Wear your values on your sleeve !

Social Research 

" Displaying Your Values Can Shield You from Unethical Behavior !" 

Research Outcome. 

Advertising your values can insulate you from unethical requests. 

The Experiment 
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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 ( to whom, such lie was targetted at ) included a quote about integrity (“Success without honor is worse than fraud”). 
Where as  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 ( on whom the experiment was being conducted)  were presented with such a quote, the likelihood that they’d send a deceptive message at all was generally lower ! 

Conclusion : 
 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.

Courtesy : HBR : a  research by Sreedhari Desai at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School.