Under the eyes of your betters

I'm thinking about A/B testing this by placing an Albertus Magnus portrait on my study desk and flipping a coin in the morning to determine if it will be visible for that day. If there is any effect, it should eventually show up in my Beeminder data (for studying logic, maths, and computer programming).

Turning it on its head, not being seen when one wants to be seen is a cause of anxiousness. Not being seen is sometimes interpreted as a pass for antisocial behavior. And what keeps religious people in line? God sees all.

In social work, yelling 'stop fighting' does little but yelling 'everyone is looking at you' works like magic.

It would be interesting to know if this can be refined by changing the social role of the (real or imagined) watcher. For instance, the behaviors elicited by being watched by a psychologist might be different from those elicited by a police officer, a bar bouncer, a wealthy philanthropist, or a member of the clergy.

I wonder whether having pictures of your role models in your workspace and people in your life who encourage you to do well when you talk to them might encourage you to engage in behavior more in line with those virtues you'd like to cultivate. Especially if you intentionally go for pictures where the people in them are looking at the camera directly.

There is, of course, a long tradition of hanging up pictures like this. There is also the habit of keeping a picture of one's loved ones in one's wallet or on one's desk, to remind you of what it's all for.

Consider the Puritan Pulpit. The all-seeing Eye of God painted onto the pulpit was the only adornment in the meeting house.

If this works, it seems like a good use for those LCD picture frames. Turn them on when you want to work, turn them off to relax.

I don't want a stranger to see me try something new and fail, but ideally that's something I should be doing quite often at work. Otherwise how will I learn? Seems like this would inhibit productive as well as antisocial behavior.

"Secure Beneath the Watchful Eyes"

You might also think about intensifying the effect by wearing a visible sign of group membership for a group you'd like to represent well. I wear a small cross necklace, but I wear it inside my shirt at work. When I'm riding the metro, I'm a bit more attentive to being especially polite when it's outside my shirt (though obviously I'd like to behave that way always).

I feel that may be a bit creepy, though perhaps that is the point. Still, a slightly-off-center gaze would be preferable. Seems relatively easy to conduct this experiment, unless there's a flaw in my reasoning of what the control would be.

Especially if you intentionally go for pictures where the people in them are looking at the camera directly.

Probably that's vital -- and make them frown too. I've had plenty of pictures of people in my room over the years, but none has had the effect that the one linked to in this comment probably would.