How to Enforce Ethical Behavior

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Laura Turner and today we are going to talk about how to enforce ethical behavior. I have two points to make to you today. First point is going to be about how to enforce ethical behavior in kids. The second is going to be about how to enforce ethical behavior in adults. Theoretically, we should treat the two in a separate way. Number one kids are being taught, adults should have already been taught. They should have experiences that are going to influence them when they think about acting ethically. So first, in children I would suggest rewarding children for ethical behavior. Also, either punishing or calling out and identifying your non ethical behavior. I am not one who advocates using a stick or a paddle to beat the kid. I would say that should make the kid in to an example for the other children. The most important thing is to reward that ethical behavior. Let's say Johnnie turned in his classmate for cheating, something like that. Johnnie did a good job with this and he should be rewarded. So you're going to base it on you are going to get an award for doing well rather then you're going to be punished for doing something bad. In adults, I had to do this in college, some colleges enforce an honor code. They have all the students in school sign a code of honor that says I will not lie, cheat or steal when I am in my best mind. So you can almost say that adults should be accountable to themselves. You should ask them to be accountable for themselves so others will be honest with them. So there's the idea of if your an honest person, others will be honest. Then when you sign your honor code as an adult or when you take that test at your job that says I will not steal merchandise from the store. When you do that you also have the obligation to turn in people that are doing unethical things. With the honor code came this sort of unspoken idea that we could all seat in a room together and take a test without the Professor being there and no one would cheat because no one would want to get anonymously turned in. There's the other factor is you can anonymously tell someone that unethical behavior is happening in your job or your school. So that's my advice for enforcing ethical behavior."