‘A promise may stop kids from cheating’

CHENNAI: At online school these days, cheating is the ‘new normal’. But new research from the University of Plymouth has found that adolescents (640 of them from India) who made a promise to be truthful were less likely to ‘cheat’ than those who did not, even when they could not be found out. “Cheating in academic settings is a common problem world over,” says Pune-based psychologist Jahnavi Sunderarajan, who worked on the study with Patricia Kanngiesser, associate professor of psychology at the University of Plymouth.
The study was prompted by a 2015 article on 750 students in Bihar being expelled for blatant cheating in an exam. “We wanted to examine the prevalence of dishonest behaviour among school children and develop methods to promote honesty,” says Jahnavi. Patricia explains that promises are ‘speech acts’ and create commitments by merely saying specific words.
For the study, published in the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, researchers used the method of voluntary promises to create an honour code using a dice game where students’ points and thereby rewards were directly proportional to the number of dots on the dice. Before the task, half the students were given a choice to promise to be truthful.
Students in the promise group were told they would receive a higher pay-off — double the points per dot on the dice — if they promised to report honestly the number of dots they could see. Students in the control group had to do nothing regardless of whether they chose the lower or higher pay-off.
“We found that statistically, over-reporting the number of dots on the dice was lower in the group that had made the promise,” says Sunderarajan. “The study suggests a verbal promise puts moral pressure on the child to be honest. Alternately, it could make them realize that by promising, they are winning the trust of the other person and breaking the promise could result in betrayal of that trust.”
The findings suggest that if students are asked to sign an honour code at the beginning of the exam saying they would answer honestly it may reduce the prevalence of cheating, she says, adding, “However, as dishonesty is visible in children as young as those in preschool, this needs to be promoted from a young age.”
Chennai-based psychiatrist Dr Kannan Gireesh also believes that children will reduce the amount they lie if they know they are “trusted and loved even if they fail”. “Empathy makes children want to connect,” he says.