PSYCHOLOGYTo Stop Bad Behavior, Display a Virtuous Quote by Scott Berinato FROM THE JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2016 ISSUE T he Research: Sreedhari Desai, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, ran a series of studies in which subjects believed they were part of a virtual team playing a game. The subjects were told that they’d earn more money if they got their teammates to unwittingly spread a lie. Unbeknownst to the participants, the other players were all researchers. In the signatures of their e-mails to the subjects, some included a quote about integrity, some a neutral quote, and some no quote at all. The subjects were least likely to ask the people who put the virtuous saying in their messages to do their unethical bidding. NOMA BAR The Challenge: Can you really insulate yourself from wrongdoing by advertising your values? Or will people just think you’re being holier than thou? Professor Desai, Some were “moral” brands. The shirts the avatars wore had brands on them. was “Success and luck go hand in hand. we didn’t use e-mail messages but had team members build little digital avatars of themselves. we still got very similar results. just to see if power somehow mitigated the effect of the moral talisman. Desai: We clearly saw that if people had decided to do the unethical thing. they may perceive a person as morally “pure” and feel that asking them to get “dirty” makes an ethical transgression even worse. HBR: What quote were they shown? “Success without honor is worse than fraud. What’s causing these results? When someone is in a position to request an unethical thing.” Instead. like YourMorals. “I won’t ask that person. while others weren’t. Are you sure this carries over to the real world? To Stop Bad Behavior.defend your research.” It clearly takes a point of view on ethics. We also found that when subjects were presented with such a quote.” In another study. the likelihood that they’d send a deceptive message at all was generally lower. they may not consciously be thinking. In fact. Display a Virtuous Quote . they didn’t try to get him or her to participate in a deception. the subjects thought that the study was about avatars. they were far less likely to try to involve someone who displayed a quote on morals than to approach other team members. So a virtuous quote not only shielded a teammate from being asked to do a bad thing but also seemed to regulate the subjects. The outcome was similar: When subjects saw that a team member had an avatar wearing a moral brand.org. we primed people to feel powerful before playing the game. Or they may be concerned that someone with moral character will just refuse the request. Games in labs are artificial. The neutral quote. But it didn’t. in contrast. In another study. Is it just religious symbols and quotes about ethics that affect us? I’d love to study other types of cues. empirical evidence is needed. like vermilion dots on their foreheads or pictures of Hindu gods or quotes from the Koran or the Bible in their cubicles. but this suggests that religious symbols communicate something universally positive to us. So would you recommend that employees display their morality more prominently? . That’s encouraging. and the quality of work relationships. a high percentage of employees report they’ve been asked to do unethical things. performance. Display a Virtuous Quote In business surveys. We did an analysis of employees and managers in India. We also asked the subordinates if they’d gotten a request to do something unethical in the past six months. Maryam Kouchaki. would that priming effect fade over time? Would the managers be desensitized? It doesn’t appear that they were. Controlling for job satisfaction. and I wanted to see if we could empower employees so that their supervisors wouldn’t ask in the first place. We asked the bosses if they’d noticed anything religious about their subordinates. but I’d predict the same effect. Even if managers were exposed to symbols for a religion different from their own. we still found that people who wore or displayed religious symbols were less likely to be asked to do something shady. I suspect that if I showed quotes about environmental causes—about the sanctity of nature—my boss would be less likely to ask me to dump chemicals into a river. We know from previous research that people associate these religious symbols with morality. My coresearcher. Couldn’t this effect wash away if everyone starts displaying quotations and symbols? That’s part of why we wanted to do the workplace survey. It’s such a simple intervention. the mitigating effect was there.To Stop Bad Behavior. We often hear in the media of inter-religious tensions. Obviously. That’s how all this started. If I see Krishna in your cubicle every day. What encouraged me most was that we also controlled for religious beliefs. Our preliminary study showed that people there were skeptical of moral displays. In fact. though? We tested some for that. the incidence of unethical behavior dropped because of moral displays. They seemed to think the bloke with the quote was being “holier than thou” and probably had something to hide. we tested whether they affected other people’s perceptions of your leadership and competence. By the way. But in general. we found that displaying moral symbols did not affect whether bosses would lay you off. What if this result is peculiar to certain cultures? There could be cultural boundaries. but what people did themselves. And to me. just to be clear. and found that they did not. but they still were left with a favorable impression of the leaders’ morality.Well. we’re studying how people react to moral symbols in Australia. I’d be less likely to misquote you and make your research look foolish. It could be a subconscious effect. we didn’t test people’s morality. In another study. If you had started this conversation with a pithy saying about integrity. Oddly. We tested how others perceived symbols of morality—and behaved in response. though. the heartening thing is that overall. I have to explore what makes Australians different. And in another. You could have a beautiful quote on your email and also be an unethical person. we asked those people if they remembered the moral quotes from the leaders they were evaluating. I’d say the findings support displaying moral symbols as a way to signal to others that you’re a good person and reduce the chances that you’ll be asked to do bad things. It tells me we can do better. It measures what people do when they’re aware that no one else will know they’re being dishonest. . They were more fond of and likely to spare someone with fun-loving and silly quotes. people couldn’t always identify the quote they’d just read. Not just in what people asked others to do. You messed up. Could the symbols make bosses unwilling to take on hard choices. The glass is half full for me. Why is this research important? What I love about it is that it doesn’t at all concern behaviors that are publicly known. Comments that are overly promotional.org will be energetic. constructive. This article is about PSYCHOLOGY FOLLOW THIS TOPIC Comments Leave a Comment POST 0 COMMENTS JOIN THE CONVERSATION POSTING GUIDELINES We hope the conversations that take place on HBR. .” Now I’m counting on you to do the right thing.34–35) of Harvard Business Review. To comment. readers must sign in or register. mean-spirited. or off-topic may be deleted per the moderators' judgment. our moderating team will review all comments and may edit them for clarity. A version of this article appeared in the January–February 2016 issue (pp. “Let thy secret unseen acts be such as if the men thou prizest most were witness around thee. length. and thought-provoking. and relevance.I don’t think it’s too late. And to ensure the quality of the discussion. All postings become the property of Harvard Business Publishing. Scott Berinato is a senior editor at Harvard Business Review.
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