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 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.