The Extortionate Cost of Contract Cheating

Veeran-Colton, Terisha; Sefcik, Lesley; Yorke, Jonathan

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-12680-2_16

“…If you are caught cheating on a laboratory task, you can disappoint the experimenter (although the experimenter may secretly hope that you cheat, if your cheating supports their hypothesis). If you are caught cheating on an exam, you may get thrown out of college (Veeran-Colton et al, 2022). Perhaps because of the lower stakes, and because they are designed to elicit cheating, laboratory studies find higher rates of cheating than field studies (Gerlach et al, 2019).…”

Section: Variability In Action Selection Across Situationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Canary Alive: What Cheating Reveals about Morality and Its Development

Dahl,

Waltzer

2023

Human Development

0

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Reports of academic cheating trigger fears of moral decay. This inference, that cheating is a dying canary in the coal mine of morality, assumes that youth who cheat lack genuine, moral concerns with honesty and integrity. This article proposes an alternative perspective on cheating and dishonesty. We propose that cheating and other forms of dishonesty result from (1) misperceptions of what constitutes cheating, (2) evaluations that cheating or lying is okay under exceptional circumstances, and (3) prioritization of non-integrity actions during conflict. Each of these three steps—perceptions, evaluations, and action-selections—show both situational and developmental variability. From this perspective, research on cheating reveals moral engagement, not moral disengagement: Developmental and psychological research shows that, far from being a dying canary, cheating reveals the pervasive role of morality in decision-making.

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“…These conflicts illustrate how people can remain morally engaged with, and care genuinely about, a moral principle even when they violate that principle. -Colton et al, 2022). Perhaps because of the lower stakes, and because they are designed to elicit cheating, laboratory studies find higher rates of cheating than field studies (Gerlach et al, 2019).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Canary Alive: What Cheating Reveals About Morality and Its Development

Dahl,

Waltzer

2023

Preprint

0

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Reports of academic cheating trigger fears of moral decay. This inference, that cheating is a dying canary in the coal mine of morality, assumes that youth who cheat lack genuine, moral concerns with honesty and integrity. This article proposes an alternative perspective on cheating and dishonesty. We propose that cheating and other forms of dishonesty result from (1) misperceptions of what constitutes cheating, (2) evaluations that cheating or lying is okay under exceptional circumstances, and (3) prioritization of non-integrity actions during conflict. Each of these three steps—perceptions, evaluations, and action-selections—show both situational and developmental variability. From this perspective, research on cheating reveals moral engagement, not moral disengagement: Developmental and psychological research shows that, far from being a dying canary, cheating reveals the pervasive role of morality in decision-making.

show abstract