College Station, Texas – August 1, 2019 —
Is cheating a product of the environment or a character trait?
Dr. Marco Palma, director of the Human
Behavior Lab at Texas A&M University and professor in the department of
agricultural economics, and Dr. Billur Aksoy, assistant professor of economics
at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York, took a closer look at cheating
during periods of relative economic abundance and scarcity to determine whether
cheating for monetary gain is a product of the economic environment.
During the experiment, they found
evidence that cheating is more likely caused by an individual’s propensity to
cheat than external factors. To view the paper supporting their work, visit http://bit.ly/scarcityoncheating.
Famous criminals’ propensity for
cheating has been attributed to their circumstances and being a product of an
impoverished upbringing, Palma explained. So to test this theory, researchers
selected a remote community in Guatemala for a field experiment to help
determine whether scarcity, or impoverished situations, truly influence a
person’s propensity to cheat and lie.
The Experiment
According to Palma, the experiment gave
participants the opportunity to cheat without any repercussions, and they were
tested both during times of scarcity and relative abundance. Since the village
where the experiment was held relied solely on coffee production for their
livelihood, the abundance period would be during the five-month window when
coffee is harvested weekly, and scarcity would be tested during the seven
months of no harvest, and therefore no income.
The experiment included giving
participants a cup and dice and asking them to roll the dice with the cup.
Depending on the number rolled, participants received monetary compensation for
filling out a survey. If a one was rolled, the participant received five
quetzales, which is a little bit less than a dollar. Rolling a two paid 10
quetzales, a three paid 15 quetzales and so on. Rolling a six received nothing.
Participants were asked to roll the dice twice by shaking the cup.
“The first time is the one that counts,
and then they shake it again so nobody else sees what they rolled,” Palma said.
“So now people have an opportunity to cheat in order to increase their
earnings.
We did this in the scarcity period, and again in the abundance
period.”
By even distribution, each number should
be rolled about one-sixth of the time, he said.
Cheating for Personal Gain
“If you look at the high paying numbers,
there are three numbers out of six. So, 50% of the time they should report a
high payoff and 50% of the time a low payoff,” he said. “We find that they
reported about 90% of high numbers during scarcity and about 90% in abundance.
So, there was no change in cheating across the two periods.”
“This tells us there is no real change
for the propensity to cheat during scarcity and abundance.
Meaning, this is
more like an inner characteristic of an individual.”
Cheating for a Friend
The second part of the experiment gave
people the opportunity to cheat for someone in their village, the in-group,
like a family member or friend, and increase their monetary benefit.
“In general, people cheat for the
in-groups, but at a lower rate than they would for themselves. And this doesn’t
really change across the scarcity and abundance conditions,” he said.
Cheating for a Stranger
Next, they were given the opportunity to
cheat for a stranger, the out-group, someone outside of the community.
“During the abundance period, people did
not cheat for the out-group,” Palma said. “In other words, if it is somebody
who is outside of the group, the level they reported for the high payoffs was
exactly 50%, which is the expectation. But during the scarcity period, the gap between
the in-group and the out-group was closed. All of a sudden people started
cheating for the out-group at the same rate as they did for the in-group.”
Results
Palma explained that the participants’
willingness to cheat during scarcity was unexpected. During the scarcity
period, the boundaries of the in-group and out-group disappear not only because
people are willing to incur a moral cost, but they are also willing to incur
monetary costs by giving the same amount of money to both groups.
“This experiment helped bridge the gap
between the lab and the real world, and we can inform policy makers and make
accurate predictions of how humans will react under different types of
environments,” Palma said.
According to Aksoy, these findings
appear to be universal.
“In our experiment, we did not find any
significant impact of scarcity on cheating behavior when the beneficiaries were
the subjects themselves,” she said. “In a recent unpublished study, titled
“Poverty negates the impact of social norms on cheating,” other researchers
also reach the same conclusion in their experiment with rice farmers in
Thailand. This suggests that our findings are not exclusive to Guatemalan
coffee farmers, but, of course, there is more research that needs to be done in
order to better understand this phenomenon. In fact, a study conducted in 23
countries highlights very little differences in cheating behavior across the
countries. ”
The Human Behavior Lab has recently
received a grant, with Drs. Catherine Eckel and Jonathan
Meer from the
economics department at Texas A&M, to continue studying cheating behavior,
and they plan to conduct follow-up experiments within the U.S.
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