School, Lies, and Videotape

In reading Derek Bok’s Our Underachieving Colleges, I came across the following statistic: 80% of high-school students admit to having cheated on a test or assignment. By general admission of the polling profession, this indicates that the actual figure is probably much higher; some people who would cheat are probably also people who would lie about cheating, even on an anonymous survey. 47% admit to having stolen something from a store, 77% to having lied to their parents about “something big”, and so on. Derek Bok uses these statistics to argue that colleges should be providing some kind of moral education, to prepare their students to be good citizens upon graduation. I don’t believe that morals can be taught, but these statistics raise some questions. How important is the fact that so many students cheat? Does the figure indicate that students are immoral, and is that significant? When people talk about the causes behind falling crime rates in typically high-crime places, they offer a number of possible explanations, from more policemen to better social programs, but no one suggests that we are, on the whole, becoming better, more moral people.

Following the example of lowering the murder rate in a big city, there are two broad paths towards lowering the rate of student cheating. One is the “larger/more effective police force” option: put more restrictions on students. Check their bags as they enter an exam, have more proctors walking the aisles, institute strict penalties for cheating, and generally expend more effort to catch cheaters. This has the benefit of almost surely quelling students’ ability to cheat, but it doesn’t allow for the distinction between a student who would not cheat no matter what, and a student who would cheat only if there was a good chance she would not be caught. To some, this distinction is not important; all that matters is that students do not cheat, their inner turmoil be damned. I’m interested in the latter category, though. It seems a very human thing: maximize your personal benefit from a situation. It’s well documented that we behave much more morally when we’re being observed, or when we think we’re being observed, than when we don’t. If someone sees us pick up a wallet, we’re more likely to at least make a show of trying to find its owner; when an honor-system donation box has a picture of a pair of eyes taped to it, donations go up. Clearly, some people will cheat if they believe they won’t get caught, but would stop cheating if it became too difficult or too costly; these people do not have some sort of disorder that compels them to cheat, but rather, a natural human propensity towards finding the loophole.

The second means of curbing student cheating would be the “more social programs” avenue. Just as alleviating poverty alleviates crime, taking into account students’ assessment of the fairness of teachers’ expectations, and lowering these expectations accordingly, will result in less cheating. A student who copies a homework assignment because he didn’t have time to complete it is in a different academic situation from a student who copies the same homework assignment because he didn’t understand the material well enough to do it. The same logic applies to low-level corporate cheating and stealing: the employee who steals office supplies or skims from the petty cash fund is expressing his disatisfaction with his job, his level of compensation, or his working environment. Assessing the perceived discrepancy will allow the company to at least determine whether it would be more economical to raise employee wages, or put up with a certain amount of petty theft.

Distinguishing in these ways from the out-and-out cheater, and the opportunistic cheater, or the stress-induced cheater, seems valuable from the student perspective; if a morally superior option can be made available and equally attractive, it pleases our consciences to take it. But how beneficial is this distinction from the point of view of the teacher, or the administrator, or the potential employer? Acknowledging that virtually everyone is inclined to cheat given certain conditions (something the 80% factor indicates) is the first step. Although we don’t acknowledge it, when we hire a new employee, we are admitting that he or she may be tempted to steal from us, or cheat us. It then seems helpful to be able to predict under what circumstances such temptation would arise, and into which category of cheater the person in question falls. An opportunistic cheater may be a better hire for a law firm, because such a person is inclined to finding loopholes, something that benefits a good lawyer. A stress-induced cheater may not be a good hire for a hospital, but may be a perfectly reasonable hire for an office-type job where meticulousness and attention to detail are more important than performing quickly, or under pressure. Normally, such skills are worded in terms of the positive; rather than saying that someone is a stress-induced cheater, we would say that he works carefully and produces quality over quantity. Yet, sometimes the negative characterization is just as helpful.

A third way of looking at the problem of low-impact cheating and stealing is as a symptom, rather than a cause. Filesharing has been analyzed from this perspective quite successfully; it is a mostly victimless crime, with a relatively low chance of getting caught. An ad inserted by the RIAA during the opening credits of some DVDs shows a teenage boy breaking into an apartment and taking a tv, or hotwiring a car, or stealing a lady’s purse, and finally downloading a song online. The ominous voiceover says “you wouldn’t steal a car. You wouldn’t steal a purse. Don’t steal a movie” (or something like that.) The problem is that the motivating cause behind stealing a car is very different from the motivating cause for illegally downloading a movie. The vast majority of filesharers would probably not steal a car, or a television set, or a purse, because the chances of getting caught are too high, and the financial benefit is too low. Television sets and cars are things that have a very wide possible price range; a used Honda Civic on Craigslist is going to be many hundreds of times more affordable than a brand-new Porsche, but for someone with a limited income, both will accomplish the purpose of transportation. On the other hand, the price of going to see a movie in a theatre is likely to be fixed, within a dollar or so, based on one’s geographic location, while some films are not available in one’s area at all. Rather than implying that today’s youth are disrespectful of entertainment corporations, the filesharing epidemic seems to implicate unreasonable market pricing, and problematically low entertainment quality. When four times out of five a movie at the theatre disappoints, downloading it seems more reasonable than paying $8 and taking the gamble. Furthermore, when most movies seem to be made to be equally enjoyable on an 18-inch or 18-meter screen to all but the most discerning movie-goers, there is no reason inherent in the form for paying extra to see a movie in the theatre rather than on a laptop. Incidentally, certain artists in the music industry have realized this, and are taking steps to ensure that their products are physically appealing and artistic. As a personal case in point, I bought rather than downloaded Beck’s most recent album, “The Information”, because of the quality of its liner notes (stickers! essays!); Sufjan Stevens’ box set of Christmas songs included a long essay, christmas stickers, and a poster, which makes a pretty compelling case for buying the thing rather than just downloading the songs. Luckily, due to a disinclination to read for long periods of time on the screen, the book industry seems protected from any sort of filesharing infringement; the physical component of a book is essential to the enjoyment of reading it.

The question of pricing is the greatest motivating factor behind theft, and explains particularly well the phenomenon of teenage shoplifting. Simply enough, most products are marketed to teenagers while being priced well out of the realm of most teenagers’ finances, and the finances of many adults, as well. When fashion magazines create pressure on young women to dress a certain way, and feature items of clothing that cost hundreds of dollars, some are going to try to level out the inequality. Simply denouncing the act as immoral doesn’t address the underlying sociological problem.

I wish there were more academic studies on these ideas. I wish there were studies on whether a person who cheats on a test is more likely to become a person who steals from an employer, or a person who steals a wallet, or a car. However, these studies would require first finding out whether someone who cheats on a test is likely to lie on a questionnaire in a study, as well. Yet I feel like this is something that needs to be determined. A vast majority of research in psychology, sociology, business, and anthropology depends on the honesty of subjects in its studies. While the potential benefit to lying on a study is relatively low, nevertheless some people must do so, especially during studies which involve questions that seem personal, or culturally loaded, like asking how often one cheats or steals.