Fine-tuning the moral compass

I think that everybody has it (or so I hope): An internalized set of values and objectives that helps to navigate through life and to act ethically and to take moral decisions. In short: I think that everybody has a moral compass. However, how you fill it in, so what your individual moral compass is, is a personal affair. Fundamentally, each person has personal values and objectives, and they may be different from those of other persons, though broadly for groups of persons they more or less agree. But it is one thing to have a moral compass, it is another thing to act on the basis of it. For personal affairs and decisions that have only consequences for yourself, it’s an individual matter and you owe responsibility only to yourself. But much individual behaviour has social consequences. Then it is important that people act in the right way and sometimes that they act anyway, even if they have no personal interest in doing so. How can we make that people do so; so how can we influence their moral compasses?
In the Dutch daily De Volkskrant, I read an interesting article about investigations at the Utrecht University about this problem. Do people help others they don’t know, if it is not in their own interest? How to make car drivers adhere to the speed limit, which is useful for the group of drivers as a whole, but not for the individual drivers? How to make streets safer? In such situations, the moral compasses of individuals are relevant, and it is important to know how to change them in the right way, if necessary, or at least how to influence them so that people behave in the socially appropriate way.
Rewarding and punishing are important instruments for guiding behaviour, although they are not the only ones. What the investigators at the Utrecht University want to find out is how we can reward people best. Of course, during the years much research has been done already in this field, and what the investigators want to do is to fine-tune the rewarding approach for the problem at hand, namely public behaviour. Because the investigations just started, results are not yet known, but on the basis of a literature study something can already be said about it. In order to stimulate social behaviour, you can appeal to someone’s ideals or to his or her obligations. What is most effective? Although public campaigns often set out the obligations people have towards each other, investigations have shown that it is better to point to their ideals. For instance, in a recent campaign in the city of Utrecht street harassment is dismissed as loser’s behaviour, but maybe it should be better to stress that a harassment free city will make it safer for everybody and isn’t this what everybody wants? Or a charity campaign should not stress that you have an obligation to contribute to a better society, but it should point to the ideal that everybody wants a society free of misery. In my words, in order to stimulate socially desirable behaviour one should not point to the bad side of human beings or say that some things just have to be done, but one must point to the good side; to what people wish that will happen and to what they strive for. Be positive, not negative, but hasn’t this always been so?