The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty

We found that an honor code worked in universities that don’t have an honor code, but what about universities that have a strong honor code? Would their students cheat less all the time? Or would they cheat less only when they signed the honor code? Luckily, at the time I was spending some time at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, which was a great petri dish in which to test this idea.

Princeton University has a rigorous honor system that’s been around since 1893. Incoming freshmen receive a copy of the Honor Code Constitution and a letter from the Honor Committee about the honor system, which they must sign before they can matriculate. They also attend mandatory talks about the importance of the Honor Code during their first week of school. Following the lectures, the incoming Princetonians further discuss the system with their dorm advising group. As if that weren’t enough, one of the campus music groups, the Triangle Club, performs its “Honor Code Song” for the incoming class.

For the rest of their time at Princeton, students are repeatedly reminded of the honor code: they sign an honor code at the end of every paper they submit (“This paper represents my own work in accordance with University regulations”). They sign another pledge for every exam, test, or quiz (“I pledge my honor that I have not violated the honor code during this examination”), and they receive biannual reminder e-mails from the Honor Committee.

To see if Princeton’s crash course on morality has a long-term effect, I waited two weeks after the freshmen finished their ethics training before tempting them to cheat—giving them the same opportunities as the students at MIT and Yale (which have neither an honor code nor a weeklong course on academic honesty). Were the Princeton students, still relatively fresh from their immersion in the honor code, more honest when they completed the matrix task?

Sadly, they were not. When the Princeton students were asked to sign the honor code, they did not cheat at all (but neither did the MIT or Yale students). However, when they were not asked to sign the honor code, they cheated just as much as their counterparts at MIT and Yale. It seems that the crash course, the propaganda on morality, and the existence of an honor code did not have a lasting influence on the moral fiber of the Princetonians.

These results are both depressing and promising. On the depressing side, it seems that it is very difficult to alter our behavior so that we become more ethical and that a crash course on morality will not suffice. (I suspect that this ineffectiveness also applies to much of the ethics training that takes place in businesses, universities, and business schools.) More generally, the results suggest that it’s quite a challenge to create a long-term cultural change when it comes to ethics.

On the positive side, it seems that when we are simply reminded of ethical standards, we behave more honorably. Even better, we discovered that the “sign here” honor code method works both when there is a clear and substantial cost for dishonesty (which, in the case of Princeton, can entail expulsion) and when there is no specific cost (as at MIT and Yale). The good news is that people seem to want to be honest, which suggests that it might be wise to incorporate moral reminders into situations that tempt us to be dishonest.^*

ONE PROFESSOR AT Middle Tennessee State University got so fed up with the cheating among his MBA students that he decided to employ a more drastic honor code. Inspired by our Ten Commandments experiment and its effect on honesty, Thomas Tang asked his students to sign an honor code stating that they would not cheat on an exam. The pledge also stated that they “would be sorry for the rest of their lives and go to Hell” if they cheated.

The students, who did not necessarily believe in Hell or agree that they were going there, were outraged. The pledge became very controversial, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Tang caught a lot of heat for his effort (he eventually had to revert to the old, Hell-free pledge).

Still, I imagine that in its short existence, this extreme version of the honor code had quite an effect on the students. I also think the students’ outrage indicates how effective this type of pledge can be. The future businessmen and women must have felt that the stakes were very high, or they would not have cared so much. Imagine yourself confronted by such a pledge. How comfortable would you feel signing it? Would signing it influence your behavior? What if you had to sign it just before filling out your expense reports?

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