Emerging Adults’ Evaluations of Cheating: How External Pressures Lead to Moral Exceptions

• In Event: When is it Alright to Lie and Cheat? Developmental Perspectives on the Morality of Dishonesty

Abstract

Most children and adults sometimes lie or cheat despite judging that dishonesty is generally wrong (Davis et al., 1992; DePaulo et al., 1996; Stephens & Nicholson, 2008). These apparent “gaps” between actions and judgments about honesty have received much attention in research on moral development (Blasi, 1980; Stephens, 2018). Some scholars have concluded that moral principles do not guide actions, either because people do not care about them or because they can be turned off when it suits a person’s self-interest to cheat (Bandura, 2016; McCabe, 1997; Sykes & Matza, 1957).

An alternative view questions the prevalence of such judgment-action gaps. Instead, it proposes that children and adults sometimes accept dishonesty to uphold another value, for instance when lying is necessary to protect one’s own or others’ welfare (Fu et al., 2015; Heyman et al., 2009; Levine et al., 2010). We refer to these cases as “moral exceptions.”

Four studies examined situational factors hypothesized to generate moral exceptions about dishonesty.

Study 1 asked emerging adults (N=145, 81% women, 83% US-born) to evaluate eight hypothetical cheating vignettes in which the protagonist was either under low or high pressure to cheat (e.g., limited time due to working two jobs). Participants were more likely to accept cheating when the character was under high pressure (52% okay) than low pressure (14%), p < .001. When asked if cheating could ever be justified, most participants (70%) described situations in which they would make a moral exception (e.g., family emergency).

Study 2 (N=111, 36% women, 94% US-born) asked a broader sample of US adults to evaluate the same vignettes as in Study 1. Again, participants were more likely to accept cheating when the character faced high pressure (41%, vs. 10% low pressure), ps < .001.

To identify how specific pressures affected moral exceptions, Study 3 (N=105, 79% women, 82% US-born) created vignettes that manipulated three types of pressure (access to resources, obligations to others, and authority flexibility, Table 1). All three significantly affected judgments: Participants were more likely to think cheating was acceptable when the character lacked resources, had obligations to others, or faced an inflexible teacher, ps < .001. The more pressures that were present in a given scenario, the more participants said it was okay, p < .001.

Going beyond cheating in the classroom, Study 4 (N=170, 73% women, 85% US-born) asked participants to evaluate non-academic cheating (e.g., scamming, forgery). In addition to manipulating pressures, Study 4 examined whether the presence of direct victims (e.g., scamming someone by pretending to be their relative) leads participants to judge cheating more harshly. Participants evaluated cheating more positively when the character was under pressure and more negatively when the act had direct victims, ps < .001 (Table 2).

Our findings support an alternative account of the “judgment-action” gap for cheating: Even when they had no personal stake, emerging adults and adults made moral exceptions, judging dishonesty as permissible in the face of specific pressures and in the absence of victims.

Authors

• Fiona C DeBernardi, Cornell University
  Presenting Author

• Talia Waltzer, University of California - San Diego

• Audun Dahl, University of California - Santa Cruz