The Impact of Peer Presence on Cheating

Abstract

Recent research has shown that the presence of peers can increase individual output both in the lab and the field. This paper tests for negative side effects of such peer settings. We investigate whether peer settings are particularly prone to cheating even if they do not provide additional monetary benefits of cheating. Participants in our real-effort experiment had the opportunity to cheat when declaring their output levels. Although cheating did not have different monetary consequences when working alone than when working in the presence of a peer, we find that cheating is a more severe problem in peer settings.(JEL J20, J30, M50) * We thank settings. Hence, we are not primarily interested in productivity spillovers between low and high productive workers, but focus on the question whether it, on average, pays for employers to rely on peer settings instead of letting employees work alone.2. The motives underlying such social comparisons are self-evaluation, self-improvement, and self-enhancement (Gibbons and Buunk 1999). 11. Dai, Galeotti, andVilleval (2017) show that cheating behavior in the lab is related to cheating in the field. Furthermore, Herbst and Mas (2015) find that peer effects in the lab and in the field are comparable in size.

The Distinct Impact of Information and Incentives on Cheating

“…When the die task is repeated, Rauhut (2013) showed that subjects who are told about others' reports lie more (less) when they underestimated (overestimated) others' lying behavior compared to uninformed subjects. Similar results were reported by Soraperra et al (2017) in a die task, by Robert and Arnab (2013) in the context of a sender-receiver game, and by Bäker and Mechtel (2019) and Lauer and Untertrifaller (2019) in real-effort experiments.…”

The chronology of collective cheating: a qualitative study of collective dishonesty in academic contexts

“…Moreover, a competitive context-concerned with relative performance-plays a role on motivation, through the promotion of social comparison (Festinger, 1954). Bäker and Mechtel (2019) found more cheating when participants performed in the presence of a peer compared to working alone. Human values (Schwartz et al, 2012) are another set of important predictors (e.g., Pulfrey & Butera, 2013Pulfrey et al, 2019), as are perceived likelihood of being caught, severity of punishment, and difficulty-or accessibility-of cheating (e.g., Covey et al, 1989;Graham et al, 1994;Hollinger & Lanza-Kaduce, 1996;Houston, 1983;Shmeleva & Semenova, 2019;Zhao et al, 2021).…”

“…Extrinsic motives (with external regulation, to employ Ryan & Deci's, 2000a taxonomy) such as academic or financial benefits, both for the whole group or for one of its members, were typically associated to competitive settings, steeped in social comparison (Festinger, 1954) and contextual pressures to perform and succeed. Interestingly, research showed that such settings do drive people to cheat in an individual or collective manner (e.g., Bäker & Mechtel, 2019;Cohen et al, 2009;Palazzo et al, 2012;Pulfrey & Butera, 2013;Pulfrey et al, 2018). Another instance of extrinsic motivation (in this case with introjected regulation, Ryan & Deci, 2000a) can be found in the social benefits mentioned by the participants.…”

Homophily, Peer Effects, and Dishonesty

“…In Gino et al (2009), the presence of a confederate who signals the possibility to cheat increases individuals' dishonesty (see also Fosgaard et al, 2013). Information on the dishonesty of others increases lying (see Robert and Arnab (2013) in a sender-receiver game, Rauhut (2013) and Kroher and Wolbring (2015) in die games, Bäker and Mechtel (2019) and Lauer and Untertrifaller (2019) in real-effort tasks). In a field experiment on information transmission in networks, Drago et al (2020) showed that, on the other hand, informing targeted individuals on the risk of sanctions in case of detected fraud can generate large spillover effects on untreated neighbors.…”