Research participants who imagined themselves pursuing professional connections at a party felt dirtier afterward, on average, than those who had imagined themselves merely meeting a lot of people at the party and having a good time (2.13 versus 1.43 on a five-point dirty-feelings scale), say Tiziana Casciaro of the University of Toronto, Francesca Gino of Harvard Business School, and Maryam Kouchaki of Harvard University. Moreover, people in the former group were later more likely to take a favorable view of cleaning products such as soap, toothpaste, and window cleaner. This and other experiments suggest that networking in pursuit of professional goals can harm a person’s sense of personal moral purity, the authors write in a working paper.
SOURCE: The Contaminating Effects of Building Instrumental Ties: How Networking Can Make Us Feel Dirty
