How to do the right thing, according to science

Charles Carver and Michael Scheier, who arrived at a vital insight: Self-awareness evolved because it helps self-regulation. They had conducted their own experiments observing people sitting at a desk where there happened to be a mirror. The mirror seemed a minor accessory — not even important enough to mention to the people — yet it caused profound differences in all kinds of behavior. If the people could see themselves in the mirror, they were more likely to follow their own inner values instead of following someone else's orders. When instructed to deliver shocks to another person, the mirror made people more restrained and less aggressive than a control group that wasn't facing a mirror. A mirror prompted them to keep working harder at a task. When someone tried to bully them into changing their opinion about something, they were more likely to resist the bullying and stick to their opinion. [Willpower: Resdiscovering the Greatest Human Strength]

In a cross-sectional field study examining unethical behavior in a variety of work settings, low levels of sleep, and low perceived quality of sleep, were both positively related to unethical behavior… [Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes]

…these results provide evidence that witnessing another person's altruistic behavior elicits elevation, a discrete emotion that, in turn, leads to tangible increases in altruism. [Psychological Science]

In a 1994 Harvard study that examined people who had radically changed their lives, for instance, researchers found that some people had remade their habits after a personal tragedy, such as a divorce or a life-threatening illness…Just as frequently, however, there was no tragedy that preceded people's transformations. Rather, they changed because they were embedded in social groups that made change easier… When people join groups where change seems possible, the potential for that change to occur becomes more real. [The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business]

Half the participants were either in a room with children's toys or engaged in children's activities. Across the board, those participants lied less and were more generous than the control subjects. [Harvard Business Review]

Four experiments demonstrated that recalling memories from one's own childhood lead people to experience feelings of moral purity and to behave prosocially. [Harvard Business School]