Understanding Cheating And Unethical Behavior: Causes And Implications

Your response should show evidence of having consulted a wide range of credible reference sources (minimum of six) including textbooks, peer reviewed journals, business periodicals and reputable websites to assist you in your discussion.

Think about the following for your final essay argument:

What about a persons family, should they not have taught their children honesty and the consequences of being dishonest?
What about society, does it not have in place rules that citizens are taught and expected to follow to minimise dishonesty? Are there not consequences for breaking these rules? Are we not told of these punishments? What about the individual themselves, can they not distinguish between right and wrong through observation and general knowledge? Should they not think about how their actions can hurt others as well as themselves?
Why is it the academic world that is expected to be the only one who resolves this situation and takes all responsibility?

The Nature of Cheating and Unethical Behavior

This discussion is intended to describe few of the main areas of research about nature, issues and causes of every kind of dishonesty or cheating, while strongly refusing the essay statement.  Cheating, dishonesty and other forms of unethical behaviour are common today, not just in higher academics and business but in government, sports, schools, and various other areas. We often focus on big cases of cheating and dramatic scams, while very less attention is paid to the causes and issues related to ordinary unethical behaviour. This ordinary unethical behaviour in our daily life is also known as cheating but we unknowingly ignore the fact (Ethical Systems, 2018).

Cheating is undoubtedly unethical behaviour. But we cannot accept that students, scholars and graduates consider that there is nothing wrong in cheating, as there are a lot of evidences that shows they know cheating is completely wrong. Thus, there is instead a bridge gap amid the actions of many individuals the ethical judgment: cheating is wrong ( Fu & Ehrlich , 2013). In the context of moral ethics and integrity, there are six key factors identified those are having significant impact on unethical behaviour, ethics and integrity is one of them which gives moral implications about any situation. Moral judgment, ethical decision-making and self-control are some influential factors while we see mismanaged ethics and integrity as a base behind doing cheating in any area. Students who are lying in their school-work will most probably act in a dishonest way during whole life following graduation (Bernardi, 2012).

Trust and credibility issues can also affect cheating in any area of the human life.  Many real life examples of trust exchanges such as fellow academic students, professors, employees, customers, employers, community, and family being the trustor, require deciding to what extent they should trust a person. It means that judgement of an individual’s cheating rate will be decided through trust and credibility of the person (Butler, Giuliano, & Guiso, 2016). Moreover, cheating is a major relationship-changing incident and it is a massive breach of deep trust. Conversely, if someone is cheated on other, it doesn’t mean that the incident cannot be repaired, that student or employer can definitely change his or her impression with a highly considerable effort, which is much better than to be discarded completely (Hussey, 2017).

Addressing and identifying academic cheating issues, academic capability, and idea development moral values since schooling as well as enforced honour codes play an important role. Academic staff like teachers, professors, should not suppose that students already know and behave according to the unprinted moral rules and regulations or a self-honour code. Hence, obvious way of minimizing cheating in universities is to speak out what rules, guidelines and codes the students should follow. Moreover, according to the past researches, main cause behind cheating in depicting academic capability is student’s ethical reasoning and moral behaviour (Kaufman, 2008). Student’s moral values need to develop under constant education. Additionally, this will create a great socio-economic for the moral growth that is needed by every university to foster in the students. Cheating or dishonesty issue in academic area of any person must address as students need to be honest to be successful in their daily as well as professional life. The honest academic behaviour will also benefit or suffer the society in the long term. For an example when a student pass his or her examination and get rewarded with degree with cheating then the student as well as their family, friends and professors will be happy and feel proud (Michael & Arnav, 2017).

Causes of Cheating and Unethical Behavior

Conversely, in spite of having degree he can never success in his future professional life and career as the student is passed the class without exploring knowledge required and hence one time cheating can ruin his entire life and career. Thus, cheating cannot be taken as a positive way of getting rewarded, as it is a temporary happiness, while giving drastic long run results (Woolway, 2014).  In 2007, dozens of students at Indiana University's dentistry school were inspected for the involvement in a cheating loop, and for those reason six students out of them were suspended, nine students out of them were expelled, and twenty one got final warning letters (Galante , 2012). Society, academic atmosphere, daily around environment and our culture, all these factors are impacted or affected by cheating or dishonesty practice; particularly for an adult, child or student. If we take family as a causing factor then there are a lot of incidents where family members unknowingly teach their children that ‘There is nothing wrong in cheating’.  For an example, if one father is with his 5-years old daughter and driving to home and if he is lying over phone while talking to his wife about any incident. Hence, the daughter will get an impression that cheating or lying is not bad as his father who is an idol person of her life is lying and even after telling a lie, he is further teaching her about not telling her mother. In this way, a person’s family is very important in teaching moral values since their childhood. Hence, family members should tell the detailed consequences of being dishonest anytime and anywhere. Sometimes, through inspired from greed of societal reward and appreciation, students do cheating and misbehaviour to get good marks, which in turn result in long term disaster of their life (Michael & Arnav, 2017).

Moreover, there is a society around us that is critically important in teaching all moral values, ethics, and protects our integrity in all way. Therefore, societal effects can minimize dishonesty to a large extent by placing citizenship rules, which are to be taught at school level only and expected to be followed throughout the life. Contrariwise, there are many chapters in the syllabus of school level programs which relates and teach ethics, consequences of cheating, misconduct and other unethical behaviours (Michael & Arnav, 2017). Still, these rules and regulations set by society are not usually taught to the children effectively as these topics in the syllabus are considered as useless portion and not to be focused on. Thus, if we want ethical environment everywhere then we must follow the rules set by government and our society. The famous coach John Wooden wrote that ‘the true test of a man's character is what he does when no one is watching’, it defines the significance of not cheating anyone for anything (Pavlo, 2012). This quote teach a lot about dishonesty and cheating, as if all the persons in the world will start behaving and working honestly when no one is watching, then cheating and misconduct will be vanished all over. Additionally, one issue is that when everybody is cheating in daily life in the areas include relationships, school, college, government and legal, workplace and friendship, they are not aware of the punishments that they own caused by cheating. Hence, without knowing bad effects, prevention and cure cannot be done (Miller, Agnich, Posick, & Gould, 2015).

In conclusion, we cannot blame academic world, society, family and parents every time when we see some mishap because of unethical doing and behaviour. Human individuals are assembled with brain that is having highly accurate decisive power; hence they can easily distinguish among right or wrong with the help of keen observation as well as general knowledge acquired through regular learning. Thus, we cannot blame the academic world for this kind of behaviour as academicians, teachers and scholars are responsible for dishonesty to some extent not all over. This is our own responsibility to analyse, evaluate and take decision accordingly on the basis of our inbuilt moral and ethical values in order to remove deception from our society.

References:

Fu, E., & Ehrlich , T. (2013, 08 22). Cheating In Schools And Colleges: What To Do About It. Retrieved from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ehrlichfu/2013/08/22/cheating-in-schools-and-colleges/#1951dd8037aa

Bernardi, R. (2012). Challenges to Academic Integrity: Identifying the Factors Associated With the Cheating Chain. Accounting Education, 21(3), 247-263.

Butler, J., Giuliano, P., & Guiso, L. (2016). Trust and cheating. THe Economic Journal, 126(595), 1703-1738.

Ethical Systems. (2018). Cheating & Honesty. Retrieved from Ethical Systems: https://www.ethicalsystems.org/content/cheating-honesty

Galante , M. (2012, 08 31). The 10 Biggest College Cheating Scandals. Retrieved from Business Insider : https://www.businessinsider.com/the-10-biggest-cheating-scandals-to-rock-college-campuses-2012-8?IR=T

Hussey, M. (2017, 08 29). This is how to rebuild trust after someone cheats, according to relationship expert Matthew Hussey. Retrieved from Evening Standard: https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/dating/this-is-how-to-rebuild-trust-after-someone-cheats-according-to-relationship-expert-matthew-hussey-a3621956.html

Kaufman, H. (2008). Moral and ethical issues related to academic dishonesty on college campuses. Journal of College and Character, 9(5).

Michael, I., & Arnav, T. (2017). Behavioral correlates of cheating: Environmental specificity and reward expectation. PLoS ONE, 12(10), p.e0186054.

Miller, B., Agnich, L., Posick, C., & Gould, L. (2015). Cheating Around the World: A Cross-national Analysis of Principal Reported Cheating. Journal of Criminial Justice, 26(2), 211-232.

Pavlo, W. (2012, 10 23). Character Is What You Do When EVERYONE Is Watching. Retrieved from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/walterpavlo/2012/10/23/character-is-what-you-do-when-everyone-is-watching/#82d4ac0fc6d3

Woolway, D. (2014). A Review of “Cheating Lessons: Learning from Academic Dishonesty”. THe Journal of Educational Research, 107(3), 253.