Invisible barriers cut down on cheating

Date:
July 27, 2020
Source:
University of California - San Diego
Summary:
Both see-through and pretend partitions promoted honesty in taking
tests, psychology experiments show, suggesting simple environmental
cues can nudge children to do the right thing.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
You know those cardboard partitions that sometimes separate kids taking
a test? The ones meant to prevent cheating? According to a new study
by an international team of researchers, a see-through partition does
the trick, too -- as does a pretend barrier that doesn't exist at all.


========================================================================== Published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
the study shows that simple environmental cues can nudge children to do
the right thing.

In four experiments with 350 children in China, aged 5 to 6 years old,
the researchers -- from the University of California San Diego, Hangzhou
Normal University and the University of Toronto -- demonstrate that just
the idea of a barrier, placed between a child taking a math test and
the answer key on the next table, discouraged cheating. The barriers
used were simple metal frames, or featured clear plastic. They didn't
actually make cheating any harder to do.

Yet these "barriers" significantly reduced cheating, from a baseline of
about 50% to between about 20% and 30%.

An imaginary barrier, outlined in the air with a toy "magic wand,"
had a similar effect.

The children were tempted to cheat because the last answer on the math
test was too hard for them, making it impossible for them to complete
in the allotted time.

Interestingly, the barrier had to be between the child and the answer key.

Barriers placed on the other side of the child or other parts of the
room didn't encourage honest behavior.



==========================================================================
"Our work illustrates the power of 'nudges,' which Nobel Prize-winning economist Richard Thaler has shown to be effective at getting adults to
behave in desirable ways," said lead author Gail Heyman, professor of psychology in the UC San Diego Division of Social Sciences. "It also
suggests that people's ideas about morality are deeply rooted in how
they think about space. This is probably why there are so many spatial metaphors for morality such as 'cross the line' and 'keep on the straight
and narrow.'" The study extends prior research on children's moral
behavior, Heyman said, and it advances the researchers' "moral barrier hypothesis," that "moral violations can be inhibited by the introduction
of spatial boundaries." The study confirms the centuries-old assumption
in architecture that physical environments can affect human behavior,
which is one of the reasons many companies spend so much time and money
on designing workspaces. There's also evidence of just how powerful these
cues can be in our daily life, such as when rope lines at airports signal
where people should wait in line, or social distancing circles signal
how far apart people should stand.

The findings surprised the researchers, Heyman said, because it seems
even young children have the ability to quickly pick up on unfamiliar
and subtle environment cues to guide their moral behavior. They don't necessarily need to see others follow these cues or to be explicitly
reminded of their presence.

First author Li Zhao of Hangzhou Normal University said the researchers
were also "surprised to see academic cheating among children as young as
5 years old, especially given the lack of obvious incentives for them to
do so." The researchers guess that most of the children wanted to get a
high score to impress the experimenter, which suggests that the desire to impress other people -- even strangers -- drives human behavior starting
in early childhood.

"Our findings suggest that we can use nudges to encourage positive
behaviors and discourage negative behaviors," UC San Diego's Heyman
said. These nudges can be simple, she said, like encouraging hand-washing
by posting illustrations of people washing their hands, or painting a
colorful path from the toilet to the sink in school bathrooms. Another
daily example is encouraging children to eat a more nutritious diet by
leaving out sliced vegetables and fresh fruit.

Kang Lee of the University of Toronto says that parents and teachers can
use environmental design for moral education. He notes that the findings
are most directly relevant to discouraging cheating. He suggests that,
"When giving tests, teachers may consider making simple changes, like
setting up tape lines between students to remind them not to copy from
each other's answers. If we start such practices when children are young,
it may encourage honesty, and lead to habits associated with less cheating
in high school and college." The contributions of Li Zhao and Yi Zheng
were supported by a grant from the National Natural Science Foundation
of China (31900773) and a grant from Zhejiang Provincial Office for
Philosophy and Social Sciences of China (19NDJC058YB).


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
University_of_California_-_San_Diego. Original written by Inga
Kiderra. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Li Zhao, Yi Zheng, Brian J. Compton, Wen Qin, Jiaxin Zheng,
Genyue Fu,
Kang Lee, and Gail D. Heyman. The moral barrier effect: Real
and imagined barriers can reduce cheating. PNAS, 2020 DOI:
10.1073/pnas.2002249117 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200727154208.htm

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