Those who had been primed to feel guilty and who were subjected to the icebucket showed initial and follow-up guilt scores averaging 2.5 and 1.1 respectively.
The Brits are rarely without controversy - last year Chumbawamba's Danbert Nobacon caused uproar by drenching Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott with the water from an icebucket.
The result: Most fans outside of Munich and southwest London will be rooting against their country's representatives Saturday, dousing the usual explosion of patriotic fervor with a bucket of ice-cold apathy.
The play was written by Boff Whalley of the anarchist band Chumbawamba, whose members famously poured a bucket of ice over then Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott at the Brit Awards in 1998.
The 23 who had written about everyday interactions and 20 of the 39 who had written about behaving unethically were asked to submerge their non-dominant hand (ie, left, if they were right-handed, and vice versa) into a bucket of ice for as long as they could.