As the dirt and germs are wiped away, we're left feeling not just bodily but also morally cleansed - a kind of metaphorical virtuosity that leads us to judge others more harshly. That's according to Chen-Bo Zhong's team, who invited 58 undergrads to a lab filled with spotless new equipment. Half the students were asked to clean their hands with an antiseptic wipe so as not to soil the shiny surfaces. Afterwards all the students rated the morality of six societal issues including pornography and littering. Those who'd wiped their hands made far harsher judgments than those who didn't.
It was a similar story in a follow-up study with hundreds of participants recruited via a nation-wide database. Those primed to feel clean by reading a short passage that began 'My hair feels clean and light. My breath is fresh ...' made far harsher moral judgements about 16 social issues compared with those primed to feel dirty by a passage beginning, 'My hair feels oily and heavy. My breath stinks ...'
A third study was identical to the second, except that after reading either the dirty or clean passage of text the 136 undergrad participants also ranked themselves against their peers on several factors including intelligence, attractiveness and moral character. As before, those primed with the clean text made more harsh moral judgements on social issues. Crucially, this association was entirely mediated by their having an inflated sense of moral virtuosity compared with their peers (by contrast, reading the clean vs. dirty text made no difference to self rankings on the other factors).
'Acts of cleanliness have not only the potential to shift our moral pendulum to a more virtuous self, but also license harsher moral judgement of others,' Zhong and his team concluded. _________________________________
Zhong, C., Strejcek, B., & Sivanathan, N. (2010). A clean self can render harsh moral judgment. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46 (5), 859-862 DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2010.04.003
Link to earlier related post: Your conscience really can be wiped clean.
It was one of those crazy assignment I have to embark as a blogger, paying a visit to the Penang Airport for 12 hours and then fly back at night.
"What was I supposed to do there?" I wailed into my mobile when I first heard about it.
"Well, you're being sent there to experience and to shop." Came the reply.
"You mean, you're sending me on an assignment to fly somewhere to go on a shopping spree?"
God I love my job.
That how I ended up at the airport at 8am this morning with a return ticket to Penang on my lap.
Now there's one thing I love flying domestic in KLIA is that inside the domestic departure area of KLIA, after check-in gate, you'd find yourself right in front of the possible ONLY Victoria Secret counter in the whole of Malaysia.
I literally did not walk further than 10 steps after the check-in that my shopping bug has bitten my hard, I already had three items in mind that I would bagged on the way back this morning, before departing!
On the flight, I eagerly awaited for my great day to begin while I indulged in my Dan Brown book which I bought in England.
Got it at sales for 50 pence. That's like RM2.50. You just got to love England.
Getting off the airport, I proceeded with the procedure of obtaining myself one of those security passes I was granted, so I can roam freely in and out of the terminal at will, duty free and all.
Now I have never shop at Penang Airport before, so I didn't know what to expect.
So imagine how surprised I was when I saw there were massage centre and business centre where you can access the internet.
That would be nice, but I have work to do. I need to SHOP! :D
Other outlets around like Sembonia, (being in a handbag obsession recently, I just couldn't resist starting my journey going through loads of bags)
Which coincidentally I've brought the same bag with me.
Love Sembonia bags, not as much as Gucci, but for a brand that started out as a street fashion, they've evolved impressively into a mid-luxury brand as of today. With each bag costing over RM500 and beyond.
Same with Bonia.
I walked into the store and found myself standing front of a patent leather bag that cost more than a thousand ringgit!
The lady was so nice to offer me a staff price, though it could have been the security pass I was wearing that gave her the impression I was a staff at the airport.
without flash
with flash
Saw a baby blue purse which I almost bought, loving the color from the window display. RM300. Reasonable.
So I asked the assistant to take it down for me to have a look.
with flash
I didn't get it, deciding that the color wasn't for me afterall.
So waving goodbye to the very expensive patent leather red shiny Bonia bag, I adjourned to other shops.
Then suddenly I have to stop at this outlet called Fashion Gallery.
Bizarre name but the sight made me heart stopped.
COACH!!! EEk!!
Okay. I officially SO LOVE this bag. And it's only RM1025! So much cheaper than the Coach retailed in KL!
Until the lady told me it was duty free price. My heart sank. (I'm only a domestic passenger, which meant I wasn't entitled to duty free)
I adore the bag so much! Just look at the color!
Then the lady suddenly offered, in whisper, to give me duty free price. In her words: I'll see what I can do.
Are all penang-nites SO NICE?!!!
SHIT.
I wanted to buy, but I have to control my spending! (Been spending a lot recently *shy*)
After what seems like eons of struggle, I decided I would give it a 3-hour thought about it, it literally took every strength in my body to carry myself out of the store.
grrr...
Temptation is such a bad thing.
As I continue to browse along the rows of shops, I was planting seeds in my mind which items I should pick up today?
A fragrance? Some chocolate, oh definitely.
Some gadget padding? For my future's iPhone and baby's new iPad.
Well, I guess you'll just have to wait and see what I'll be buying.
Oh, I actually did buy something.
Muahaha! Uber cheap Bodyshop shower gel, almost half the price compared to the ones sold outside. RM19.90 each! For Passion Fruit flavour!
To avoid traffic these days, especially during the peak lunch period, traffic at Mid Valley was atrocious, and I meant this for every day, finding car park would be a pain; I have pushed most of my Marie France Bodyline treatments to 4pm.
3 hours treatment would lead me to finishing around 7pm, just in time for dinner and head home traffic-free!
But because each time I visited Marie France, they would put me on a weighing machine *dread*, a contraption I have not stepped on for two years at least *living in denial*, and recorded down my fat lost process (well, cellulite is fat, losing it is kinda like losing fat, and fat equals to weight); I have to watch what I eat during the day time.
Which meant I didn't ate the whole morning right up till my first 4pm scheduled treatment.
You know how it is right? I wanted the measurement to be precise!
And thank god, my weight measurement has been unchanging (phew, wait, or has it actually decreased? Well, as long it's not going over the 130 lb threshold I'm not concerned).
But goodness, might I tell you I was starving!!!
After the first treatment, I have already asked two therapists what there were to eat in MV and Gardens, tracing through my mind thinking about all the possibilities of food option. Not a good thought when you're doing treatments in a slimming centre wtf.
I guess they have kind of guessed from the rumblings of my tummy that I needed food, so they adjourned me to the waiting area where they served me some tea and asked me to help myself to some healthy organic biscuits.
In fact, such nice was the service at Marie France Bodyline, the therapists would almost serve you at every possible way they can.
Ask for a milo and they'll prepare it for you.
If you don't fancy milo, there's black tea, green tea or ginger tea. I mean ginger tea! How healthy is that?!
Ask for extra towels, to shower, to wash up, to use as pillow case while they perform treatments on the bed for you, they'll give you one, or two, or three.
Try doing that at other slimming centre, hmph, I did and there was definitely no milo.
And ooh, I definitely love the interior of Mid Valley's Marie France. So victorian. *heart*
Some people expect cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to be more prescriptive than it is, and therapists to be more controlling than they really are. That's according to a series of interviews with 18 clients who undertook 8 sessions (14 hours) of CBT to help with their diagnosis of generalised anxiety disorder.
Henny Westra and colleagues selected for interview nine clients whose therapy had ended positively and nine whose therapy had ended poorly. Four of the clients were male. There were four CBT therapists - two men and two women. One was PhD qualified, two were senior clinical psychology grad students, one was junior.
The vast majority of client comments (84 per cent) relating to expectations were that the CBT was not what they'd anticipated. Clients whose outcome was good tended to say they'd been pleasantly surprised - the therapist was collaborative and non-judgmental, and they'd had the opportunity to direct the therapy and choose what to talk about. Of the therapeutic process, the positive outcome clients felt, to their surprise, that they could trust the process, felt comfortable, and that they learned more than they expected. Both good and poor outcome clients worked harder in therapy than they anticipated.
Unsurprisingly, the poor outcome clients tended to say they'd been disappointed by the therapeutic process. In the majority of cases, they took pains not to blame their therapist, instead attributing their lack of progress to time constraints, poor health, their own unrealistic expectations, or their failure to remember the techniques. Direct criticism of the therapist was rare (even though interviewees were reassured their comments were confidential). One person said it would have been better not to have waited until session seven to discuss a key subject from their past.
Sixteen per cent of expectation-related comments conveyed that therapy was just as had been expected. One good outcome client in this category said they thought the therapist would get to the root of their problems, and he did. Poor outcome clients, by contrast, tended to make superficial remarks: 'it was fairly similar to what I expected, I guess'.
The broader context for this research is that client expectations are one of several factors that are known to be associated with therapeutic success (with positive expectations tending to precede good outcomes). However, very little research until now has looked at expectancy violations - that is, when therapy isn't what was expected, for good or bad.
'The findings ... suggest that expectancy disconfirmation in CBT, particularly negative expectations for the therapist and the therapy process, is a common and potentially powerful phenomenon in the experiences of CBT clients with good outcomes,' the researchers said.
A major shortcoming of this research is that the interviews weren't conducted until after the final therapy session, so it's possible that clients recalled their earlier expectations in light of their positive or negative experiences in therapy. _________________________________
Westra, H., Aviram, A., Barnes, M., & Angus, L. (2010). Therapy was not what I expected: A preliminary qualitative analysis of concordance between client expectations and experience of cognitive-behavioural therapy. Psychotherapy Research, 20 (4), 436-446 DOI: 10.1080/10503301003657395
Eventually Bong did manage to drive us to Annah Rais, after the first stop at Semenggoh to catch a glimpse of some Orang Utans.
There's a map at the entrance that outlined the vastness of a long house and also for guidance in case you get lost.
JK. It's not that massive.
But it does tell you that the natives in the Long House don't just build houses when one becomes independent or gets married and starts a family.
Extension of the family or village (eventually it will become a village) just extend from the original Long House and build their shelter next to one another.
But first, mind I remind you that Annah Rais is rather a "more commercialized" long house you'd find in Sarawak. In fact, it's kind of a popular tourist destination location considering it's the nearest long house one can access from Kuching town.
If you want real native long house, then brace yourself for 3 hours of off-the-road 4 wheel drive into the jungle and then a rapid shoot up the river to find yourself a native long house, in the middle of the jungle, and coincidentally next to a very prestigious 5 star Hilton resort.
more specifically - the Hilton Batang Ai Resort
Ironic? Welcome to commercialism.
Back to entering Annah Rais, we were each welcomed with a drink of Tuak, a strong local brew,
well technically it's rice wine, but sort of like whisky, or vodka in the local community.
Pretty strong stuff and watch how many shots you down if you don't want to end up naked in the jungle without a trace of previous night's memory.
I did some awesome stuff with Tuak later on in the trip after I returned from my "adventure", but let's talk about it later.
There's not a lot to talk about or to show of the Annah Rais Long House. If you know of the tribe, then it's just that it is, a super long stretch of endless walking on wooden platform raised high up meters above grounds.
Else it would definitely be an experience for you to understand and obverse such a bizarre culture yourself.
I would imagine it would be fascinating to foreigners who've never heard of such community before to walk through this place.
Everyone lived together in harmony and next to each other, sharing almost the same "common area" or front porch.
Even sharing the same pet.
For people who came from big cities and were used to leading a sort of independent life where each apartment/condo/house were built to ensure privacy, a sight such as this would be mind-boggling and twisted.
In the olden days, where each long house expanded large enough, it eventually becomes a tribe or a small community of its own, and each tribe would have a leader that represents the village.
Males of the community would go out on battles, to conquer or defend one's own tribe, for personal or general gain, and bring back trophies of the enemy's heads.
Gathered the skulls and put them in a sacred "trophy" room where it represented the community's head ego.
But of course those were in the past, now you can come to Annah Rais and buy yourself a RM4 banana from sellers cum residents here who served tourists as their part time.
Visit a river that led to a waterfall, if you're keen to trek with a guide you hired earlier.
Or just check out some of the other houses that were on display.
Cats here were so cool. Ladder climbing and all.
And a couple of fancy plants photo made of and fertilized with organic materials to end the post.
So that's one end to my Kuching short detour, on with my GREAT adventure in the next few posts. (next post I'll be doing live posts on a place I'm visiting in two days, stay with me :) )
Zhong, C., Strejcek, B., & Sivanathan, N. (2010). A clean self can render harsh moral judgment. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46 (5), 859-862 DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2010.04.003
