Moral development refers to understanding right from wrong and choosing to do the right thing. Unfortunately, doing the right thing is rarely easy. There are three levels of personal moral development.

Although most of us have the ability to reach this third level, only about 20 percent of people actually do reach it. Most of us behave at the conventional level. What level of moral development have you attained? What can you do to improve your moral development level?

Situational control also affects behavior. People respond to “incentives” and can often be manipulated to do the ethical or unethical thing based on the situation. Highly competitive and unsupervised situations increase the odds of unethical behavior. Unethical behavior occurs more often when there is no formal ethics policy or code of ethics and when unethical behavior is not punished. Unethical behavior is especially prevalent when it is rewarded.

People are also less likely to report unethical behavior (blow the whistle) when they perceive the violation as not being serious and when the violator is a friend.