R3.1. Salient content

As noted in the target article (sect. 4.1), “cleansing exerts its influence on whatever domain is salient to the person in a given situation. This context sensitivity of cleansing effects is consistent with situated perspectives on mental processes (Mesquita, Barrett, & Smith, Reference Mesquita, Barrett and Smith2010; Smith & Semin, Reference Smith and Semin2004) and parallels the observation that feelings and metacognitive experiences are brought to bear on what is in the focus of attention at the time of the experience (Schwarz, Reference Schwarz, Mesquita, Barrett and Smith2010, Reference Schwarz, Van Lange, Kruglanski and Higgins2012).” With salient content, there is a focal domain being separated from or connected to, producing systematic effects. Without salient content, there is no focal domain to separate from or connect to, so no systematic effect is expected.

We agree with Wyer and Briñol and Petty that an experience that comes before cleansing is more likely to be separated from the self than one that comes after cleansing, because an experience that comes before cleansing is more likely to be salient during cleansing than an experience that comes after cleansing. Exceptions are plausible. Suppose you shook someone's hand and later learn about the person's serious misdeeds. Most likely, you would feel better remembering that you did wash your hands after the handshake (than if you did not), even though the “experience” of contaminating contact followed rather than preceded the cleansing. Nevertheless, we expect the cleansing effect to be even stronger if you had already known about the person's misdeeds before shaking their hands and washing yours.

Related manifestations of salient content can be seen in religious and cultural practice. “For instance, getting rid of a sin often requires recounting it first” (Kardos). One's sin is made salient, then separated from oneself. Similarly, traditional Chinese place their hands above an incense burner for purification and removal of bad luck before touching the god of wealth to receive good luck. One's bad luck is made salient, then separated from oneself, before connecting oneself to good luck.

Missing the role of salient content results in mispredictions about the influence of grounded procedures. Urminsky argues that attitudes and behaviors that are stable over extended periods of time contradict our observation that physical acts of separation exert attitudinal and behavioral influence. This argument is misguided for several reasons. First, it ignores the existence of long-term changes in attitudes and behaviors (e.g., risk preference; Schildberg-Hörisch, Reference Schildberg-Hörisch2018) as well as personality (Atherton, Grijalva, Roberts, & Robins, Reference Atherton, Grijalva, Roberts and Robins2020; Caspi, Roberts, & Shiner, Reference Caspi, Roberts and Shiner2005). Second, it focuses on the pervasive occurrence of physical separation but ignores the equally pervasive occurrence of connection in daily life (cf. Kardos). Third and most fundamentally, the grounded procedures prediction is not that people change their attitudes and behaviors as frequently as they wash their hands or touch objects of daily life; it is that separating and connecting can remove aspects from, or add aspects to, the salient content that people consider as they form attitudinal judgments and make behavioral decisions. How much that influences the final judgment or decision depends on which additional contents are considered, consistent with the logic of mental construal (Bless & Schwarz, Reference Bless and Schwarz2010; Schwarz, Reference Schwarz2007).

The principle of salient content also has methodological implications. Systematic effects of separation or connection can only be observed when most participants in a study have the same salient content in mind. If each participant separates from or connects to something else, no systematic effect will be apparent when conditions are compared.

R3.2. Subjective construal

The psychological effect of grounded procedures further depends on how the physical act is construed in a given context. As noted in the target article (sect. 3.1), “the principle of context-dependent attribute salience implies that the same sensorimotor experience can be construed differently to highlight different salient attributes, resulting in different effects.” A physical act subjectively construed as separation (or connection) can be expected to attenuate (or accentuate) the influence of salient content. The same physical act subjectively construed as something else cannot be expected to produce the same effect (as demonstrated in Körner & Strack, Reference Körner and Strack2019 and pointed out by Körner & Strack).

One reading of these properties may be that the sensorimotor experience per se of a physical act does not matter at all; only the subjective construal of it does (Briñol & Petty). We take a milder stance, for two reasons. First, although experimental manipulations of the subjective construal of a physical act of cleansing can produce different effects (Kim, Duhachek, Briñol, Lee, & Petty, Reference Kim, Duhachek, Briñol, Lee and Petty2020; Körner & Strack, Reference Körner and Strack2019), in the absence of such manipulations, people typically do construe physical acts of cleansing as separating contaminants. Default subjective construals of this sort are likely to characterize many physical acts of separation (e.g., destroying an object, throwing it away) and connection (e.g., touching an object, keeping it close). Second, actual sensorimotor experience (e.g., washing hands) tends to produce stronger effects than merely conceptual activation (e.g., scrambling cleansing-related words), suggesting that sensorimotor experience does contribute to cleansing effects (target article, sect. 4.3) and likely other grounded procedures. Overall, our stance is that both subjective construal and sensorimotor experience matter. We expect subjective construal (whether by default or by manipulation) to matter more for the effect direction and sensorimotor experience (varying from strongest to weakest engagement; related to Haberkamp & Schmidt's notion of parametric manipulation) to matter more for the effect size.

The role of subjective construal underlies an issue raised by Schubert and Grüning: “Bafflingly, many behaviors cited as implementing separation through cleansing are either pretend (participants hands are clean to begin with), or are even confounded with the opposite of separation, namely application (e.g., hand sanitizer) or outright contamination (e.g., burning incense).” Using hand sanitizer indeed involves applying it to one's hands, but the subjective construal of the physical act is sanitizing, that is, killing germs from one's hands, as is evident from product descriptions on its packaging. Burning incense, in the cultural context in which we discussed this example, is construed by traditional Chinese as purifying the air, driving away insects, and getting rid of negative energies (Incense – Chinese Customs, n.d.), all about separating things from oneself.

Beyond these consequences, subjective construal may also be relevant to antecedents of separation. Kardos notes, “The dilemma of dirty money is an example for desiring things that are not clean.” It may or may not be a dilemma. Dirty money has been shown to elicit “selfish, greedy, and exploitative” desires and behaviors (Yang et al., Reference Yang, Wu, Zhou, Mead, Vohs and Baumeister2013, p. 473), consistent with the metaphorical association of dirtiness with immorality (Lakoff & Johnson, Reference Lakoff and Johnson1999; Lee & Schwarz, Reference Lee and Schwarz2011, Reference Lee, Schwarz, Duschinsky, Schnall and Weiss2016). And dirty money, despite being dirty, is still money (Tasimi & Gross, Reference Tasimi and Gross2020). It affords at least two subjective construals: physical dirtiness and monetary value. Their relative salience and utility may determine the direction and strength of motivation toward dirty money.

These observations highlight that changing the subjective construal of a physical act can change its consequences and antecedents. Note that subjective construal can take place within an individual mind – or in a shared reality across minds, a theme we will pick up again in sect. R5.

R7.1. Developmental analyses

Conjectures about the ontogeny of the link between physical cleansing and psychological separation are offered by Gilead et al., who suggest that it may be the result of an innate primitive, statistical learning, or sociocultural meaning. Our perspective is that the goal of a procedure generalizes over developmental time, from the specific goal of cleansing in a particular domain (e.g., separating contaminants from one's body) to a more general goal of separating any physical entities from one's body, to a mental experience of separating psychological entities from one's self. It is a process of abstraction that involves both statistical learning (which, as Gilead et al. noted, requires subjective construal; sect. R3.2) and sociocultural reinforcement (sect. R5). We are agnostic about the presence of innate primitives. To illustrate why, consider the development of cleansing behavior.

Infants do not seem to show a strong desire for cleansing, perhaps because they are not disgusted by the things that disgust adults (e.g., feces and mess; Rozin & Fallon, Reference Rozin and Fallon1987). Because innate predispositions can emerge later in life (e.g., romantic attraction emerges during puberty; Curtis & Biran, Reference Curtis and Biran2001), the absence of an early desire for cleansing does not necessarily imply the absence of an innate primitive. But the extended effort involved in socializing young children about cleansing (Gerdin, Venkatesh, Rottman, & DeJesus [Gerdin et al.]) seems more compatible with sociocultural reinforcement of a learned construal of what needs to be cleansed and what cleansing means. We therefore join Gerdin et al.'s call for investigations into how grounded procedures unfold from infancy to childhood – in fact, even into adolescence and adulthood – and agree with many of their predictions. We doubt, however, that knowledge about the threatening nature of contaminants is required to learn about separation. Although parents are likely to emphasize this rationale in cleansing education, separation is just as well exemplified by washing one's favorite jam off one's sticky fingers.

Gerdin et al. also suggest, “If grounded procedures of separation are the proximate mechanism behind all of these domains, then one may predict that children will display cleansing effects and other ‘separation effects’ at similar developmental time points. Children should start cleansing themselves of dirt and germs at the same time they begin to separate themselves from social outgroup members.” Not necessarily. A proximate mechanism of cleansing does not necessitate that all forms of physical and mental separation emerge at the same developmental timepoint. To illustrate, consider disgust. Disgust can be a proximate mechanism for adults' disapproval of certain moral violations (Chapman & Anderson, Reference Chapman and Anderson2013), but this does not necessitate that physical and moral disgust emerge at the same developmental timepoint. Instead, disgust generalizes from physical to moral events as the child develops (Danovitch & Bloom, Reference Danovitch and Bloom2009). Similar trajectories may hold for grounded procedures of separation.

R7.2. Evolutionary/functional analyses

Schubert and Grüning highlight the broad utility of “dual inheritance approaches that argue that biology and culture co-evolve and jointly determine behavior.” Given the adaptive functions of cleansing and disgust (e.g., for pathogen avoidance; Tybur & Lieberman) and the rich sociocultural meanings around them (sects. R5 and R7.1), we have no doubt that they have been subject to processes of biological and cultural evolution. One prediction is that “the involvement of the innate blueprint differs among the provided examples. It may be particularly prominent in the avoidance response provided by the disgust reactions, and much more incidental in purification by smoke” (Schubert & Grüning). Testing whether differential adaptive values translate into differential effect sizes and elicitation likelihoods will bear on the evolutionary perspective. Related to this line of thinking, cleansing effects are overall stronger in sexual than non-sexual moral violations (Lee et al., Reference Lee, Chen, Ma and Hoang2020a). More generally, testing specific predictions derived from co-evolutionary perspectives on cleansing and other physical acts of separation and connection will facilitate integration of the proposed proximate mechanism with more distal explanations (Tinbergen, Reference Tinbergen1963/2010).

By outlining the functions, mechanisms, and byproducts of disgust and how these inform diverse topics (e.g., politics, psychopathology, social exclusion), Tybur and Lieberman argue that “A similar approach might contribute to our understanding of cleansing…. Myriad consequences of cleansing could also reflect byproducts of pathogen-neutralizing adaptations.” We share these interests and submit that separation is an adaptive aspect of disgust (sect. 3.2) that serves as a proximate link from disgust's primary functions (separation from disgust elicitors) to its byproduct phenomena (separation in general). Tybur and Lieberman further point out that “L&S's account of grounded procedures… does not address the function of the effects of cleansing, nor does it consider whether such effects might arise as byproducts, perhaps of pathogen-avoidance adaptations.” This is a fair critique and we elaborate on the functions of grounded procedures below.

Cleansing undoubtedly serves pathogen-avoidance functions, as shown in public health research and recommendations (Boyce & Pittet, Reference Boyce and Pittet2002; Kampf & Kramer, Reference Kampf and Kramer2004; Pittet, Allegranzi, & Boyce, Reference Pittet, Allegranzi and Boyce2009) as well as psychological investigations (Rozin & Fallon, Reference Rozin and Fallon1987). But there is more to cleansing than pathogen avoidance, as indicated by the domain-general consequences of cleansing (sect. 4.1), which may be overgeneralizations of the behavioral immune system (Schaller, Reference Schaller and Buss2015; Schaller & Park, Reference Schaller and Park2011). Zooming out from the specific case of cleansing, grounded procedures of separation and connection in general serve at least three functions. (i) They serve the epistemic function of using tangible, physical experience to scaffold intangible, mental operations (target article; Landau, Reference Landau2017; Williams, Huang, & Bargh, Reference Williams, Huang and Bargh2009). (ii) They serve the experiential function of concretizing (Gilead et al.) and intensifying (Horner & Greenberg; Kwon et al.) the psychological experience of separating from or connecting to objects and their associated events, experiences, and sense of self. (iii) They serve the sociocultural function of instantiating shared reality (Rossignac-Milon & Higgins), connecting people to their identified community (Oyserman), and helping them ameliorate existential concerns (Horner & Greenberg). Given these epistemic, experiential, and sociocultural functions of grounded procedures, both their phylogeny and ontogeny are likely to be driven by cultural forces alongside biological ones (Schubert & Grüning).

R8.1. Additional candidates for intrapersonal and interpersonal forms of separation and connection

Felisatti et al. hypothesize that arithmetic operations of subtraction and addition confer a psychological sense of separation and connection, respectively. Supportive evidence for these links has been found in semantic priming (Bassok, Pedigo, & Oskarsson, Reference Bassok, Pedigo and Oskarsson2008), math education (Sinclair & Heyd-Metzuyanim, Reference Sinclair and Heyd-Metzuyanim2014), and attitude change (Paredes, Guyer, Briñol, & Petty, Reference Paredes, Guyer, Briñol and Petty2019). If mathematical thinking and psychological experience are not only related to each other (predicting cross-domain priming effects), but also similarly grounded in physical acts of separation and connection (Felisatti et al.), it would imply that physical experience scaffolds some of the most abstract mental representations key to humans' success, from math (Lakoff & Núñez, Reference Lakoff and Núñez2000) to culture (Oyserman et al., Reference Oyserman, Sorensen, Reber and Chen2009).

Physical acts of separation and connection can be contrasted with each other, but both involve bodily action. It seems obvious that one's body is owned by oneself; nevertheless, people differ in their subjective sense of body ownership. Scattolin, Panasiti, and Aglioti (Scattolin et al.) suggest that a high (vs. low) sense of body ownership may be experienced as connection to (vs. separation from) oneself, a possibility raised by their observation that variations in body ownership show parallel properties to those of grounded procedures, including domain- and valence-general consequences (target article, sects. 4.1 and 4.2) and valence-asymmetric antecedents (sect. 4.4). In addition to body ownership, continuity (vs. discontinuity) between one's past and present self may be another intrapersonal form of connection (vs. separation), according to Légeret and Hoffrage, who also suggest social inclusion (vs. exclusion) as an interpersonal form of connection (vs. separation).

Intrapersonal and interpersonal (i.e., non-physical) forms of separation can be recruited in the maintenance of a positive self-evaluation (e.g., by separating an immoral behavior from one's self-view or distancing oneself from an outperforming other; Tesser, Reference Tesser2000). When non-physical forms of separation as well as physical ones (e.g., cleansing) are all readily available, Wyer asks, which kind of strategies do people use? We suggest several determinants, including individual differences in (i) habitual behavior and (ii) chronic thought and feeling, and situational differences in (iii) fit and (iv) salience, reminiscent of the social cognition principles of accessibility and applicability (Higgins, Reference Higgins, Higgins and Kruglanski1996). People who habitually wash their hands or take a shower when they feel anxious, stressed, guilty, or unpleasant in other ways are likely to keep exhibiting these behaviors. The same applies to people who chronically think about and feel the urge for cleansing (e.g., OCD patients; sect. R6). Different situations can also trigger different emotions, motivations, and actions (target article, Table 2). A physical form of separation is more likely to occur when it matches the psychological features of a given situation. Such occurrence, contrary to Wyer's expectation, can be spontaneous, as when participants spontaneously cleansed themselves after thinking about unpleasant sexual encounters (Elliott & Radomsky, Reference Elliott and Radomsky2009, Reference Elliott and Radomsky2012; Fairbrother, Newth, & Rachman, Reference Fairbrother, Newth and Rachman2005; Herba & Rachman, Reference Herba and Rachman2007).

R8.2. Various physical forms of cleansing, separation, and connection

Vicarious cleansing (e.g., watching someone wash their hands) can influence one's attitudes and behaviors, though less strongly than actual cleansing does (e.g., washing one's own hands; Xu, Bègue, & Bushman, Reference Xu, Bègue and Bushman2014). The reason, Briñol and Petty speculate, is that actual experience, relative to vicarious or imagined experience, is more strongly linked to the self (see also target article, sect. 6.1). Ekves et al., drawing on the theory of intersecting object histories (sect. R4), further predict that the effect of watching someone else will be graded: “The more history the person you are watching shares with you (is it your partner, your friend, or a stranger?), the stronger the effect should be on you.” We agree with these predictions.

There are other physical forms of separation than cleansing, such as movement away from the self and enclosure of objects (target article, sect. 4.5). Recent research showed that when 5- to 6-year-olds were seated at a table and had the opportunity to cheat by peeking at an answer sheet on a nearby table without leaving their seat, simply having a physical barrier that separated the two tables reduced cheating behavior by half – even though the barrier was merely an empty frame that did not interfere with the ability to peek or when the barrier was merely imagined (Zhao et al., Reference Zhao, Zheng, Compton, Qin, Zheng, Fu and Heyman2020). When separation is less subtle and more intentional, and when the entity being separated is not a random object in an experiment but a personally meaningful object with strong associations with one's past self (e.g., a wedding ring), stronger effects are expected (Ekves et al.).

Turning from separation to connection, Wentzel, von Walter, and Scharfenberger (Wentzel et al.) recommend exploring different physical forms of grounded connection, including touching a physical entity, incorporating it (e.g., eating or drinking it), being encompassed by it (e.g., wearing it), and creating it. These can be redescribed (Fig. R2) as entity interfacing self, entity in self, self in entity, and self making entity. When the entity is another person, connection can also occur by sharing of physical space and coordination of physical activity (Kwon et al.). Such diverse forms may be construed as different versions of connection that underlie different but related psychological notions (e.g., ownership, interdependence), much like different forms of separation have different shades of meaning (target article, Table 2). Notwithstanding these differences (as noted by Urminsky), grounded procedures are posited at a level of abstraction that integrates multiple classes of phenomena, all of which involve various physical forms of separation and connection.

Figure R2.

Varieties of grounded connection.

Although separation and connection can be examined independently of each other, predictions can also be made about their interplay. For example, if people expect opportunities of separation (e.g., handwashing) in the near future, they should be more willing to connect with negative entities (e.g., tainted money) at the moment (Kardos). More generally, expected opportunities of separation or connection should increase people's current willingness to engage with an undesirable entity or disengage from a desirable entity, respectively.

In daily life, physical acts of separation can precede connection (e.g., removing one's bad luck with incense before receiving good luck from the god of fortune; sect. R3.1) or vice versa (e.g., touching dirt to get rid of it from one's shoes; Kardos). What physical forms of separation and connection are capable of counteracting each other's influence? Wentzel et al. predict two determinants. (i) Procedures of separation/connection that serve specific (vs. more general) goals are applicable to specific (vs. broader) kinds of situations. (ii) Procedures of separation/connection with high sensorimotor engagement (e.g., actual movement) are counteracted only by procedures of connection/separation that also include high sensorimotor engagement, whereas procedures with low sensorimotor engagement (e.g., simulated movement) are counteracted by procedures with low or high sensorimotor engagement. Adding to these predictions, we draw on Figure R2 to predict that (iii) each form of connection is most likely to counteract and be counteracted by a form of separation that does the exact opposite (e.g., breaking the interface between an entity and oneself, taking an entity out of oneself). We are excited about future research into the spontaneous or strategic interplay between grounded procedures of separation and connection in people's mind and their social reality.