The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty

You might suspect, given the polarization in Congress, that such negative social influences would be contained within parties. You might think that if a Democrat breaks the rules, his behavior would influence only other Democrats and that bad behavior by Republicans would influence only Republicans. But my own (limited) experience in Washington, D.C., suggests that away from the watchful eye of the media, the social practices of Democrats and Republicans (however disparate their ideologies) are much closer than we think. This creates the conditions under which the unethical behavior of any congressman can extend beyond party lines and influence other members, regardless of their affiliation.

ESSAY MILLS

In case you’re unfamiliar with them, essay mills are companies whose sole purpose is to generate essays for high school and college students (in exchange for a fee, of course). Sure, they claim that the papers are intended to help the students write their own original papers, but with names such as eCheat.com, their actual purpose is pretty clear. (By the way, the tagline of eCheat.com was at one point “It’s Not Cheating, It’s Collaborating.”)

Professors, in general, worry about essay mills and their impact on learning. But without any personal experience using essay mills and without any idea about what they really do or how good they are, it is hard to know how worried we should be. So Aline Grüneisen (the lab manager of my research center at Duke University) and I decided to check out some of the most popular essay mills. We ordered a set of typical college term papers from a few of the companies, and the topic of the paper we chose was (surprise!) “Cheating.”

Here is the task that we outsourced to the essay mills:

When and why do people cheat? Consider the social circumstances involved in dishonesty, and provide a thoughtful response to the topic of cheating. Address various forms of cheating (personal, at work, etc.) and how each of these can be rationalized by a social culture of cheating.

We requested a twelve-page term paper for a university-level social psychology class, using fifteen references, formatted in American Psychological Association (APA) style, to be completed in two weeks. This was, to our minds, a pretty basic and conventional request. The essay mills charged us from $150 to $216 per paper in advance.