Answer the following statements true (T) or false (F)

Question

1. The psychological mechanism of motivated blindness discourages cheating among students.
2. Cheating may be done as a way to redress perceived unfairness.
3. Studies show that students who cheat and don’t actually do the assigned work are more likely to fail anyway.
4. Prior to its natural gas pipeline explosion, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) had an incentive system that encouraged crews to find leaks, which led to steep increases in repair costs.

Answer 1

1. False
Students know cheating is wrong, but they do it because of psychological mechanisms such as motivated blindness, the tendency to overlook information that works against their best interest.
2. True
People rationalize cheating with justifications that are mainly personal and emotional, including that cheating seeks to redress perceived unfairness. The urge to cheat may arise from a deep sense of unfairness, such as your sense that other people had special advantages that you did not.
3. True
As the research shows, students who cheat and thus don’t actually do the assigned work are more likely to fail anyway.
4. False
Prior to the explosion, PG&E relied on gas-leak surveys to determine whether transmission pipelines were safe, but the company’s incentive system awarded bonuses to supervisors whose crews found fewer leaks and kept repair costs down. Indeed, the company’s own internal audit found the incentives actually encouraged crews to produce inaccurate surveys.