The Phenomenon of Cheating during Exam Essay Example

The phenomenon of cheating during exams in colleges and universities is a well-known issue that requires constant consideration. Moreover, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, lots of universities in Israel and around the world have had to conduct the exams in an online format which has made the occurrence of cheating on exams even more prevalent. In fact, many universities in Israel were unprepared for the new and challenging situation. As a result, students were more likely to cheat on exams completed at home, by using aids and even helping each other during the exam. The present essay will discuss both intrinsic and extrinsic reasons that motivate the students to cheat on exams.

There are several reasons why people tend to cheat. First of all, when an individual is exposed to the dishonesty of someone who is an out-group peer, he might decide that he doesn't want to cheat at all. For example, according to Gino et al. (2009), a student who sees a class member cheating on an exam and without getting caught may change his or her estimation of the probability of being caught in the act. Secondly, the social norms mechanism that says when an individual grows up in an environment that cheating is “popular” he or she probably tends to cheat too. For instance, in an experiment conducted by Bandura, “children exposed to an aggressive model reproduced considerably more aggressive behaviours toward a Bobo doll than did children who were not exposed to the aggressive model” (Gino et al., 2009). The more important intrinsic reason is that although people generally reject lying, they often feel that lying in the name of the collective good is morally justified due to blue lies serving pro-social purposes. To illustrate, people tend to justify their lies as blue lies and say that they serve “pro-social purposes” when they are actually acting wrong (Fu et al., 2008).

We believe that the motivations for cheating are more extrinsic. In other words, social pressure plays a role many times when people cheat. For example, according to Fu et al. (2008), as people get older they become more inclined to lie to benefit the collective and many times it happens because the collective leads the individual to do so. The more the collective cheats, the more the individual will feel comfortable and committed to doing the same. Likewise, there is a large effect of the collective on exam cheating in Israeli culture, as people feel more comfortable cheating to help others and moreover, they tend to cheat even more when other people near them do it as well. Taken together, since the desire is to do good with the collective, intuitions must raise awareness of the collective harm of cheating. For example, cheating can impair the abilities and learning processes of others. Besides, signing the purity of the exams at the beginning of each test raises the issue of the individual's awareness and thus it is likely that after signing, he or she will feel less comfortable cheating. Another way to reduce cheating among students during this period is to ban test-taking in the test in the same place for two students, in order to minimize as much as possible situations where people are together and therefore feel more comfortable cheating. Yet, it is important to remember that at the end of the day, a person with strong values ​​will be able to stand up for himself or herself and won’t cheat, even if it is in the name of the collective good.