Bad Science Begets Ridiculous Results: A professor at Middle Tennessee State University thought his MBA students were cheaters. So, to deal with the problem, he had them sign a pledge...wherein they agreed that their immortal souls would go to hell if they'd ever cheated in his class. He claims he got the idea after reading about an academic study that showed students who read the 10 Commandments before an exam were less likely to cheat.
UPDATE Bad Writing Begets Ironic Results: I need to apologize to Dan Ariely for the terrible headline above. I meant this to be about bad science writing, which I'd assume would have something to do with the professor misinterpreting this so terribly. But you know how you sometimes type half an email, come back later and finish it and then, after sending, realize you did a terrible job of saying anything even close to what you meant? Yeah. The result, unfortunately, was a sentence that was extremely unfair to Dr. Ariely and put me squarely in that bad writing camp. My apologies.
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Ack! MBA students or "How to make money and Nothing else". Face it they are selling their "immortal" souls to become MBAs anyway so this won't even slow them down.
This is the university in my hometown. I'm rather embarrassed now, I thought things were getting more progressive back home.
I used to think that. But now my husband is in MBA school. He's actually learning a lot of really interesting things about management, organizational structures, and--believe it or not--making the world more sustainable.
bah... that only works if they're catholic.
"The" chapter on ethics? I need to read that.
Yeah, this seems to be a redundant thing to ask of MBA students...
Also, by offering such a contract, isn't the professor claiming he's the devil?
I'll put some fictional twist on that: "Similarly, a report showed that Atheist (non-religious) students who read the 10 Commandments prior to an exam were twice more likely to cheat". I wonder if the professor thought of that aspect.
"Bad Science Begets Ridiculous Results"
OR
"Good Science Begets Working Result"
Since the article doesn't mention any associated facts, things like this actually work. Prof. Dan Ariely currently of Duke and who also works with the MIT Media Lab did the research suggesting this tactic would work. Here is his TED talk on the subject.
Basically if you give people the chance to cheat on a test for prizes they will cheat less if they were "primed" by thinking about the Ten Commandments (regardless of their religion or if they even knew the commandments) than if they thought about books they had read as children. Here is the ,related paper. The idea is that there is something about oaths and moral priming that actually prevents small incidences of cheating that we all otherwise indulge in.
So before everyone starts freaking out, take a deep breath, and be glad that someone has been reading about behavioral economics.
I do believe they try to teach responsible business ethics with an MBA degree, the hard part is believing that more than 5% of graduates leave the program with ethics in mind. Maybe it's just that modern business seems to produce many more Madoffs intent on personal wealth and power than morally and ethical leaders.
Face it until you are the boss you do what you are told. If that is to produce wealth you produce wealth, if it is a sustainable growth your boss wants then that is what you work towards. These days it seems to be more the former not the later. Hell there are companies bundling Life Insurance policies into securities!?! I know I am a cynic but how long until a few of the bigger policy holders have "accidents" for profit?
I assume anybody who really believed in the concept of signing your soul away to damnation would consider this idea horrible and evil. At least Faust got a lifetime of fun and power and knowledge out of the deal. Richard Rich got Wales. Here, in a moment of weakness, a struggling student might go to Hell for a chance at a slightly better grade in one class. And the professor would be partly responsible for giving a soul to the devil -- not something that a religious believer would take lightly. This sounds like a cynical and hypocritical exploitation of religion on the part of the professor and the students who signed this ridiculous contract.
This strategy makes the desperate people who are struggling and need to cheat to get by a tough spot fail out, and leaves the people who don't care if their immortal soul goes to hell or not to achieve the highest marks and succeed and go into business where they can do more damage by being selfish, with less competition from those who have some, but not perfect ethics.
Yes, it also increases the number of rational atheists in the mix, but they're the bad rational atheists with no ethics anyway, so the advancement is only minor.
I'd think a better strategy is to just focus on catching and removing the cheaters.
Damn your logic!
I don't think its a religious thing. Its more like reading about STD's before you go have sex. A sort of cockblock for cheaters. Its less a religious thing and more an "its a bad idea."
Deals with the devil are symbolic (or Protestant anti-Catholic agitprop from the Reformation era). They are very weak as actual theology.
The amount of cheating at all levels of education is expanding massively, however, and many institutions are attacking it in all the wrong ways.
Agreed. Prof. Tang cited a study where people were less likely to cheat after being read the 10 Commandments. Picking on whether it really would "scare" people, or atheists, is missing the point.
MTSU Tang's plan ain't nothing to fuck with.
I would refuse to sign, then call my lawyer, it's a state school, they can't force a religious based pledge.
LOL. Nice.
Aha. The study was conducted by Dan Ariely, and is referred to in "Predictably Irrational". Interestingly, he obtained similar results by having students sign a statement that the test was covered by the MIT code of ethics. Never mind that there is no MIT code of ethics. The point of the study is that reminding people of ethical responsibility decreases the likelihood of cheating. There's nothing magical about The Ten Commandments; the pledge can be secular or religious in nature. You're less likely to cheat if you're reminded to stay honest.
Dear MAGGIE KOERTH-BAKER,
Before describing my research as bad science -- did you bother to check the paper, the data, the results?
We can debate the logic of the application, the downside of having such a strong "honor code" but where do you get the "bad science" from?
In case you don't want to read any of the papers on this, here is a short video that describes the results: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_on_our_buggy_moral_code.html
Irrationally yours
Dan Ariely
Here is the video of Dan Ariely talking about the study: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_on_our_buggy_moral_code.html from TED
http://russiatoday.com/Art_and_Fun/2009-06-19/Got_soul_Here_s_your_money_.html
"A financial company named “Kontora” in the Latvian capital Riga offers every adult citizen loans in cash. [---] The document says the loan is given using, as security, “the client’s immaterial being, namely the immortal soul”. The terms state the soul stays the property of “Kontora” until the last cent of the credit is paid."
So, basicly, this teacher is Mephistopheles?
poor kids.
be sure to hit up "Liquid Smoke" if you feel like you need a drink afterwards. it's right on the square. tell em i sent you (they'll probably expect you to drink too much and start loud political arguments if you do).
1) Oops, Maggie... Busted...
2) Dr. Ariely, if you're still reading, could you post the title of the article in question (the 10 Commandments one)? Your EBSCO list of articles goes on for 5 pages (wow!). I, for one, would really like to read the original paper.
"The amount of cheating at all levels of education is expanding massively, however, and many institutions are attacking it in all the wrong ways."
Is that one of those 'I heard it and so it must be true' stats? How do they measure cheating, or know if it's happening? Or is that a statement pulled from smoke?
There's a Fredric Brown short story that's basically this, although I can't recall the name of it now.
On the subject of academic cheating:
I attended university in the U.S. in the 1970s and again in the 1990s at a total of four schools, earning my most recent degree in 2000. Universally, cheating was so uncommon as to be virtually nonexistent. In my limited experience, the percentage of students who are willing to cheat has not increased.