Cheaters, Liars and Crooks

One of my favorite streamers recently got caught cheating. This incidence made me reflect on the subject of cheating as a character trait. Then I began to realize that the subject of cheating has come up various times in intellectual frameworks over the last few weeks. I am not alluding to ridiculous conspiracies by political neophytes talking about elections. I am talking about tangible research, data-driven burden of proof accounts of cheating. This has made me contemplate, what personality traits do individuals possess that influence them to be prone to cheating. In my shallow level of analysis I found that it is not just the act of cheating on it's own. All these acts require the individual taking part in falsification or data, plagiarism, hacks or just plain using someone else to tell you the answers; to also lie. So all cheaters must also be liars.

This article is not directly about the situation where the streamer decided to use a resource to help him make better moves in an online chess tournament, he simply represents the catalyst that led me down the path of pondering, 'What makes people cheat?". What psychological traits are apparent in those people who behaviorally cheat? We are in an era where honest, considerate and moralistic people are considered weak and cheaters, liars and crooks are to be admired. Maybe America was always be run by liars, cheaters and crooks. They set the system up where they could prosper and the rest of us abiding by the belief we were subject to social contracts that admonished lying, cheating and stealing. Traits that were deemed negative for social cohesion and development so they could continue to prosper. Either way, I am a sucker for reflections on moral integrity and to what extent it still exists or what benefit it is offering the 'social contract'.

Let's start with motive. What leads a person to cheat if they have been raised within a social order where moral integrity was to be asserted with the strength of ones pride and respectability in the collective. To understand true strength as the means to create the outcome you are personably responsible. Not lying, stealing, cheating, or manipulating to benefit yourself. Personally, I don't cheat, my ego won't let me. I always want to prove that I am just better than other people. I look at those who do cheat as weak and feckless. I always wanted to prove I was better than other people. I may not have been perfect and I never want to be. I just wanted to be better than others. That is just me though, there are plenty of people out there that have no real pride in themselves they are just focused on how other people perceive them. And this is what made me very interested in the pathology.

Freakanomics recently participated in a series of exams into the prevalence of cheating in academia. I am not talking about the cheating that is persistent in high school and universities where students, especially the Greek culture have copies of the test and can just fill out Scantrons ahead of time and turn in, I am talking about adjunct, and tenured professors submitting publications with outright false or manipulated data. Running entire research grants on proposals submitted and co-authored by some of the top academics in their departments at the highest accredited institutions only to be identified as frauds. Professors can be awarded grants of significant value to conduct long-term research, in these cases based on the submission of a lie. So do they do it for the accolades, for tenure, for the grant money, I don't know, i just see it as cheating their way to prominence. Is that what you would do? Is that what you would do? Could you do it, a life of cheating and lying?

When it comes to academics I have always enjoyed learning. Even with the battalion of bad teachers that plague the education system fighting against a child's independent success. But no matter how uninteresting a teacher could make an interesting subject I never turned to cheating to meet the expected grade requirements. Really, I feel if more kids didn't cheat there would be a better assessment on which teachers were providing the most productive learning environment and they could be acknowledged. Social order teaches us that cheaters aren't suppose to be rewarded but as we learn everyday the world if full of cheaters and they had to learn it somewhere. In some cases, some very high profile, parents are going so far as to cheat for the kids. Hiring professionals to take SAT tests, falsifying athletic credentials to boost the acceptance into premier schools. Bribing athletic departments to help push through acceptances. Money has made people loose their damn minds.

We run into the same problem in athletics as academics. Among mediocre athletes who feel their skill isn't being represented to the fullest. This is either a lie they were telling themselves or a lie their parents were telling them. That they are much better than the competition and they 'deserve' more. Even worse is when an agent or coach betrays the trust at a chance of personal gain. We have seen performing enhancement drugs plague professional sports for decades. Lance Armstrong, Sammy Sosa, the country of Russia. Then there is your generic cheating Tom Brady deflating balls, refs being paid by betting cartels, gamers using hacks. Each one so proud of what they had built in the process of short cutting their claim to fame. The other side is that the ones I have mentioned are the ones that have gotten caught, think of all the ones that went undetected using the same methods but were still too mediocre to get caught. We are a society that now argues in playground tactics. These guys or country may tell us they did it cause all the others were doing it. Which is an excuse liars tend to make.

If you had the change steal a patent from a colleague you knew was going to rack in billions,, would you do it? If you got in possession of insider trading information about the bankruptcy of a 500 company would you short the long? Would you start taking performance enhancing drugs if you thought you could get signed to a big team? Would you hire someone to take your kids SAT if it meant them getting into a better school? Would you steak a carrot from the grocery store if you were a little hungry? Would you cut in front of someone in line if it meant you could save thirty minutes? Will you take money out of a friends wallet because you think they owe you the money? Where is our line for moral integrity? Where is yours?