January 5, 2012 • 33 mins
Have you ever cheated on a test? You're not alone. But what goes on in a student's mind when they reach for the cheat sheet and how does it play out in various cultures? In this episode, Robert and Julie look at what science has to say about cheating.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
you know, I used to be a school teacher for
a very short period of time, right after I graduated
with my multi useful degree in creative writing. Did you
(00:25):
have a tweet jacket? I did not, Like I got
some chords later on that at the time, I didn't.
I did not have much in the way of scholarly
ad dress close, you know. But yeah, I taught high
school English for a little bit and I had some
wonderful um kids that we're not necessarily all that inspired,
but you know, I went in there and tried the
(00:45):
best I could, and of course I ended up encountering
some cheating because there were number of feople in these
classes that really did not care. And it was the
challenge and probably a challenge you know, I ultimately was
not up to, was to try and get them interested
about English, about about learning in any way, shape or form,
and and ultimately some of these kids just weren't gonna
(01:07):
listen to any of it. They'd rather, you know, do nothing.
They'd rather pass notes. But but then you would encounter
kids that are equally less interested in achieving in the
class until it comes down to the final minute, until
the test paper is on the desk, and then they
want to succeed, and then they become Macavellian freaks, right,
(01:27):
and then they start pulling out the cheating techniques. And
it always like it would it would blow my mind
a little bit when someone puts a tremendous amount of
effort into some notes that they're gonna you know, hide
in their sleeve or there or there, you know, so
you couldn't get them to take notes during class, but
they'll copy like whole pages of text book onto the
corner of their desk and pencil so they can erase
it with like a licked palm. If you come around, man,
(01:51):
you saw the dark side cheating, scholastic cheating. Well yeah,
and it's um, it's interesting. Uh. And then that's why
we're talking about it in this podcast. And we are
talking pretty much academic cheating, scholastic cheating. Uh that we're
not going to get into any kind of saucy silp
opera stuff. You're not com boots cheating. Yeah, and I mean,
of course everybody can relate to this, right, because who
who among us has not cheated at least once in
(02:12):
some fashion. Right, Yeah, if you haven't broken the rules,
I'm willing to bet you've bent them at some point, uh,
in your favor. I mean, it's just what we do.
It's it's it's really a part of nature. Um. I
mean that sounds like I'm defending it. You know. It's
like I wouldn't cheating on the test man. It's a
part of nature. But but it's just part of the
evolution and maintenance of cooperative behavior, right. Right. If you're
gonna live in a society, you're gonna have to adhere
(02:34):
to the social contract, which says please don't cheat because
you know, otherwise the rest of us get shafted, right,
or at least that's sort of the bare bones basics
behind it. Yeah, it's one of those kind of a
balance though. Right. It's like, in many cases we can't
all cheat because the system will collapse. But some people
are gonna be willing to take the risks to reap
the rewards of cheating. Right, And Um, if you're out
(02:56):
there and you think, no, I'm not a cheater, it's
just that's not me. Um. I I want to say,
what if what if we told you that your beliefs
and values were not actually fixed and the moral code
that you carry with you and to find yourself by
is is actually kind of like a flotilla on the
sea of circumstances around you. Because that's what we're going
to talk about today, and this is just kind of
(03:16):
a slippery slope. Um, what we think about in terms
of our morality can sometimes be very different from the
actual reality of our morality. That I'm not gonna start
rapping to our Yeah, so let's hit some stats here. UM,
I have some interesting numbers here, and this is first.
Let's start with the US. We have a number of
listeners in the US. Uh. We are in the U S.
(03:37):
And we attended school in the US, So these numbers
apply to all of all of US. UM. On most
US college campuses, over seventy five of the students admit
to some cheating. Um. You look at Internet plagiarism. Uh,
you see about ten percent in in two thousand one.
Majority of these U S students think that cheating is
(04:00):
quote not a serious issue, and you see cheating rise
from eleven percent in nineteen sixty three to in nineteen
And this is based on self reported stats from state universe, Right,
which is interesting that it's risen that much. But but
then look at you take a look at US high schools.
Seventy series are into serious test cheating, like serious. Um,
(04:24):
your anecdote is corroborated. Yes, seventy two are into cheating
on written assignments, and over half are are generally into
some level of plagiarism on written assignments using the Internet. Yeah,
and um, I do have to look at the Internet
plagiarism and I've to say that ten percent in nineteen
early adopters. Yeah, my jurism online obviously in two thousand
(04:46):
and one is because everybody's using the internet. Then, right,
it's interesting to look at this jump you see from
high school to college and and there their number of
reasons you can lay out for that. But to me anyway,
when I when I look back at my own scholastic career,
my own academic high school was more about like us
versus them, about like like school and when you're kids
(05:06):
versus the teachers. Yeah, yeah, like when you're when you're
in high school, unless you're a really serious student, which
for the most part I was not. School feels like
this thing that is forced upon you. It is the
thing done to you. It happens to you. Quit doing
school to me, world, because I have I have games
of magic I need to play. Uh you know that
that kind of thing. Because I was an exciting kid, well,
(05:29):
and if you're a kid like I was, I was
offended by a lot of different aspects of school, like
particularly that I had to ask to go to use
the restroom. I thought that was insane. I can see that.
I can imagine you're being very stubborn about that, right,
Why would I just I mean, can you not trust
me to go and empty my blotters on my own?
But for a lot of kids too, it's just about
(05:49):
surviving school, right. So Unfortunately, at least here in the US,
we don't have a great um sort of system in
place where you really are trying to kid they're getting
engage and it's more of a hey, we're all in
this together. Like you said, this is a very US
versus them. Yeah, it says versus them. Your I mean,
your hormones are doing all sorts of crazy stuff. You
you look at the world differently your immediate concerns are
(06:12):
going to be or in many cases are more related
to your interpersonal conflicts, um or or just having fun. Right. Uh.
And then in college, hopefully this shifts over more towards
school is not something done to me, but school is
something that I need to use or I am using
to better myself to gain some foothold in the world.
And uh and and so you have a little more
(06:34):
investment into it. Right, You're making some choices on your
own to about what sort of path you want to pursue. Right,
and then of course being into it. The subject is
another big thing, because I mean I remember back in
high school there were subjects I was really into, Like
I wasn't about to cheat on or to think about
cheating even on, like I say, an ancient history class
that I had, because I just love that thing. It
was just like all these you know, it's like ancient
(06:55):
battle after ancient battle and kings and rebellions. I mean
that stuff was awesome, or you know, or or literature
in English. I was always really into that. You know.
The temptation would arise in things like like well, I
guess it would arise in math class, but it quickly
becomes obvious that you can't really even think about cheating
in math because you have to solve this problem they
(07:15):
give you. And how are you going to do that? Well,
you should look over to whoever is sitting on your
right or left. See. But the thing, the thing was
that was always too risky for me, Like I was
not willing to take the risk of visually looking over
at somebody's desk and copying off of them. Okay, well,
we're going to talk about the psychological factors in a
moment and and this sort of risk assessment. But we
(07:36):
have established that we in the United States are a
bunch of cheaters. Yeah, what's the rest of the world doing? Yeah? Yeah,
for instance, what's Russia doing well? Russia? Apparently they are
really into sharing notes talking in classes. Okay, it's not
even hidden. The goal is to bring the whole class
level up, and bribes are routinely expected for grades. Wow,
so a teacher would expects bribe to come in I
(07:59):
guess us. Okay, that's that's interesting. I mean, I I
don't know if I was ever offered a bribe per
se when I was teaching, but I did have this
one situation where there's this girl that's just super failing English,
like if she couldn't have tried harder to fail it.
And I and I gave these I wanted these kids
to pass. I was giving them all sorts of opportunities
for extra credit. It's like, here, read this short story
and you'll get extra credit. You know, write something about it,
(08:21):
Do this and you'll get some extra credit, and will
let me help you pass this class. And of course
it's the last minute, and like this girl comes up
and it's like creepily saying like I'll do anything to pass,
blah blah blah. And then it was just like the
get away, go read a short story. But I I
also remember encountering someone This is not during my teaching,
this was in school, but I remember encounting somebody who
(08:43):
had been to school in Germany, and they had told
me that in their experience in Germany, cheating was more
expected and from the teachers, so like you were expected
to try and cheat. But then the teachers knew this,
so they're just making everything harder. Now. I don't know,
and we'll get into this a little bit too. I
don't know to what extent that person was rationalizing their
(09:04):
own individual cheating philosophy. If they were like saying, well,
they know we're cheating, they're just making it harder on me.
And in fact, I don't cheat to keep up, I'm
doing myself a disservice. Yeah. Yeah, But some of the
stats we were looking at, though, they said that in
German schools, the sharing of answers is common. Uh, and
it's understood that it is very much a student versus
teacher situation, and so if you didn't share, it would
(09:27):
be a social taboo exactly right. You'd be sort of
forced to um or you'd be shunned. And Mexico sharing
is common, but students will deny this. Okay, that was
that sort of interesting. Professors do not expect citations and papers.
I thought that was amazing because you could just make
up anything. Really, um, you know, that sounded reasonable. Yeah,
(09:49):
I mean maybe they're just more until like, hey, at
least they're trying. I don't know if you can get
crazy with citation recommendation teachers, but Costa Rica, this is interesting. Teamwork.
The rule in personal and academic life, including supporting those
who do not contribute to the group. We've all been
in those situations where you have like a group assignment,
and there's on one end of the spectrum as a
(10:10):
person who's like super gung ho their leaders there, this
is what we're gonna do, this is when we're gonna
meet to do it. This is the work that's involved.
And then you have that one person that's just riding coattails. Yeah.
That there's the ne'er do well. Yeah, and everybody gets max.
They're like, you're not doing anything, so but of course
you have to go ahead and ban together because your
great is going to be effective by this person, which
makes sense. I mean, I having having been to Costa Rica,
(10:32):
it's uh. And I'm not pretending to have any deep,
like a deep cultural understanding of the country because I
want a vacation there for a week. But you do
get a huge sense of togetherness in this idea of yeah,
like let's let's pull this country up by our bootstraps.
Let's let's start carrying about the environment. Let's uh, you know,
let's get some tourist dollars in here. Let's let's let's
do it, so sell these monkeys. I was not I
(10:55):
did not have an opportunity to buy a monkey when
I was there. I mean, like the idea of the monkeys. Ok,
it's like, yes, let's save the environment, let's sell monchy.
I didn't come home with a lemur And um, China
and I mean there's bullets here. There's all sorts of
crazy things going on in China in terms of cheating. UM,
students actually openly admit that cheating is a way of life.
(11:18):
Intellectual property is a foreign concept. And of course we've
seen this before. And some of the products that um,
you know DVDs that you can get over there for
fifty cents a dollar whatever, they're kind of ripped off.
In fact, didn't you tell me that there was a
fake iPod store a few months back? But even more
(11:38):
amazing was I think it was the fifth Harry Potter book.
I could be wrong in this Potter fans, but uh,
you know, everyone was eagerly anticipating the next Harry Potter
book and there was then it was out in China
with this crazy cover that had like the dragon from
Sleeping Beauty on it, and it was like, wow, I
never found out exactly like what it consists it off,
(12:00):
did someone like write a big fan fiction book? Did
they just like download a bunch of fan fictions from
the internet, but I don't know portions of it. And
rewrote it. I mean, you gotta put in some considerable work,
and they're even to fill a book that size up nothing.
The big value for for students in China is saving
face and maintaining group harmony. Cheating is seen as a
skill everyone should develop to succeed in the world. World
(12:20):
is corrupt, so this is like the basic thought process here. Yeah,
thus is the world? So yeah, you know which is
I mean, some people would say, well, that's a very
realistic point of view right there, um Burma. Students learn
um that it's sort of a task that's shared by
a group, so it's not seen as cheating again, so
much um. And the worst accusation in this culture is selfishness,
(12:42):
pursuing your own goals at the expense of others. So
we've talked about some of the stats around cheating. We
discussed sort of our own personal takes on school, you know,
at an early age, and then how it changed depending
on if we were into a subject where we were
in college. And so it only makes sense not to
discuss like why is a was a culture? Why don't
we why do we cheat? Why don't we attempt to
(13:03):
work the system in our favor and uh and get
by without putting Yeah, what's going on in our minds
that allows us to do this, um, even if it's
sort of outside of what we think is our own
moral code. And there are a couple of different topics
we can cover here. One is moral disengagement and another
is motivated forgetting and uh. Moral disengagement is described by
(13:26):
psychologist Albert van Dura to UM, which is like the
process by which people pervert their own sense of self
and their sense of right and wrong in order to
give into a questionable temptation. Okay, so you you become
morally disengaged from what you're doing, and we've seen this
in many instances. Um. And then motivated forgetting. We'll talk
(13:47):
about that in a moment. Dr Lisa Shoe at Harvard
University conducted a study in which one group of students
were left to their own devices to report their score
while another another groups was calculated by a proctor. And
when students were given more morally permissive environment, it was
found that they were more apt to cheat, which, okay,
that's no surprise, right. A sticking point is that before
(14:09):
and after they were given a questionnaire to to gauge
their degree of moral engagement. Okay, so the questionnaire would
sort of ask them like, you know, how do you
feel about you know, these certain circumstances and your own
morality and so on and so forth, And she found
that the students who cheated exhibited greater amounts of moral disengagement,
pointing to the fact that doing the deed, actually cheating,
(14:30):
can lead to sort of like a tangle web we
weave when once we begin to deceive. Right, So, once
you do it, you're more apt to continue doing it,
at least in some sort of short term, right, I mean,
are we talking about hours? Are we talking about months?
That's not exactly defined. But you know, once you cross
that line, it's a lot easier to do it again, right,
(14:51):
And it's frequently pointed out that it's a lot of
it comes down to risk calculation and rip at evaluation.
What am I to gain by cheating? What are my
chances of being caught? And then if I'm caught, what
are the consequences? Like is uh is Mr Lamb the
English teacher? Is he just gonna fail me on the test? Well?
I was going to fail anyway, Right, so I might
(15:12):
as well cheat. There's nothing wrong with that. What's am
I get? How much trouble am I going to get in?
Am I going to be you know, sent to the
principal's office? Am I gonna have to set outside? Like
I'm already on thin ice? Anyway? So right, if you
had a history of sending kids the principal's office for cheating,
then maybe you know, someone might say, oh, that's too
much of a risk for me. Some of the teachers
they're still were still beating kids in the hallways with paddles.
(15:37):
That was Tennessee, right, it was we were in Georgia.
I can't really certain mats were known to be um paddlers.
And really, yeah, I thought that like corporal punishment was
like had gone uh, you know by the wayside. And
I think there was also a knowledge that well, I
mean certainly wasn't in elementary school. I think like all
the teachers had like paddling was the the ultimate upun shman.
(16:00):
And you know it was humiliating too, because the kid
would unless you were like the kid was really hardened.
There was all those kids that didn't cry. But generally
the kids, yeah, they're used to the nuns, but uh,
but by high school, it kind of felt like like
maybe there was sort of a it depended on on
who you were and and what you're you're like social
(16:20):
socio economic status was somehow, because it's kind of like
the teachers who who still paddled tended to be like
the shop teachers and the or or coaches or you know,
like and you have the instruments to do it well.
Like to to put it, I guess to frame it simple,
it's like it was more of the country boy teachers
who still paddled, and it was the country boys who
(16:41):
got paddled. So that's interesting. Yeah, okay, yeah, that's actually
that's I've seen some studies on spanking and how it's
a cultural phenomenon in some areas, so that's very interesting.
I mean I remember situations where it was like, uh,
and it would be like a study hall class I
was in where the teacher was like, you keep that up,
I'm gonna have paddle you, and the kid would would
(17:03):
keep up with it, and then you'd sort of get
paddled and it was like this weird kind of like
badge of honor for having been paddled and then it
was just kind of like businesses. It was like this
weird attitude towards taking a relatively grown man out into
the hallway and beating him on the buttocks with a
large piece of wood. That anyway, I'm going off the
(17:25):
camp and you know how I am my eighth grade mind.
Yeah yeah, yeah, so I mean but again, it's this
is a social contract that was entered two and said
that there was some sort of like okay, I accepted,
and it comes in and, like I said, comes down
to risk evaluation for my chance of being caught, what
what are the consequences of I am? And what do
(17:46):
I have to gain? And and for a number of people,
the equation ends up saying yes, I should teat because
I was more to gain than to lose in doing this.
Dr She also found this phenomenon called motivated forget, and
students who read an academic honor code before cheating on
a test had a harder time recalling details of it afterward. Um,
(18:09):
which is interesting, right, So they were sort of like, oh,
that whole thing that's really fuzzy, I can't quite remember.
It's almost like they're willing themselves to forget it. So
they could have some sort of excuse of oh I
wasn't aware of that, and I wouldn't have cheated, you
know what I mean. That's that's the logic, right. But
if they were made to sign the Honor Code rather
than just passively read it beforehand, Um, then the instances
(18:30):
of cheating actually decreased, so that the passive versus the
active of actually signing it and saying okay, I agree
that I understand this information would contribute to the less cheating.
So I don't know. Sort of sort of interesting that
there are certain stop gaps in your mind that happened.
And this has also been found by Professor of behavioral
(18:53):
economics at Duke University, Dr Don dan Arially. Um. He's
also m I T as well as a rhetor of
m I T Center for Advanced Hindsight. Um. He's really
interested in the bugs in our moral codes and Enron
inspired him to study cheating. Yeah. Um, turns out that
a lot of people cheat a little bit, sort of
(19:14):
one of his grocery findings. And in economic theory, cheating
is a very simple cost benefit analysis. Okay, So again
you talked about, like, what's the probability of getting caught
how much do I stand gain from cheating? What kind
of punishment is doled out? And he took all of
that information and he conducted several tests, and one he
gave test subjects twenty math problems to solve and told
(19:37):
them that they'd all get paid cash for each correct answer,
and then he gave them an impossible amount of time
for them to to um actually answer these questions. I
think like five minutes or something and um. So, in
other words, you couldn't get the full amount that you
you might be able to get paid out, like maybe
for ten right answers, you can maybe only do five. Um.
(19:58):
So that insure that nobody could complete it in time.
And then when the time was the control subjects were
told to count their correct answers and collect their pay. Okay.
So the test group, however, was told to shred their
exams before reporting their totals. So you have two groups, okay,
one that that's counting up the other one who can
is essentially getting rid of the evidence before Yeah, they
(20:20):
could say, and and they would be like, could you
have proof of that? And Nope, just shredded it. But
I totally answered everything you did in an impossible amount
of time exactly. And so you know, obviously he's trying
to engage cheaters into cheating. Um. So not surprisingly, the
people who were shredding were cheating a lot more um.
But they only cheated by a small amount. Okay, So
(20:42):
when I say small amount, they knew better than to
say ken because they didn't want to be They didn't
want to be that obvious exactly exactly, Like there was
some sort of margin of cheating that was acceptable to him.
So he looked into that situation. I thought, well, I'm
going to vary the amount that I pay them, so
you know this. I'm gonna conduct this experiment again um
at ten cents, at fifty cents, at a dollar. And
(21:03):
what he found is that the the highest the dollar
per question, actually cheating went down. So again there's some
sort of like prescribed or or inscribed morality inherent in cheating,
like this is for a dollar, this is serious business,
like cheating for a nickel. That's not that's no big deal,
I mean, it's kind of It reminds me a lot
(21:24):
of these, uh, these cost analysis that you see regarding
office theft, where individuals will steal a pin or steal
of the thing of printer paper or whatever, because they're
looking at it. It's like that's a pen, that's some
printer paper, that's a you know, that's a computer mouse.
That's that's pretty cheap. But but the same individual that
would rationalize that would not say take off with a
(21:46):
laptop or or just robbed the soda refrigerator blind. There
are levels at which it is acceptable and in which
it is not acceptable in the thief's mind. Well, and
that's what Arialie was looking at too, and he was
sort of like, a how does this play out? When
I put a six pack of a soda in the
dorm refrigerators and of course those disappeared like in no time.
(22:08):
But then he put a plate of six one dollar
bills in the refrigerator and they just stayed there completely,
you know, because again, if I steal that one dollar,
I'm stealing. But if I'm taking a coke, I'm taking coke. Right.
I've I've always found it interesting the whole theft of
of of office food. Yeah, because I think and you know,
(22:28):
this is a great place to work, but I think
we have occasionally encountered some some office food theft here,
just in small amounts. I will say, do not bring
a fancy yogurt because there is one person in the
office that I know will not be your yogurt who
really likes fancy yogurt. Never So, now you know, well,
on the opposite end of that spectrum, I once worked
(22:50):
for a newspaper that had a press room in the back.
And when I mean a press room, it's like we
we made the newspaper in the front. I was in
the editorial department, and then in the back the press
room dudes would would print the paper and the old
timey cut and paste. Yeah. Yeah, I was part of that,
and some of the people worked there were old timey.
It was. It was great. But there was a refrigerator
shared by both departments, and it was it eventually just
(23:12):
became common knowledge that on the weekends, if you happen
to leave anything in the fridge and I mean anything
like a half eaten meal in a styrofoam containing, those
dudes in the back would emerge from their press room
that did not smell of newspapers. Let's just say it
had a very uh there was this there was a
certain herbal odor going on, and then they would just
consume everything yeah, Oh, I think I knew what you're
(23:35):
talking about there, like cannabis. Yes, yes, that's what I'm suspecting. Well,
I mean it's the weekend cannabis. They've got the munchies exactly. Yeah.
So they would just eat everything in the refrigerator, like
down to like half sandwiches and and and leftovers and
like somebody's uh, you know, mostly empty thing of peanut butter.
It's kind of amazing. I love telling that story. But
(23:57):
I think it's funny that that people will continue to
leave stuff they are knowing that, like the cannadbas munchies
were going to occur over the weekend, or maybe they
didn't realize. Okay, yeah, so you see it in the workplace,
You see it in college dorms with with soda. Right.
But Ariel like he is obsessed with this idea of cheating,
and so he conducts another experiment, and this is very
(24:17):
similar to the other one where he's got the group
who is self reporting, um, you know how many correct
answers that they have. But in this group, he's got
a bunch of Carnegie Melon students and he has um
like thirty seconds into this, right, It's like very obvious.
This person is cheating. He stands up, he's got his
Carnegie Melon sweatshirt on, and he says, I'm done. What
(24:38):
do I do? And the person uh in the study says,
just go ahead and collect your money, And of course
a lots of other people start going, yeah, me too,
I'm done, and they're cheating as well. But what they
found is that when they varied it by having the
person wearing a University of Pittsburgh sweatshirt right rvals, this
(24:59):
is an outside right, this person is standing up with
the University of Pittsburgh sweatshirt in a room full of
Melanie or Melanie Hey, Melanie of Carnegie Melon students, that
the cheating actually went down. I think that even said
to null because people did not identify with that person.
They were outside of their their social group. It again
comes down to what is the moral climate, uh, you know,
(25:21):
and and in in us versus them, what is the
moral climate of us? You don't want to be them? Right?
And so he kind of took all of this and
he applied it to to and Ron right, because he's
he's thinking like, how does this play out in the
real world in financial circumstances when there where there's a
lot of cheating going on, and so he's saying, okay,
here's a bunch of people who are engaged in systematic, widespread,
(25:44):
planned accounting fraud in order to keep stock prices artificially
high as well as their credit rating. And think about
stock and credit rates. These are now the stand ins
for money, just as um, you know, the cokes and
the fridge were, or the the soda in the fridge was.
So there's an abstraction of money. So people are a
(26:04):
little bit more apt to say like, Okay, it's just
it's just play money, right, It's just an idea of
money that we're dealing with here. It's not big piles
of cash that we're actually stealing. Um. And he's also
saying that you have a bunch of people in that
in the actual industry who are identifying with each other.
So again we're looking at that that same sort of
university sweatshirt. Think of them everybody working at Enron is
(26:28):
wearing the same university sweatshirts and saying, well, you know,
if that person is doing it, then it must be okay,
it's okay if that I can donate or I sort
of look the other way or even participate. And it's
just really interesting because it turns out that this sort
of fraud um is something like six hundred billion dollars
a year. Uh So it's widespread. And when you look
(26:51):
at it that way as this abstraction of money and
everybody's just sort of turning the other way, then it
becomes a much more problematic. Right. Well, it also makes
me think of a various correctional institutions, you know, and
just the idea that taking somebody for say a minor
drug offense at a young age, putting them in a
prison environment and then you know, acting surprised if they
(27:12):
come out of that environment with the attitude more of
an attitude that the criminal behaviors are are okay. Right,
because in some some respects, there's a permissive environment no
matter what that is, you know, across the board, whether
it's a culture, organization of business, there are things you
can get away with, right, Um. But let's talk about creativity.
Oh yeah, yeah, So this comes down to the same
(27:34):
dude we were talking about earlier, Dan Airily, who again
was doing another test where he had and this time
it was like a hundred people, uh and he were
doing a similar thing where everybody takes a test. They're
filling in their multiple choice and then they're asked to
transfer their answers to another sheet, which, by the way,
accident just because of a printing air, it has the
answers on it. So don't the answers are on the
(27:56):
sheet you're transferring to, but don't change from your originals. Again,
this is sell reporting really to the individual, right, So yeah,
will the person cheat? Will they not? And then they
compare everything afterwards, And they were testing creative and supposedly
non creative people, and he found that the the more
creative the person like, the higher level of cheating involved.
In this particular study, creative people are a bunch of cheaters. Well,
(28:20):
it's interesting. What's really fascinating about this is that it
comes down to um something we've talked about before, like
the power of storytelling, like the creative mind getting engaged
in the creation of a story, the creation of of
a character with various things set upon them. I think
I made the argument that I feel like, uh, sometimes
(28:40):
creative people and especially writers tend to be more depressed,
more miserable in some conditions because their their brain is
more apt to create a me story, you know, like
something bad happens, and then they create, they create, instantly
create that story where about how something bad happened to me,
how something bad is happening to me, to a largely
(29:01):
send the tell our memories form. We've talked about using
say like Tetris games to immediately uh, stay of off
post traumatic stress, because before that you can actually form
that me story and take what has just happened, in
form it into this this series of events and store
it away. You're interfering with it with Tetris and anyway,
the argument here with the creative individuals is that when
(29:23):
it comes to cheating, they're more um apt to create
a story again where I am the central character. But
in this story, UM, I have a rationale for cheating.
That's suppos about to say too? Is that? Um? You know,
we've done so much research on pattern recognition, and a
lot of times it takes a great amount of creativity
to see patterns where there are none. Um. And of
(29:44):
course you can rationalize with with pattern recognition. Right. It's
like the German individual that I talked to that one time,
for instance, you know I mentioned earlier. It's like, I'm
not sure to what extent what they were telling me
was true or or is that just there there me
story that rationalize their cheating. It's like, well, my I
come from a culture that, uh where it's okay. Or
(30:05):
in the school, the teachers know I'm cheating, so it's
it's it's fine they if I'm not cheating, I'm I'm
cheating myself by not rising to the occasion. Or you know,
you can imagine any number of cases where someone's like, well,
the class is too hard, so I should cheat to
make up the difference. Or I've been said I've had
to put up with other things in my life, I've
been into the disadvantage, or I had a rough a
(30:26):
rough week, uh you know prior to the test, so
cheating is is okay for me? Or I mean I
was just thinking about this too. Like if you've got
too much cash back from an exchange at a retailer, yea,
and you might say that I read this to uh
something like you you might not like that retailer and say,
oh that's the that's the man, Like they don't need
a big box store, they don't need this money. So yeah, likewise,
(30:49):
I'm in the office stuff case where people will end
up doing it for petty reasons. Um, like you know,
give me too much work to do. I'll take that
out with pin theft your yogurt. Yeah, um, but yeah,
I mean early. It was basically saying that the sort
of morality about cheating is really about the mirror that
(31:09):
reminds us of who we are at the point where
it matters. So again, signing an honor code before you
take a test, it's going to be much more effective
and reminding you about, you know, what is important to you,
what matters in terms of how you conduct yourself. Um.
And they've even seen studies before where it's far more
effective to post how fast someone is traveling in their car, right,
(31:33):
how much they're speeding. Yeah. They have those roadside meters
that tell you yeah yeah, because once they see like
oh man, I'm going sixty five and forty five, people
sort of shame themselves and saying, oh I I see
the mirror of myself. And and it's far more effective
than putting you know, two cup cars there all day long,
because then that's just these are guys are out to
get me. They're literally out there get me and uh
(31:55):
and uh and it and it's instead of it being
a me versus them, it's a me versus me. I'm
in competition with my own sense of self being. Some
things to think about here. Oh yeah, so cheating. I'll
tell you what If you guys have anything you would
like to share with us about the cheating academic cheatings
of scholastic cheating, um, let us know. I would love
to hear anyone's story on Like you know, I'm always
(32:19):
game for any amusing tales about creative methods of cheating
and from if you if you're a teacher or if
you're a student. And I'm very interested in people who
have who can can really be honest with themselves and
look at cases where they have cheated and then where
they haven't cheated, or where like a part time in
their life when they did cheat on tests and then
they left that behind, Like what change in you? What
(32:41):
you know? How did you how did your attitude toward
the subject matter change or towards school itself change? I
think all that substas are you like sophocleans and you
say something like I would prefer even to fail with
honor that win by cheating. Ah, there you go, so
you can find us on Facebook and Twitter. We are
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(33:01):
stuff to love the mind. To find us that way
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the case, feel free to send us an email at
and blow the mind at how stuff works dot com.
Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we
explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
you know, I used to be a school teacher for
a very short period of time, right after I graduated
with my multi useful degree in creative writing. Did you
(00:25):
have a tweet jacket? I did not, Like I got
some chords later on that at the time, I didn't.
I did not have much in the way of scholarly
ad dress close, you know. But yeah, I taught high
school English for a little bit and I had some
wonderful um kids that we're not necessarily all that inspired,
but you know, I went in there and tried the
(00:45):
best I could, and of course I ended up encountering
some cheating because there were number of feople in these
classes that really did not care. And it was the
challenge and probably a challenge you know, I ultimately was
not up to, was to try and get them interested
about English, about about learning in any way, shape or form,
and and ultimately some of these kids just weren't gonna
(01:07):
listen to any of it. They'd rather, you know, do nothing.
They'd rather pass notes. But but then you would encounter
kids that are equally less interested in achieving in the
class until it comes down to the final minute, until
the test paper is on the desk, and then they
want to succeed, and then they become Macavellian freaks, right,
(01:27):
and then they start pulling out the cheating techniques. And
it always like it would it would blow my mind
a little bit when someone puts a tremendous amount of
effort into some notes that they're gonna you know, hide
in their sleeve or there or there, you know, so
you couldn't get them to take notes during class, but
they'll copy like whole pages of text book onto the
corner of their desk and pencil so they can erase
it with like a licked palm. If you come around, man,
(01:51):
you saw the dark side cheating, scholastic cheating. Well yeah,
and it's um, it's interesting. Uh. And then that's why
we're talking about it in this podcast. And we are
talking pretty much academic cheating, scholastic cheating. Uh that we're
not going to get into any kind of saucy silp
opera stuff. You're not com boots cheating. Yeah, and I mean,
of course everybody can relate to this, right, because who
who among us has not cheated at least once in
(02:12):
some fashion. Right, Yeah, if you haven't broken the rules,
I'm willing to bet you've bent them at some point, uh,
in your favor. I mean, it's just what we do.
It's it's it's really a part of nature. Um. I
mean that sounds like I'm defending it. You know. It's
like I wouldn't cheating on the test man. It's a
part of nature. But but it's just part of the
evolution and maintenance of cooperative behavior, right. Right. If you're
gonna live in a society, you're gonna have to adhere
(02:34):
to the social contract, which says please don't cheat because
you know, otherwise the rest of us get shafted, right,
or at least that's sort of the bare bones basics
behind it. Yeah, it's one of those kind of a
balance though. Right. It's like, in many cases we can't
all cheat because the system will collapse. But some people
are gonna be willing to take the risks to reap
the rewards of cheating. Right, And Um, if you're out
(02:56):
there and you think, no, I'm not a cheater, it's
just that's not me. Um. I I want to say,
what if what if we told you that your beliefs
and values were not actually fixed and the moral code
that you carry with you and to find yourself by
is is actually kind of like a flotilla on the
sea of circumstances around you. Because that's what we're going
to talk about today, and this is just kind of
(03:16):
a slippery slope. Um, what we think about in terms
of our morality can sometimes be very different from the
actual reality of our morality. That I'm not gonna start
rapping to our Yeah, so let's hit some stats here. UM,
I have some interesting numbers here, and this is first.
Let's start with the US. We have a number of
listeners in the US. Uh. We are in the U S.
(03:37):
And we attended school in the US, So these numbers
apply to all of all of US. UM. On most
US college campuses, over seventy five of the students admit
to some cheating. Um. You look at Internet plagiarism. Uh,
you see about ten percent in in two thousand one.
Majority of these U S students think that cheating is
(04:00):
quote not a serious issue, and you see cheating rise
from eleven percent in nineteen sixty three to in nineteen
And this is based on self reported stats from state universe, Right,
which is interesting that it's risen that much. But but
then look at you take a look at US high schools.
Seventy series are into serious test cheating, like serious. Um,
(04:24):
your anecdote is corroborated. Yes, seventy two are into cheating
on written assignments, and over half are are generally into
some level of plagiarism on written assignments using the Internet. Yeah,
and um, I do have to look at the Internet
plagiarism and I've to say that ten percent in nineteen
early adopters. Yeah, my jurism online obviously in two thousand
(04:46):
and one is because everybody's using the internet. Then, right,
it's interesting to look at this jump you see from
high school to college and and there their number of
reasons you can lay out for that. But to me anyway,
when I when I look back at my own scholastic career,
my own academic high school was more about like us
versus them, about like like school and when you're kids
(05:06):
versus the teachers. Yeah, yeah, like when you're when you're
in high school, unless you're a really serious student, which
for the most part I was not. School feels like
this thing that is forced upon you. It is the
thing done to you. It happens to you. Quit doing
school to me, world, because I have I have games
of magic I need to play. Uh you know that
that kind of thing. Because I was an exciting kid, well,
(05:29):
and if you're a kid like I was, I was
offended by a lot of different aspects of school, like
particularly that I had to ask to go to use
the restroom. I thought that was insane. I can see that.
I can imagine you're being very stubborn about that, right,
Why would I just I mean, can you not trust
me to go and empty my blotters on my own?
But for a lot of kids too, it's just about
(05:49):
surviving school, right. So Unfortunately, at least here in the US,
we don't have a great um sort of system in
place where you really are trying to kid they're getting
engage and it's more of a hey, we're all in
this together. Like you said, this is a very US
versus them. Yeah, it says versus them. Your I mean,
your hormones are doing all sorts of crazy stuff. You
you look at the world differently your immediate concerns are
(06:12):
going to be or in many cases are more related
to your interpersonal conflicts, um or or just having fun. Right. Uh.
And then in college, hopefully this shifts over more towards
school is not something done to me, but school is
something that I need to use or I am using
to better myself to gain some foothold in the world.
And uh and and so you have a little more
(06:34):
investment into it. Right, You're making some choices on your
own to about what sort of path you want to pursue. Right,
and then of course being into it. The subject is
another big thing, because I mean I remember back in
high school there were subjects I was really into, Like
I wasn't about to cheat on or to think about
cheating even on, like I say, an ancient history class
that I had, because I just love that thing. It
was just like all these you know, it's like ancient
(06:55):
battle after ancient battle and kings and rebellions. I mean
that stuff was awesome, or you know, or or literature
in English. I was always really into that. You know.
The temptation would arise in things like like well, I
guess it would arise in math class, but it quickly
becomes obvious that you can't really even think about cheating
in math because you have to solve this problem they
(07:15):
give you. And how are you going to do that? Well,
you should look over to whoever is sitting on your
right or left. See. But the thing, the thing was
that was always too risky for me, Like I was
not willing to take the risk of visually looking over
at somebody's desk and copying off of them. Okay, well,
we're going to talk about the psychological factors in a
moment and and this sort of risk assessment. But we
(07:36):
have established that we in the United States are a
bunch of cheaters. Yeah, what's the rest of the world doing? Yeah? Yeah,
for instance, what's Russia doing well? Russia? Apparently they are
really into sharing notes talking in classes. Okay, it's not
even hidden. The goal is to bring the whole class
level up, and bribes are routinely expected for grades. Wow,
so a teacher would expects bribe to come in I
(07:59):
guess us. Okay, that's that's interesting. I mean, I I
don't know if I was ever offered a bribe per
se when I was teaching, but I did have this
one situation where there's this girl that's just super failing English,
like if she couldn't have tried harder to fail it.
And I and I gave these I wanted these kids
to pass. I was giving them all sorts of opportunities
for extra credit. It's like, here, read this short story
and you'll get extra credit. You know, write something about it,
(08:21):
Do this and you'll get some extra credit, and will
let me help you pass this class. And of course
it's the last minute, and like this girl comes up
and it's like creepily saying like I'll do anything to pass,
blah blah blah. And then it was just like the
get away, go read a short story. But I I
also remember encountering someone This is not during my teaching,
this was in school, but I remember encounting somebody who
(08:43):
had been to school in Germany, and they had told
me that in their experience in Germany, cheating was more
expected and from the teachers, so like you were expected
to try and cheat. But then the teachers knew this,
so they're just making everything harder. Now. I don't know,
and we'll get into this a little bit too. I
don't know to what extent that person was rationalizing their
(09:04):
own individual cheating philosophy. If they were like saying, well,
they know we're cheating, they're just making it harder on me.
And in fact, I don't cheat to keep up, I'm
doing myself a disservice. Yeah. Yeah, But some of the
stats we were looking at, though, they said that in
German schools, the sharing of answers is common. Uh, and
it's understood that it is very much a student versus
teacher situation, and so if you didn't share, it would
(09:27):
be a social taboo exactly right. You'd be sort of
forced to um or you'd be shunned. And Mexico sharing
is common, but students will deny this. Okay, that was
that sort of interesting. Professors do not expect citations and papers.
I thought that was amazing because you could just make
up anything. Really, um, you know, that sounded reasonable. Yeah,
(09:49):
I mean maybe they're just more until like, hey, at
least they're trying. I don't know if you can get
crazy with citation recommendation teachers, but Costa Rica, this is interesting. Teamwork.
The rule in personal and academic life, including supporting those
who do not contribute to the group. We've all been
in those situations where you have like a group assignment,
and there's on one end of the spectrum as a
(10:10):
person who's like super gung ho their leaders there, this
is what we're gonna do, this is when we're gonna
meet to do it. This is the work that's involved.
And then you have that one person that's just riding coattails. Yeah.
That there's the ne'er do well. Yeah, and everybody gets max.
They're like, you're not doing anything, so but of course
you have to go ahead and ban together because your
great is going to be effective by this person, which
makes sense. I mean, I having having been to Costa Rica,
(10:32):
it's uh. And I'm not pretending to have any deep,
like a deep cultural understanding of the country because I
want a vacation there for a week. But you do
get a huge sense of togetherness in this idea of yeah,
like let's let's pull this country up by our bootstraps.
Let's let's start carrying about the environment. Let's uh, you know,
let's get some tourist dollars in here. Let's let's let's
do it, so sell these monkeys. I was not I
(10:55):
did not have an opportunity to buy a monkey when
I was there. I mean, like the idea of the monkeys. Ok,
it's like, yes, let's save the environment, let's sell monchy.
I didn't come home with a lemur And um, China
and I mean there's bullets here. There's all sorts of
crazy things going on in China in terms of cheating. UM,
students actually openly admit that cheating is a way of life.
(11:18):
Intellectual property is a foreign concept. And of course we've
seen this before. And some of the products that um,
you know DVDs that you can get over there for
fifty cents a dollar whatever, they're kind of ripped off.
In fact, didn't you tell me that there was a
fake iPod store a few months back? But even more
(11:38):
amazing was I think it was the fifth Harry Potter book.
I could be wrong in this Potter fans, but uh,
you know, everyone was eagerly anticipating the next Harry Potter
book and there was then it was out in China
with this crazy cover that had like the dragon from
Sleeping Beauty on it, and it was like, wow, I
never found out exactly like what it consists it off,
(12:00):
did someone like write a big fan fiction book? Did
they just like download a bunch of fan fictions from
the internet, but I don't know portions of it. And
rewrote it. I mean, you gotta put in some considerable work,
and they're even to fill a book that size up nothing.
The big value for for students in China is saving
face and maintaining group harmony. Cheating is seen as a
skill everyone should develop to succeed in the world. World
(12:20):
is corrupt, so this is like the basic thought process here. Yeah,
thus is the world? So yeah, you know which is
I mean, some people would say, well, that's a very
realistic point of view right there, um Burma. Students learn
um that it's sort of a task that's shared by
a group, so it's not seen as cheating again, so
much um. And the worst accusation in this culture is selfishness,
(12:42):
pursuing your own goals at the expense of others. So
we've talked about some of the stats around cheating. We
discussed sort of our own personal takes on school, you know,
at an early age, and then how it changed depending
on if we were into a subject where we were
in college. And so it only makes sense not to
discuss like why is a was a culture? Why don't
we why do we cheat? Why don't we attempt to
(13:03):
work the system in our favor and uh and get
by without putting Yeah, what's going on in our minds
that allows us to do this, um, even if it's
sort of outside of what we think is our own
moral code. And there are a couple of different topics
we can cover here. One is moral disengagement and another
is motivated forgetting and uh. Moral disengagement is described by
(13:26):
psychologist Albert van Dura to UM, which is like the
process by which people pervert their own sense of self
and their sense of right and wrong in order to
give into a questionable temptation. Okay, so you you become
morally disengaged from what you're doing, and we've seen this
in many instances. Um. And then motivated forgetting. We'll talk
(13:47):
about that in a moment. Dr Lisa Shoe at Harvard
University conducted a study in which one group of students
were left to their own devices to report their score
while another another groups was calculated by a proctor. And
when students were given more morally permissive environment, it was
found that they were more apt to cheat, which, okay,
that's no surprise, right. A sticking point is that before
(14:09):
and after they were given a questionnaire to to gauge
their degree of moral engagement. Okay, so the questionnaire would
sort of ask them like, you know, how do you
feel about you know, these certain circumstances and your own
morality and so on and so forth, And she found
that the students who cheated exhibited greater amounts of moral disengagement,
pointing to the fact that doing the deed, actually cheating,
(14:30):
can lead to sort of like a tangle web we
weave when once we begin to deceive. Right, So, once
you do it, you're more apt to continue doing it,
at least in some sort of short term, right, I mean,
are we talking about hours? Are we talking about months?
That's not exactly defined. But you know, once you cross
that line, it's a lot easier to do it again, right,
(14:51):
And it's frequently pointed out that it's a lot of
it comes down to risk calculation and rip at evaluation.
What am I to gain by cheating? What are my
chances of being caught? And then if I'm caught, what
are the consequences? Like is uh is Mr Lamb the
English teacher? Is he just gonna fail me on the test? Well?
I was going to fail anyway, Right, so I might
(15:12):
as well cheat. There's nothing wrong with that. What's am
I get? How much trouble am I going to get in?
Am I going to be you know, sent to the
principal's office? Am I gonna have to set outside? Like
I'm already on thin ice? Anyway? So right, if you
had a history of sending kids the principal's office for cheating,
then maybe you know, someone might say, oh, that's too
much of a risk for me. Some of the teachers
they're still were still beating kids in the hallways with paddles.
(15:37):
That was Tennessee, right, it was we were in Georgia.
I can't really certain mats were known to be um paddlers.
And really, yeah, I thought that like corporal punishment was
like had gone uh, you know by the wayside. And
I think there was also a knowledge that well, I
mean certainly wasn't in elementary school. I think like all
the teachers had like paddling was the the ultimate upun shman.
(16:00):
And you know it was humiliating too, because the kid
would unless you were like the kid was really hardened.
There was all those kids that didn't cry. But generally
the kids, yeah, they're used to the nuns, but uh,
but by high school, it kind of felt like like
maybe there was sort of a it depended on on
who you were and and what you're you're like social
(16:20):
socio economic status was somehow, because it's kind of like
the teachers who who still paddled tended to be like
the shop teachers and the or or coaches or you know,
like and you have the instruments to do it well.
Like to to put it, I guess to frame it simple,
it's like it was more of the country boy teachers
who still paddled, and it was the country boys who
(16:41):
got paddled. So that's interesting. Yeah, okay, yeah, that's actually
that's I've seen some studies on spanking and how it's
a cultural phenomenon in some areas, so that's very interesting.
I mean I remember situations where it was like, uh,
and it would be like a study hall class I
was in where the teacher was like, you keep that up,
I'm gonna have paddle you, and the kid would would
(17:03):
keep up with it, and then you'd sort of get
paddled and it was like this weird kind of like
badge of honor for having been paddled and then it
was just kind of like businesses. It was like this
weird attitude towards taking a relatively grown man out into
the hallway and beating him on the buttocks with a
large piece of wood. That anyway, I'm going off the
(17:25):
camp and you know how I am my eighth grade mind.
Yeah yeah, yeah, so I mean but again, it's this
is a social contract that was entered two and said
that there was some sort of like okay, I accepted,
and it comes in and, like I said, comes down
to risk evaluation for my chance of being caught, what
what are the consequences of I am? And what do
(17:46):
I have to gain? And and for a number of people,
the equation ends up saying yes, I should teat because
I was more to gain than to lose in doing this.
Dr She also found this phenomenon called motivated forget, and
students who read an academic honor code before cheating on
a test had a harder time recalling details of it afterward. Um,
(18:09):
which is interesting, right, So they were sort of like, oh,
that whole thing that's really fuzzy, I can't quite remember.
It's almost like they're willing themselves to forget it. So
they could have some sort of excuse of oh I
wasn't aware of that, and I wouldn't have cheated, you
know what I mean. That's that's the logic, right. But
if they were made to sign the Honor Code rather
than just passively read it beforehand, Um, then the instances
(18:30):
of cheating actually decreased, so that the passive versus the
active of actually signing it and saying okay, I agree
that I understand this information would contribute to the less cheating.
So I don't know. Sort of sort of interesting that
there are certain stop gaps in your mind that happened.
And this has also been found by Professor of behavioral
(18:53):
economics at Duke University, Dr Don dan Arially. Um. He's
also m I T as well as a rhetor of
m I T Center for Advanced Hindsight. Um. He's really
interested in the bugs in our moral codes and Enron
inspired him to study cheating. Yeah. Um, turns out that
a lot of people cheat a little bit, sort of
(19:14):
one of his grocery findings. And in economic theory, cheating
is a very simple cost benefit analysis. Okay, So again
you talked about, like, what's the probability of getting caught
how much do I stand gain from cheating? What kind
of punishment is doled out? And he took all of
that information and he conducted several tests, and one he
gave test subjects twenty math problems to solve and told
(19:37):
them that they'd all get paid cash for each correct answer,
and then he gave them an impossible amount of time
for them to to um actually answer these questions. I
think like five minutes or something and um. So, in
other words, you couldn't get the full amount that you
you might be able to get paid out, like maybe
for ten right answers, you can maybe only do five. Um.
(19:58):
So that insure that nobody could complete it in time.
And then when the time was the control subjects were
told to count their correct answers and collect their pay. Okay.
So the test group, however, was told to shred their
exams before reporting their totals. So you have two groups, okay,
one that that's counting up the other one who can
is essentially getting rid of the evidence before Yeah, they
(20:20):
could say, and and they would be like, could you
have proof of that? And Nope, just shredded it. But
I totally answered everything you did in an impossible amount
of time exactly. And so you know, obviously he's trying
to engage cheaters into cheating. Um. So not surprisingly, the
people who were shredding were cheating a lot more um.
But they only cheated by a small amount. Okay, So
(20:42):
when I say small amount, they knew better than to
say ken because they didn't want to be They didn't
want to be that obvious exactly exactly, Like there was
some sort of margin of cheating that was acceptable to him.
So he looked into that situation. I thought, well, I'm
going to vary the amount that I pay them, so
you know this. I'm gonna conduct this experiment again um
at ten cents, at fifty cents, at a dollar. And
(21:03):
what he found is that the the highest the dollar
per question, actually cheating went down. So again there's some
sort of like prescribed or or inscribed morality inherent in cheating,
like this is for a dollar, this is serious business,
like cheating for a nickel. That's not that's no big deal,
I mean, it's kind of It reminds me a lot
(21:24):
of these, uh, these cost analysis that you see regarding
office theft, where individuals will steal a pin or steal
of the thing of printer paper or whatever, because they're
looking at it. It's like that's a pen, that's some
printer paper, that's a you know, that's a computer mouse.
That's that's pretty cheap. But but the same individual that
would rationalize that would not say take off with a
(21:46):
laptop or or just robbed the soda refrigerator blind. There
are levels at which it is acceptable and in which
it is not acceptable in the thief's mind. Well, and
that's what Arialie was looking at too, and he was
sort of like, a how does this play out? When
I put a six pack of a soda in the
dorm refrigerators and of course those disappeared like in no time.
(22:08):
But then he put a plate of six one dollar
bills in the refrigerator and they just stayed there completely,
you know, because again, if I steal that one dollar,
I'm stealing. But if I'm taking a coke, I'm taking coke. Right.
I've I've always found it interesting the whole theft of
of of office food. Yeah, because I think and you know,
(22:28):
this is a great place to work, but I think
we have occasionally encountered some some office food theft here,
just in small amounts. I will say, do not bring
a fancy yogurt because there is one person in the
office that I know will not be your yogurt who
really likes fancy yogurt. Never So, now you know, well,
on the opposite end of that spectrum, I once worked
(22:50):
for a newspaper that had a press room in the back.
And when I mean a press room, it's like we
we made the newspaper in the front. I was in
the editorial department, and then in the back the press
room dudes would would print the paper and the old
timey cut and paste. Yeah. Yeah, I was part of that,
and some of the people worked there were old timey.
It was. It was great. But there was a refrigerator
shared by both departments, and it was it eventually just
(23:12):
became common knowledge that on the weekends, if you happen
to leave anything in the fridge and I mean anything
like a half eaten meal in a styrofoam containing, those
dudes in the back would emerge from their press room
that did not smell of newspapers. Let's just say it
had a very uh there was this there was a
certain herbal odor going on, and then they would just
consume everything yeah, Oh, I think I knew what you're
(23:35):
talking about there, like cannabis. Yes, yes, that's what I'm suspecting. Well,
I mean it's the weekend cannabis. They've got the munchies exactly. Yeah.
So they would just eat everything in the refrigerator, like
down to like half sandwiches and and and leftovers and
like somebody's uh, you know, mostly empty thing of peanut butter.
It's kind of amazing. I love telling that story. But
(23:57):
I think it's funny that that people will continue to
leave stuff they are knowing that, like the cannadbas munchies
were going to occur over the weekend, or maybe they
didn't realize. Okay, yeah, so you see it in the workplace,
You see it in college dorms with with soda. Right.
But Ariel like he is obsessed with this idea of cheating,
and so he conducts another experiment, and this is very
(24:17):
similar to the other one where he's got the group
who is self reporting, um, you know how many correct
answers that they have. But in this group, he's got
a bunch of Carnegie Melon students and he has um
like thirty seconds into this, right, It's like very obvious.
This person is cheating. He stands up, he's got his
Carnegie Melon sweatshirt on, and he says, I'm done. What
(24:38):
do I do? And the person uh in the study says,
just go ahead and collect your money, And of course
a lots of other people start going, yeah, me too,
I'm done, and they're cheating as well. But what they
found is that when they varied it by having the
person wearing a University of Pittsburgh sweatshirt right rvals, this
(24:59):
is an outside right, this person is standing up with
the University of Pittsburgh sweatshirt in a room full of
Melanie or Melanie Hey, Melanie of Carnegie Melon students, that
the cheating actually went down. I think that even said
to null because people did not identify with that person.
They were outside of their their social group. It again
comes down to what is the moral climate, uh, you know,
(25:21):
and and in in us versus them, what is the
moral climate of us? You don't want to be them? Right?
And so he kind of took all of this and
he applied it to to and Ron right, because he's
he's thinking like, how does this play out in the
real world in financial circumstances when there where there's a
lot of cheating going on, and so he's saying, okay,
here's a bunch of people who are engaged in systematic, widespread,
(25:44):
planned accounting fraud in order to keep stock prices artificially
high as well as their credit rating. And think about
stock and credit rates. These are now the stand ins
for money, just as um, you know, the cokes and
the fridge were, or the the soda in the fridge was.
So there's an abstraction of money. So people are a
(26:04):
little bit more apt to say like, Okay, it's just
it's just play money, right, It's just an idea of
money that we're dealing with here. It's not big piles
of cash that we're actually stealing. Um. And he's also
saying that you have a bunch of people in that
in the actual industry who are identifying with each other.
So again we're looking at that that same sort of
university sweatshirt. Think of them everybody working at Enron is
(26:28):
wearing the same university sweatshirts and saying, well, you know,
if that person is doing it, then it must be okay,
it's okay if that I can donate or I sort
of look the other way or even participate. And it's
just really interesting because it turns out that this sort
of fraud um is something like six hundred billion dollars
a year. Uh So it's widespread. And when you look
(26:51):
at it that way as this abstraction of money and
everybody's just sort of turning the other way, then it
becomes a much more problematic. Right. Well, it also makes
me think of a various correctional institutions, you know, and
just the idea that taking somebody for say a minor
drug offense at a young age, putting them in a
prison environment and then you know, acting surprised if they
(27:12):
come out of that environment with the attitude more of
an attitude that the criminal behaviors are are okay. Right,
because in some some respects, there's a permissive environment no
matter what that is, you know, across the board, whether
it's a culture, organization of business, there are things you
can get away with, right, Um. But let's talk about creativity.
Oh yeah, yeah, So this comes down to the same
(27:34):
dude we were talking about earlier, Dan Airily, who again
was doing another test where he had and this time
it was like a hundred people, uh and he were
doing a similar thing where everybody takes a test. They're
filling in their multiple choice and then they're asked to
transfer their answers to another sheet, which, by the way,
accident just because of a printing air, it has the
answers on it. So don't the answers are on the
(27:56):
sheet you're transferring to, but don't change from your originals. Again,
this is sell reporting really to the individual, right, So yeah,
will the person cheat? Will they not? And then they
compare everything afterwards, And they were testing creative and supposedly
non creative people, and he found that the the more
creative the person like, the higher level of cheating involved.
In this particular study, creative people are a bunch of cheaters. Well,
(28:20):
it's interesting. What's really fascinating about this is that it
comes down to um something we've talked about before, like
the power of storytelling, like the creative mind getting engaged
in the creation of a story, the creation of of
a character with various things set upon them. I think
I made the argument that I feel like, uh, sometimes
(28:40):
creative people and especially writers tend to be more depressed,
more miserable in some conditions because their their brain is
more apt to create a me story, you know, like
something bad happens, and then they create, they create, instantly
create that story where about how something bad happened to me,
how something bad is happening to me, to a largely
(29:01):
send the tell our memories form. We've talked about using
say like Tetris games to immediately uh, stay of off
post traumatic stress, because before that you can actually form
that me story and take what has just happened, in
form it into this this series of events and store
it away. You're interfering with it with Tetris and anyway,
the argument here with the creative individuals is that when
(29:23):
it comes to cheating, they're more um apt to create
a story again where I am the central character. But
in this story, UM, I have a rationale for cheating.
That's suppos about to say too? Is that? Um? You know,
we've done so much research on pattern recognition, and a
lot of times it takes a great amount of creativity
to see patterns where there are none. Um. And of
(29:44):
course you can rationalize with with pattern recognition. Right. It's
like the German individual that I talked to that one time,
for instance, you know I mentioned earlier. It's like, I'm
not sure to what extent what they were telling me
was true or or is that just there there me
story that rationalize their cheating. It's like, well, my I
come from a culture that, uh where it's okay. Or
(30:05):
in the school, the teachers know I'm cheating, so it's
it's it's fine they if I'm not cheating, I'm I'm
cheating myself by not rising to the occasion. Or you know,
you can imagine any number of cases where someone's like, well,
the class is too hard, so I should cheat to
make up the difference. Or I've been said I've had
to put up with other things in my life, I've
been into the disadvantage, or I had a rough a
(30:26):
rough week, uh you know prior to the test, so
cheating is is okay for me? Or I mean I
was just thinking about this too. Like if you've got
too much cash back from an exchange at a retailer, yea,
and you might say that I read this to uh
something like you you might not like that retailer and say,
oh that's the that's the man, Like they don't need
a big box store, they don't need this money. So yeah, likewise,
(30:49):
I'm in the office stuff case where people will end
up doing it for petty reasons. Um, like you know,
give me too much work to do. I'll take that
out with pin theft your yogurt. Yeah, um, but yeah,
I mean early. It was basically saying that the sort
of morality about cheating is really about the mirror that
(31:09):
reminds us of who we are at the point where
it matters. So again, signing an honor code before you
take a test, it's going to be much more effective
and reminding you about, you know, what is important to you,
what matters in terms of how you conduct yourself. Um.
And they've even seen studies before where it's far more
effective to post how fast someone is traveling in their car, right,
(31:33):
how much they're speeding. Yeah. They have those roadside meters
that tell you yeah yeah, because once they see like
oh man, I'm going sixty five and forty five, people
sort of shame themselves and saying, oh I I see
the mirror of myself. And and it's far more effective
than putting you know, two cup cars there all day long,
because then that's just these are guys are out to
get me. They're literally out there get me and uh
(31:55):
and uh and it and it's instead of it being
a me versus them, it's a me versus me. I'm
in competition with my own sense of self being. Some
things to think about here. Oh yeah, so cheating. I'll
tell you what If you guys have anything you would
like to share with us about the cheating academic cheatings
of scholastic cheating, um, let us know. I would love
to hear anyone's story on Like you know, I'm always
(32:19):
game for any amusing tales about creative methods of cheating
and from if you if you're a teacher or if
you're a student. And I'm very interested in people who
have who can can really be honest with themselves and
look at cases where they have cheated and then where
they haven't cheated, or where like a part time in
their life when they did cheat on tests and then
they left that behind, Like what change in you? What
(32:41):
you know? How did you how did your attitude toward
the subject matter change or towards school itself change? I
think all that substas are you like sophocleans and you
say something like I would prefer even to fail with
honor that win by cheating. Ah, there you go, so
you can find us on Facebook and Twitter. We are
below the mind. On Twitter and on Facebook, we're just
(33:01):
stuff to love the mind. To find us that way
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and blow the mind at how stuff works dot com.
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