The Lady Macbeth effect: what it is and how it expresses the feeling of guilt.

A curious psychological effect based on purification rituals and guilt.

Since ancient times, water has been seen as a pure element, capable of cleansing not only the body but also the conscience or even the soul. That is why it is often used symbolically in different acts and ceremonies of contrition or to free oneself from past mistakes.

However, it is not something reserved for the spiritual or religious sphere, but it is something frequent in our daily life: it is the Lady Macbeth effectwhich we are going to talk about in this article.

What is the Lady Macbeth effect?

It is known as the Lady Macbeth effect to the tendency or need to clean ourselves, wash our hands or take a shower after having committed an act that goes against our beliefs and feelings, in the face of the feeling of dislike and internal discomfort that contradicts our belief and our action. and feelings, due to the feeling of dislike and internal discomfort caused by the contradiction between our belief and our action.

It is a response to the cognitive dissonance that is present in the majority of the population, without being pathological, and that obeys the need to act to alleviate the discomfort caused by the incoherence. In other words: it seeks to wash our conscience of having done something that one considers bad or inappropriate and for which one feels guilty. And this washing is literal, since physical cleanliness is associated or linked to mental or moral cleanliness: the water will cleanse our guilt and discomfort just as it does the actual dirt.

Dissonant actions, words and thoughts can be of a very different nature or severity. In some cases they can be really severe, but it is not necessary that it is necessarily something traumatic or serious but it can come (and in fact it is the most frequent) from small lies, fights, thefts or even infidelities.

This effect occurs in acts that we do directly, but also in imagined acts, dreams or thoughts.. It has even been observed in video games, with players using tricks or cheating.

In general, we can include any act that seems relevant to us and for which we feel guilty because it contradicts values and beliefs that are ingrained and important for the person in question. It is even possible that it occurs in cases in which the subject himself has done nothing or has not been able to do anything but that arouse guilt, such as a fight between loved ones or the visualization of some kind of humiliation.

Curiously, the fact of washing one's hands seems to have a positive effect on reducing the feeling of guilt.In an experiment conducted by Drs. Zhong and Liljenquist, after having an unethical act typed on a computer, half of the participants were offered to wipe themselves with the excuse that the keyboard was not clean. Subsequently, all were asked to participate in a second unpaid experiment to help a researcher in distress. Those who washed up showed about 50% less interest in participating than those who did not, indicating the study that they had less need to repair or lessen their sense of guilt.

Why does this effect occur?

The reasons why this tendency exists are not fully known, although there is a clear link to conditioning and cultural learning..

On the one hand, we learn that water is capable of removing and cleaning physical dirt. This learning, together with the fact that cleansing promotes well-being and eliminates residues and pathogens, is generalized to other areas such as morality.

Likewise, as we have seen previously, throughout history, water has been associated with purification in many cultures and religions. water has been associated with purification in a great number of cultures and religions, including Judaism, Christianityincluding Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, among others.

The origin of its name.

"A little water will clean up the crime". This very representative phrase of the effect that is being explained in this article is part of the story of William Shakespeare's Macbeth, a play that is the origin of the name "A little water will cleanse crime.a play that is the origin of the name of the effect we are dealing with.

Throughout the play "Macbeth and Lady Macbeth" we see how Macbeth, a nobleman who achieves recognition in a battle against the Norsemen, succumbs to greed and ambition for power after being appointed baron by King Duncan.

Together with Lady Macbeth, his wife, he decides to plan and provoke the death of the monarch in order to obtain the crown (since both his appointment as baron and his ascension to king were predicted by witches). Having committed regicide, Macbeth exclaims "Shall the whole ocean wash the Blood from my hands, or shall my hands stain the green sea in a vast scarlet stain?".

It is after that moment that Lady Macbeth utters the opening line, proposing that a little water will wash away the guilt of murder. Despite this, throughout the story the woman begins to have hallucinations in which she sees the dead man's blood in which she sees the dead man's blood on her hands due to guilt, and finally ends up committing suicide.

Link with some pathologies

Although, as we have said, the Macbeth effect effect occurs in a generalized way in the population without its presence implying anything pathological, it is true that this effect also manifests itself (and in an exaggerated way) in some types of pathologies.The truth is that this effect also manifests itself (and also in an exaggerated manner) in some types of pathologies.

The clearest example is seen in obsessive disorders and specifically in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, which is characterized by the repeated occurrence of intrusive thoughts, recurrent and considered unacceptable by those who suffer from them, causing the appearance of anxiety that the subject usually tries to avoid through different rituals called compulsions (although such avoidance in the background feeds the perpetuation of anxiety).

Obsessions and/or compulsions (ritual actions are not always carried out, there may be obsession without compulsion as in obsessional neurosis) occupy much of the time and often limits the life of the sufferer. It is common for people with OCD to be hyperresponsible and have strong feelings of guilt regarding the content of their obsessive thoughts or the non-fulfillment of their rituals (in many cases the subject believes that the compulsion prevents what they have imagined from happening, since it is not uncommon for there to be a belief that thinking something is equivalent to doing it).

Within the disorder itself there are multiple variants with respect to obsessions and compulsions, but among the latter one of the most frequent is precisely that of repeated washing. Although in some cases the compulsion is linked to a panic at the idea of infecting or causing disease to people in the immediate environment, in many other cases the washing is a response to the feeling of guilt and an attempt to "wash it away".

It is linked to the obsession of contamination and to the mental pollution.the latter being the sensation of being internally dirty or impure without any external element or event that generates it. This pollution is an effect of the anxiety and discomfort generated by the thought, together with a strong guilt as the obsessions go against the person's beliefs. Therefore we can consider that in these cases we would be seeing a Macbeth effect in pathological degree.

In addition to Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, the Macbeth effect will also be seen more frequently in all disorders that are associated with feelings of guilt (even if guilt has no reason to be present). People with post-traumatic stress disorder or survivor syndrome may also be examples of populations in which it may occur more frequently.

References:

• Fairbrother, N., Newth, S., & Rachman, S. (2005). Mental pollution: Feelings of dirtiness without physical contact. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 43, 121-130.
• Khan, M., & Grisham, J. R. (2018).Wiping your conscience clean: Investigating the Macbeth effect in individuals with high obsessive-compulsive contamination concerns. Journal of Experimental Psychopathology, 1-10.
• Shakespeare, W. (2010). Macbeth. Boston, MA: English Play Press. (Original work published 1699).
• Zhong, C. B., & Liljenquist, K. (2006). Washing Away Your Sins: Threatened Morality and Physical Cleansing. Science, 313 (5792): 1451–1452.