The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty

A research assistant sat within eyeshot of the machine and pretended to work on her laptop. But instead she recorded what people did when confronted with the surprise of free candy. After doing this for a while, she observed two types of behavior. First, people took approximately three pieces of candy. When they got their first candy together with their payment, most people checked to see whether it would happen again (which, of course, it did). And then many people decided to go for it a third time. But no one tried more often than that. People undoubtedly remembered a time when a vending machine ate their money without dispensing anything, so they probably felt as though this generous machine was evening out their vending-machine karma.

We also found that more than half of the people looked around for a friend, and when they saw someone they knew, they invited their friend over to partake in the sugar-laden boon. Of course, this was just an observational study, but it led me to suspect that when we do something questionable, the act of inviting our friends to join in can help us justify our own questionable behavior. After all, if our friends cross the ethical line with us, won’t that make our action seem more socially acceptable in our own eyes? Going to such lengths to justify our bad behavior might seem over the top, but we often take comfort when our actions fall in line with the social norms of those around us.

Infectious Cheating in Class

After my experience with the vending machine, I started observing the infectious nature of cheating in other places as well—including in my own classes. At the start of the semester a few years ago, I asked the five hundred undergraduate students in my behavioral economics class how many of them believed that they could listen carefully in class while using their computers for non-class-related activities (Facebook, Internet, e-mail, and so on). Thankfully, most of them indicated that they couldn’t really multitask very well (which is true). I then asked how many of them had enough self-control to avoid using their laptop for non-class-related activities if it was open in front of them. Almost no one raised a hand.

At that point I was conflicted between prohibiting laptops in the classroom (which are of course useful for taking notes) or allowing laptops but, to help the students fight their lack of self-control, adding some intervention. Being an optimist, I asked the students to raise their right hands and repeat after me, “I will never, never, never use my computer in this course for anything that is not class-related. I will not read or send e-mail; I will not use Facebook or other social networks; and I will not use the Internet to explore any non-class-related material during class time.”

The students repeated these words after me, and I was rather pleased with myself—for a while.

From time to time I show videos in class both to illustrate a point and to give the students a change in pace and attention. I usually take this time to walk to the back of the class and watch the videos with the students from there. Of course, standing at the back of the class also gives me a direct line of sight to the screens of the students’ laptops. During the first few weeks of the semester their screens shone only with class-related material. But as the semester drew on—like mushrooms after the rain—I noticed that every week more and more of the screens were opened to very familiar but non-class-related websites and that Facebook and e-mail programs were often front and center.

In retrospect, I think that the darkness that accompanied the videos was one of the culprits in the deterioration of the students’ promise. Once the class was in darkness and one student used his laptop for a non-class-related activity, even for just one minute, many of the other students, not just me, could see what he was doing. That most likely led more students to follow the same pattern of misbehavior. As I discovered, the honesty pledge was helpful in the beginning, but ultimately it was no match for the power of the emerging social norm that came from observing the misbehavior of others.^*

One Bad Apple