#preventing cheating

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21 Hidden Motivations Behind Why Women Cheat

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21 Hidden Motivations Behind Why Women Cheat

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21 Hidden Reasons Why Women Cheat and How to Prevent It

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We know that students are less likely to cheat when they are aware of the negative moral consequences of their actions (Woolfolk, 2014). We also know that anti-cheating policies are relatively ineffective because they don’t tackle the real issue: the reasons why the student decided to cheat. Woolfolk mentions plenty of good suggestions for teachers such as avoiding creating high pressure situations, emphasizing learning rather that attining high grades, and more generally, try to be a more trustworthy, credible sourse of information for your students (2014).

This got me thinking, “there has got to be something even easier that is also effective,” and then I remembered an article we read in my Psychology of Leadership class that talked about cheating. So I rummaged through my old folder until I found it.  The article was perfectly titled, “To Cheat or Not to Cheat.” It discussed the results of a recent experiment, which demonstrated how subtle changes in language can dramatically affect ethical behavior (Krakovsky, 2012).

Apparently when you ask a person to pick a number between one and ten, they are much more likely to think of an odd number. With this in mind, the experimenters were able to test honesty. The experimenters asked participants to do this, and then they told the participants that if the number they thought of was even they would get $5. A good measure of whether cheating was present within a group was if they had a high rate of even numbers reported (Krakovsky, 2012).

The participants were divided into groups and one group of participants were told that the experimenters would be unable to know if you are “cheating,” and another group was told that it is impossible for the experimenters to know whether you are a “cheater.” The experimenters found that the “cheating” group was twice as likely as the “cheater” group to cheat (Krakovsky, 2012).

Changing that one little word to “cheater” lead people to behave more ethically (Krakovsky, 2012). I imagine that hearing the word cheater acts like as a kind of morality reminder. It sets off alarms. Most people like to see themselves as good (positive self-concept); thus, the word cheater is a morality alarm clock. It makes people more aware of the moral consequences of their behavior. (Think of all the cognitive dissonance. Yuck!)

How does all of this relate to anti-cheating policies?  It would probably be beneficial for teachers to reflect upon the tone and word choice, and contemplate the sorts of subtle changes they could make that would emphasize the moral consequences of cheating. I think that when students are made more aware, they will approach the question, “What are the costs?” differently. They would be even more aware of the morality costs, which subsequently would make the student less likely to cheat.

(Woolfolk, 2014)

Refrences

Krakovsky, M. (2012, Nov 19). To cheat or not to cheat. Stanford business magazine. Retrieved from http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/to-cheat-or-not-to-cheat.html

Woolfolk Hoy, A. (2014). Educational psychology (12th ed.). Columbus, OH: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.