我一心痒就 human flesh search engine 了一下，发现李同学原来是密西根大学心理学系的研究生，在 Schwartz 教授的实验室研究很有趣的课题，本科在香港中文大学毕业。这个英文名字，我猜，十有八九是自己给取的，李同学一定也是那个神神叨叨口没遮拦的小个子导演的影迷。要么就是另一个神神叨叨的导演的影迷。
To Quiet the Mind After a Tough Choice, Use Soap:
Washing your hands after making a difficult choice may help you live with your decision, new research suggests. Rather than looking at the moral implications of such decisions, as other studies on hand-washing have done (for example, Zhong and Liljenquist, Science, 8 September 2006), this Brevium investigates how hand-washing can alleviate a condition called “cognitive dissonance,” the uncomfortable feeling that comes from holding two opposing ideas in your mind at the same time. Spike W. S. Lee and Norbert Schwarz conducted two experiments. In the first, undergraduate students ranked 10 CDs, as part of an alleged consumer survey, and then were given a choice of taking home their fifth or sixth choices. Those students who washed their hands after making this choice later ranked their chosen and rejected CDs in roughly the same way as they had initially. In contrast, students who did not wash their hands later ranked their chosen CD substantially higher than the one they rejected, suggesting that they were rationalizing their choice. A second experiment, in which students chose one of two different fruit jams and then rated how they expected the jams to taste, had similar results. Students who cleaned their hands expected the jams to taste roughly the same, whereas students who had not cleaned their hands expected the chosen jam to taste much better. “Much as washing can cleanse us from traces of past immoral behavior, it can also cleanse us from traces of past decisions, reducing the need to justify them,” the authors write.
Article #7: "Washing Away Postdecisional Dissonance," by S.W.S. Lee; N. Schwarz at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI.
