Biopics about bad behavior have been on a roll in recent years: The Dropout, on the Theranos scandal; Inventing Anna, about how a young socialite scammed New York’s high society out of millions; and two shows (Dopesick and Painkillers) about Purdue Pharma’s role in the opioid crisis. These are just a few making the rounds on our ever-growing “watch lists.”

It’s easy enough to understand why they’re so popular: bad behavior is often dramatic and gripping. But harder to understand is why people, who might otherwise seem ordinary, choose to participate in this bad behavior.

This week, we’ll explore one factor driving bad behavior—and a possible solution—in new research by Kellogg’s Rima Touré-Tillery. Plus, how leadership could be measured in the difference you make in others’ lives.

Understanding bad behavior

Touré-Tillery and her colleague Jane Jiaqian Wang of the National University of Singapore propose that not having a clear self-concept—that is, the thoughts and beliefs you use to define who you are—could lead people to distance themselves from their actions and justify their bad behavior.

Putting this idea to the test, Touré-Tillery and colleagues recruited 149 participants from a U.S. university to complete an established twelve-question survey that assessed their level of self-concept clarity. They rated their agreement with statements like, “In general, I have a clear sense of who I am and what I am.”

Three months later, the research team asked the same participants to take a survey that assessed how they might respond to twelve moral scenarios. For example, buying a shirt, wearing it, then returning it to the store. Or allowing someone at work to be blamed for something they did. The team found that those with a lower score on the initial survey’s self-concept clarity scale were less likely to do the right thing.

“When people don’t know who they are, they think their moral actions don’t really reflect who they are,” Touré-Tillery says. “The boundaries between right and wrong don’t work in the same way. If they think they don’t know themselves, it can lead to lying and cheating.”

Yet not all hope is lost. A little bit of help, even something as simple as a reminder, can discourage people from bad behavior, the researchers find.

In a separate study, they asked participants to flip different U.S. coins five times and report their results. Some participants were told that they would receive five cents every time the coin landed on heads, while others were not given this incentive.

In addition, about half of the participants in each of these groups signed an honor pledge beforehand that had statements such as, “It is unethical to lie to get a bonus in the study, regardless of my personal circumstances” and “Cheating in the study is inappropriate because it hurts hardworking researchers who deserve to be treated with respect and honesty.”

The pledge worked: participants who signed the honor pledge reported around the same number of heads, regardless of whether they had high or low self-concept clarity. In contrast, those who did not sign the honor pledge and had low self-concept clarity reported a higher number of heads to get a bonus.

“When you remind people that it is not okay to justify bad behaviors, it prompts them to reflect on their moral self,” Wang says. “It’s a simple but targeted way of changing behavior.”

Read more about bad behavior in Kellogg Insight.

Values-based leadership

To some, leadership might seem like another box to check as they move up in their careers. It’s easy enough to think, “Do I have a team of people reporting to me? Yes; I must therefore be a leader.”

But for Kellogg’s Harry Kraemer, leadership extends well beyond an individual’s role in an organization.

“Leadership is not a destination,” he writes in Forbes. “Rather, it is a journey of continuous reflection and improvement that lasts a lifetime. The goal is to pursue not only success, but most importantly significance—as measured in the difference you make to others.”

One way to have a meaningful impact on others is to seek their perspective, and to listen to their thoughts with care. “You already know what you know; what you don’t know is how others think and what they believe,” Kraemer writes. “By listening to others, you open your mind to varied points of view and seek to understand perspectives that differ from your own.”

This kind of intentional listening can help people develop a balanced perspective, which in Kraemer’s experience, is pivotal to becoming a “values-based leader.”

Read more from Kraemer in Forbes.