ABSTRACT
As with lying, at one time or another nearly everyone cheats. Academic cheating is common and has become the norm in many schools. Cheating also is often seen in sports, at work, in business transactions, and in marriages. A brief survey is presented for readers to report and reflect upon their own cheating. Academic cheating, the primary focus of this chapter, occurs not only among students but also among adults. Cheating among adults is seen in parents paying for fraudulent schemes to have their children admitted to prestigious colleges and in school administrators falsifying their schools’ test scores. Reasons why people cheat are examined, with emphases on immature moral reasoning, lack of moral emotions, mechanisms of moral disengagement, impulsivity and sensation seeking, the Cheater's High, and various contextual factors.
