What Makes People Cheat

Somehow, "Please be honest in your written and verbal communications" just doesn't have the same ring as "Thou shalt not lie." Francesca Gino and Joshua Margolis, two professors at Harvard Business School, wanted to dig deeper into the implications of framing an ethical request as a positive or a negative-to find out if that commandment would be equally effective framed as a positive request rather than a negative one.

Using a series of experiments, they found students were less likely to cheat when they were worried about the consequences or given a stern reminder of them. Asking nicely, or simulating a situation in which students would get a reward for being honest, didn't work as well.

The research raises interesting questions, especially in situations where employees are encouraged to reach a goal-say, to sell a certain number of mortgages each month-- and could conceivably find it easier to reach that goal by stepping over an ethical line-perhaps by selling mortgages to people who are clearly unable to afford them. The research also shows that positive messages about reaching a goal can overwhelm cautions about ethics. "If the message is, 'Be sure not to step over the line, but hit those numbers,' don't' be shocked if people forget the first message," says Margolis. "You need to be clear about penalties even as you are clear about goal-setting."

HUGE NUMBERS OF CHEATERS
To see how easily students would cheat in different situations, they were given sets of seven letters and told to make anagrams from them. Students were told they'd be given a Scrabble dictionary to check their work, and would then pay themselves for each right answer using money in envelopes on their desks.

In one experiment, before checking their work, students were asked to complete a maze. For half the students, completing the maze successfully would allow a cartoon mouse to get a piece of cheese. This was supposed to help the students think in a 'reward' frame of mind. The other students had to complete the maze to keep the mouse from being eaten by an owl (the 'punishment' frame of mind). The cartoon mazes may seem kind of silly, but they had two very different effects on the students:

• A whopping 83% of the students in the 'reward' frame of mind (those who did the cheese maze) cheated.
• Some 39% of the students in the 'punishment' frame of mind (those who did the 'owl' maze) cheated.

How can companies encourage ethical behavior without resorting to a punitive environment? Or are punitive-sounding statements exactly what is required?

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