We're a bunch of cheats

Nina 11-01-2005

AT least 50 per cent of people will cheat on tests if they think they can get away with it.

A research report found most people were deterred from cheating only by a fear of getting caught, and almost everyone would cheat if the stakes were high enough.
The study, by University of NSW psychology professor Bill von Hippel, was published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

More than 300 university students were asked to complete a series of "solvable but onerous" computer-based maths problems as part of research into mathematical aptitude.

Participants were told they had to press the space bar within 10 seconds to trigger a response box, or a bug in the computer program would cause the answer to appear automatically. The students were told not to wait for the answer to appear as this would ruin the study. Participants took the tests in private cubicles and were told the researchers wouldn't know if they waited for the answers, although this information was in fact monitored. About 50 per cent of participants waited for the answer to appear.

"We were rather struck by how many people cheated knowingly," Dr von Hippel said. "All they saved was five or 10 minutes and a bit of mental effort. After we told them it would completely ruin our study they did it anyway because they knew they wouldn't be caught."

When participants had only one second to press the space bar, about 10 per cent of people who didn't cheat on the first set of questions then did so. The study was a very "low stakes" example of what moves people to cheat, he said.

"If you push the stakes up you could get almost everybody doing it, I think," he said.

"There's probably a few of those souls out there who won't cheat under any circumstances - but they've got to be rare."

Hsoolien

I'm one that does not