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