Gross messages ‘make students wash hands after loo’

For their study, the researchers at the University of Denver posted messages in the bathrooms of two undergraduate residence halls with messages like “You just peed, wash your hands”, accompanied with vivid graphics and photos.

The gross messages resulted in a 26 per cent increase in hand washing among females and an eight per cent increase among males, the study found.

However, observations in two control dorms over the same four-week period showed that hand washing decreased by nearly two percentage points among females and 21.5 percentage points among males.

“Fear of spreading germs or getting sick by not washing didn’t mean much to students. What got their attention was the knowledge that they might be walking around with gross things on their hands if they didn’t wash,” the study’s lead author Renee Botta said.

Though they tried gross messages, germ messages and you’ll-get-sick messages, the researchers said that the only ones with an impact were the “gross messages”.

“(In fact), the relevance of the message is really, really important. You can threaten that they’ll get the flu or promise a flu-free winter, but if they don’t really care about that, your message is going to fall flat,” Botta said.