Honest .. I couldn't help myself .. the computer made me cheat!

mmmm hmmm [she says, noncommitally]. I first read about this posting to a blog called "Research Digest" from the "The British Psychology Society" [link to that full text] from George Siemens' wonderful elearnspace blog which is one of my "can't miss" subscribed blogs. [link to full post on elearnspace].

Basically, according to the BPS blog, students were asked to take computerized tests where they were told that there was a glitch in the testing program that displayed the answers to the test questions and were given instructions on how to avoid having that happen. Before testing began, the treatment group read about deterministic argument that postulates human free will is a myth, an "illusion" as they say on the blog, and that the students (presumably human) thus had no control over their actions or decisions.

You guessed it. The treatment group were found to be more likely to cheat than those who had not read the material about determinism. A second, similar experiment where students were exposed to information arguing for the concept, against, and neutrally and were then asked to self-evaluate a test is also described, and again, those who read arguments that we really have no self-will were more likely to cheat.

The researchers say the significance here is:

If exposure to deterministic messages increases the likelihood of unethical actions, then identifying approaches for insulating the public against this danger becomes imperative.

Yikes! I hear so much about cheating students, particularly in online classes, and I have always thought one of the main reasons was because we put so much pressure on the grading process and so little on actual learning assessment. But heck, maybe all we have to do is insert anti-deterministic literature before every quiz and test to solve the cheating process

Nah .. I still think it's the stress!