Does competition enhance performance? Or does it simply create more incentive to cheat? That was precisely the question a pair of Spanish researchers set out to explore in an interesting experiment. Fifty-five men and women spent a half-hour working on mazes on a computer. Half the students were paid based on the number of mazes they completed “whereas the half in the ‘highly competitive’ condition were only paid per maze if they were the top performer in their group of six students,” according to the British Psychological Society’s research blog:
“The students in the highly competitive condition narrowed their eyes, rolled up their sleeves, focused their minds and cheated. That’s right, the students playing under the more competitive prize rules didn’t complete any more mazes than students in the control group, they just cheated more.”
The test subjects were able to cheat by switching to easier levels of difficulty or clicking on a button that offered solutions for the mazes (software on the computers monitored what the test subjects were actually doing). Perhaps the most interesting finding: poor performers cheated the most.
‘It turns out that individuals who are less able to fulfill the assigned task do not only have a higher probability to cheat, they also cheat in more different ways,’ the researchers said. ‘It appears that poor performers either feel entitled to cheat in a system that does not give them any legitimate opportunities to succeed, or they engage in “face saving” activity to avoid embarrassment for their poor performance.”
The test designers have a funny way of describing cheating. From what I read here, the “cheating” consists of using freely provided on-hand methods to simplify the given tasks. That would be like giving someone a textbook, but saying that it is cheating to open it up and look in it.
Comment by Obi-Wandreas — June 25, 2010 @ 10:50 pm
Obi-Wandreas’s point is serious but I dispute the use of the word “freely”. A look at the original BPS blog suggests that in fact there were clearly stated rules (as there always are on assessments) that the “cheaters” broke. To rephrase Obi-Wandreas’s last sentence: “That would be like giving someone a textbook at the beginning of a unit, but saying that it is cheating to open it up during the test.” Yes, it sounds like those test-takers cheated.
Implications abound, as Dan Ariely and Levitt & Dubner suggest in their books and TED speeches. There’s a moral component as well as an assessment-design/implementation component. Obviously. What intrigues me most, though, is the conclusion about the “poor performers.” I hear this to have implications with regard to both students and teachers, especially if the stakes are high.
Questions that I want to hear more about: How do we find out who are “poor performers”? How did the British researchers? To what extent does the authenticity of the assessment matter? Are there alternative assessments — ways to assess different elements of skill and knowledge (in English, for example, I almost always see some kids write better on reflective assignments than they do on literary analysis, and some who have better content knowledge than they have synthesis abilities)? How do the test-takers “know” they are among the “weaker” ones — previous assessments, or general fear/anxiety/self-esteem issues, or maybe even the loftiness of their personal goals?
Integrity and assessment are two of my favorite topics. Thanks for posting this and giving me lots to think about!
Comment by Carl Rosin — June 26, 2010 @ 10:49 am
Competition is part of the fabric of our ethos. It’s imperative in any free market economy. Work harder than the competition, perform better, experience more success. Run faster, jump higher, study harder/longer. It’s also what’s made this country great (until recently).
I believe it’s the conspicuously absent piece in our education reform movement.
Cheating? It simply cannot be tolerated and it should NOT be an excuse to dismiss competition from our schools. It can and should be prevented at every turn.
Comment by Paul Hoss — June 27, 2010 @ 2:37 pm
[...] Competition doesn’t enhance performance; it encourages cheating, concludes a British study. Poor performers make the most creative cheaters. Via Core Knowledge Blog. [...]
Pingback by Kids compete if parents can pay « Joanne Jacobs — June 30, 2010 @ 6:50 am