.
GreenT. (2007) Inquisition: The reign of fear, London: Macmillan.
24.
HaidtJ. (2003) The moral emotions. In: R. J.DavidsonK. R.SchererH. H.Goldsmith (eds) Handbook of affective sciences, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 852–870.
25.
HeathertonT. F.KleckR. E.HeblM. R.HullJ. G. (2000) The social psychology of stigma, New York: Guilford Press.
26.
HewstoneM.RubinM.WillisH. (2002) Intergroup bias. Annual Review of Psychology53: 575–604.
27.
HodsonG.CostelloK. (2007) Interpersonal disgust, ideological orientations, and dehumanization as predictors of intergroup attitudes. Psychological Science18: 691–698.
28.
HoggM. A. (1996) Intragroup processes, group structure and social identity. In: W. P.Robinson (ed) Social groups and identities: Developing the legacy of Henri Tajfel, London: Butterworth-Heinemann, pp. 65–93.
29.
HorbergE. J.OveisC.KeltnerD.CohenA. B. (2009) Disgust and moralization of purity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology97(6): 963–976.
30.
HummertM. L. (1994) Physiognomic cues and activation of stereotypes of the elderly in interaction. International Journal of Aging and Human Development39: 5–20.
31.
InbarY.PizarroD.BloomP. (2009) Conservatives are more easily disgusted than liberals. Cognition & Emotion23: 714–725.
32.
JewkesR. K.WoodK. (1999) Problematizing pollution: Dirty wombs, ritual pollution, and pathological processes. Medical Anthropology18: 163–186.
33.
JodeletD. (1989) Folies et représentations sociales. [Follies and social representations], Paris: P.U.F.
KurzbanR.LearyM. R. (2001) Evolutionary origins of stigmatization: The functions of social exclusion. Psychological Bulletin127: 187–208.
36.
MarkelH. (1999) When germs travel. The American Scholar68: 61–69.
37.
MarkelH.SternA. M. (2002) The foreignness of germs: The persistent association of immigrants and disease in American society. Milbank Quarterly80: 757–788.
38.
MillerW. I. (1997) The anatomy of disgust, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
39.
MontepareJ. M.ZebrowitzL. A. (2002) A social-developmental view of ageism. In: TDNelson (ed) Ageism, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 77–125.
40.
OldstoneM. B. A. (1998) Viruses, plagues, and history, New York: Oxford University Press.
41.
OpotowS. (1990) Moral exclusion and injustice: An introduction. Journal of Social Issues46: 1–20.
42.
ParkJ. H.FaulknerJ.SchallerM. (2003) Evolved disease-avoidance processes and contemporary anti-social behavior: Prejudicial attitudes and avoidance of people with physical disabilities. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior27: 65–87.
43.
PassiniS. (2007) Un approfondimento della relazione tra autoritarismo e religione [A deepen on the relationship between authoritarianism and religion]. Rassegna di Psicologia1: 93–107.
44.
RachmanS. (2004) Fear of contamination. Behaviour Research and Therapy42: 1227–1255.
45.
RachmanS.HodgsonR. J (1980) Obsessions and compulsions, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
46.
RadomskyA. S.ElliottC. M. (2009) Analyses of mental contamination: Part II, individual differences. Behaviour Research and Therapy47: 1004–1011.
47.
RapoportJ. L. (1989) The boy who couldn't stop washing: The experience & treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder, New York: Penguin.
48.
RasmussenS. A.EisenJ. L. (1992) The epidemiology and clinical features of obsessive compulsive disorder. The Psychiatric Clinics of North America15: 743–758.
49.
RemottiF. (1996) Contro l'identità. [Against the identity], Roma-Bari: Laterza.
50.
RichlerM. (1994) This year in Jerusalem, New York: Knopf.
51.
RozinP.FallonA. E. (1987) A perspective on disgust. Psychological Review94: 32–41.
52.
RozinP.HaidtJ.McCauleyC. R. (2000) Disgust. In: M.LewisJ. M.Haviland-Jones (eds) Handbook of emotions, New York: Guilford Press, pp. 637–653.
53.
RozinP.RoyzmanE. B. (2001) Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and contagion. Personality and Social Psychology Review5: 296–320.
54.
RyanW. (1971) Blaming the victim, New York: Pantheon.
55.
SacchiP. (2007) Sacro/profano, impuro/puro nella Bibbia e dintorni. [Sacre/profane, impure/pure in the Bible and so on], Brescia: Morcelliana.
56.
SchallerM.ParkJ. H.MuellerA. (2003) Fear of the dark: Interactive effects of beliefs about danger and ambient darkness on ethnic stereotypes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin29: 637–649.
57.
SchiefenhövelW. (1997) Good tastes and bad tastes: Preferences and aversions as biological principles. In: H.MacBeth (ed) Food preferences and taste, Providence, RI: Berghahn, pp. 55–64.
58.
SchwartzS. H.StruchN. (1989) Values, stereotypes, and intergroup antagonism. In: D.Bar-TalC. G.GraumanA. W.KruglanskiW.Stroebe (eds) Stereotypes and prejudice: Changing conceptions, New York: Springer-Verlag, pp. 151–167.
59.
ShermanG. D.CloreG. L. (2009) The color of sin. White and black are perceptual symbols of moral purity and pollution. Psychological Science20(8): 1019–1025.
60.
SnyderM. L.KleckR. E.StrentaA.MentzerS. J. (1979) Avoidance of the handicapped: An attributional ambiguity analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology37: 2297–2306.
61.
Speltini, G., Passini, S., & Morselli, D. (2010). Questioni di pulizia: rappresentazioni e valori [Cleaning issues: representations and values]. Giornale Italiano Di Psicologia, 37, 623–646.
62.
SuedfeldP.SchallerM. (2002) Authoritarianism and the Holocaust: Some cognitive and affective implications. In: L. S.NewmanR.Erber (eds) What social psychology can tell us about the Holocaust: Understanding perpetrator behavior, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, pp. 68–90.
63.
TajfelH. (1981) Human groups and social categories. Studies in social psychology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
64.
TajfelH.TurnerJ. C. (1979) An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In: W.AustinS. Worchel (eds) The social psychology of intergroup relations, Chicago: Nelson Hall, pp. 33–47.
65.
VigarelloG. (1985) Le propre et le sale. [The cleanliness and the dirtiness]. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.
66.
WoodyS. R.TolinD. F. (2002) The relationship between disgust sensitivity and avoidant behavior: Studies of clinical and nonclinical samples. Journal of Anxiety Disorders16: 543–559.
67.
Yaryura-TobiasJ. A.NezigogluF. A. (1997) Obsessive-compulsive disorder spectrum: Pathogenesis, diagnosis, and treatment, Washington: American Psychiatric Press.
