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Haha! I bet the title tricked you! This thread probably isn't what you are thinking it is. Unless you've read Live Science's article from November 14th: Oddly, Hypocrisy Rooted in High Morals.

Apparently, people who consider themselves to be very "moral" are more likely to commit unethical acts, and justify them. College students who self-identify as "very moral" are far more likely to cheat, and justify such immoral actions as good in the long run. This sort of idea of having a high self-worth for being a "moral" person, but doing outrageously unethical things better explains the behavior of people like Ted Haggard.

In light of this study, is it ethical to consider oneself very moral, and use that identity to justify bad behavior?

Another possible answer is that people who have high morals for themselves tend to also have high standings in society. When they get caught doing something wrong they try to justify it so they don't look immoral.

Its like those asian kids who got caought cheating they their answer for why was because they're expected to do good on all exams...better then any one else. They told reporters that some kids are EXPECTED to cheat if they cant do good.

But according to the study, only if they consider cheating to be okay morally. I mean, I think it's morally acceptable to support gay rights, but a lot of people don't. I consider myself moral enough. Does that mean that I'm immoral, or more likely to do immoral things because I can justify it to myself as being moral?

If cheating is perfectly moral and ethical to you, then no, you're not being immoral or unethical. You are by a certain standards, but if morals and ethics are relative, then you're not being immoral.

If they were justifying things they considered to be immoral by saying, "But I'm so moral it makes up for it," then I'd agree, but this study is talking about people who identify themselves as moral but do things that others feel is immoral...cheating.

The only reason I think it's wrong is because it hurts other people, but that's because I sat down and thought about who cheating affects. A lot of people think, "If no one gets hurt, it's not wrong." It's not universally accepted that cheating is wrong, even in college, because a lot of people don't realize that it hurts other students when they cheat. Most professors will tell you it's wrong to cheat, because they can't accurately guage you that way. Some will not hold that stance, though I've admittedly only met two.

I'd also like to point out it doesn't mean much to say they think it's justifiable to cheat in certain situations. I think it's morally justifiable to steal in certain situations. I think it's morally justifiable to kill in certain situations. I think it's morally justifiable to do a whole lot of things in certain situations, actually, but I don't think the acts themselves are usually okay, or even completely moral when justifiable morally. The study also said,



And later on,



It would be interesting to see the actual study and figure out how they rated these people, too.

But someone who thinks that he or she will be an incompetent doctor if he or she cheats through med school isn't likely to cheat for the greater good, because he or she will realize they won't help. If they think the cheating will only get them into graduate school where they will go on to do the work correctly (let's be honest with ourselves, how many doctors need to know all about Oscar Wilde in order to do their jobs correctly?), then they may feel it's justifiable "for the greater good." They're not talking about cheating throughout med school, but cheating to get the grades to get into med school...that's a bit different.

I'd be able to do it. There are so many things in college that you will NEVER need to know once you get out unless your job is tailored to that particular field, in which case, you won't need to know the rest of the things that you'll never need to know anyway, so you really are doing a lot of useless classes just to get the grades. If me succeeding due to cheating didn't affect other students who did things honestly, I'd do it, and wouldn't feel bad about it at all. There is just not enough time in my life to waste on useless things, in my opinion, if it didn't affect others, I'd be all for it.

Thus the only reason I am against cheating. It hurts the people who do things the honest way.

But the person running the class doesn't always feel it's unethical. I pointed out two professors I know of earlier. I'd like to know these ways of getting out of non-major-related requirements, too, since I'm looking at doing about ten million, but even some major-related requirements aren't going to help in med school. I don't agree with it (again, for the reasons I mentioned) but it's not going to affect how you are as a doctor if you cheat in English 101, Philosophy (different than Medical Ethics), Intro to Sociology, or Women's Studies. Some of those are required in different schools no matter what your major is.

Professor 1's summary was that cheating is doing work in a different, faster way if you don't get caught. Professor 2's summary was that cheating is one way to get ahead in the real world, and certain types of cheating are justifiable, such as cheat sheets, because in the real world we use those methods all the time.

I dunno, doing it online or at a community college aren't really getting out of it. You still have to do them, and you still need to pass. You can make it easier, but it's like someone bludgeoning you with a bat instead of a bat with metal spikes.

I agree with you that people who consider themselves moral are going to be more hypocritical just because they're automatically labeling people who don't behave the way they do as immoral yet they're doing something considered immoral by others; basically, they won't justify other people doing something they consider immoral, but expect their own justifications to hold up as absolutely moral. That's hypocritical. But I don't think they're more likely to commit unethical acts (this would get into a debate about how to classify something as universally unethical), I think they're just more likely to be hypocrites, if anything.

See, I don't really care if certain people cheat off of me, and I have actually cheated for people who I felt would really not be able to do the work without help (in middle school, I help this chick with her math homework, because she literally couldn't figure it out, I would explain the answer and why it was the answer, but I did give her the answer) or who would otherwise not be able to get through school without cheating (in high school, I allowed a senior to cheat off my Earth Science test, and the teacher basically allowed it - she had to pass the class to graduate, and was passing all of her other classes).

What's weird is, I hate group projects because I used to have to basically do all the work on my own to get it done well.
Many of my college classes allow a cheat sheet on tests, particularly my computer science classes. The idea being that, if one had a job in the field, these would be problems that one could just find out about.