Cheating

In Dan Ariely's TED Talk "Our Buggy Moral Code" he talks about the topic of cheating. Ariely conducted an experiment where he would give test subjects a simple math test with 20 questions on it and the subjects had 5 minutes to complete as many as they can and for every question they got right they would get a dollar. However, at the end Ariely would have them shred the test and have the subjects tell him what they got, giving them the chance to cheat. On average most people would answer about 4 questions but after shredding they would say they got an average of 7 questions right. All of these people cheated because they were given the chance to cheat. In my personal opinion cheating is a form of deception driven by a motivation. The motivation is usually to better on a test or get the job. In this case the participants cheated because they wanted the money that Ariely was offering them.