#1) Reminders

The first step to being a good person is establishing reminders.

Seems too simple but reminders have powerful effects.

• Text message reminders encouraged saving, reduced smoking and increased voting.

• Mentioning the Ten Commandments before a tempting situation reduced cheating on a test.

• Guilting people works because reminding others of their transgressions causes them to improve their behavior. It also makes them more likely to accept apologies and forgive.

#4) Hang Out With Good People

Seeing others behave dishonestly makes you more likely to be dishonest.

Seeing people behave altruistically makes you more likely to be altruistic:

…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.

Research shows you become like the people you surround yourself with, so spend more time with the type of people you want to be.

From Charles Duhigg’s excellent book The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business:

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.

#5) Think About Your Childhood

Being a good person can be as easy as keeping a teddy bear nearby.

No, I’m not saying you should carry around stuffed animals but reminders of children make you more honest.

Via Harvard Business Review:

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.

Taking a minute to recall memories from your childhood can improve your behavior.

Four experiments demonstrated that recalling memories from one’s own childhood lead people to experience feelings of moral purity and to behave prosocially.

#3) Get Enough Sleep

Lack of sleep is correlated with unethical behavior:

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…