Advertising your values can insulate you from unethical requests, according to research by Sreedhari Desai at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. In a series of studies, subjects were told that they’d earn more money if they got their teammates (who were actually researchers) to unwittingly spread a lie. In their email signatures, some teammates included a quote about integrity (“Success without honor is worse than fraud”), while others used a neutral quote (“Success and luck go hand in hand”) or no quote at all. If subjects decided to do the unethical thing, they were far less likely to try to involve someone who displayed a virtuous quote than other team members. And when subjects were presented with such a quote, the likelihood that they’d send a deceptive message at all was generally lower. So a virtuous quote not only shielded a teammate from being asked to do a bad thing, but it also seemed to regulate the subjects, the researcher said.
Source: To Stop Bad Behavior, Display a Virtuous Quote
