After observing the behavior of cheating, we developed a hypothesis based on one of the significant factors in cheating behavior: confidence. The purpose of our experiment was to test whether or not confidence had an effect on an individual's willingness to conform to a cheating environment. To test our hypothesis, we created a Lego building experiment that allowed us to determine whether or not people felt comfortable with certain tasks and observe how their comfort level affected their behavior. We created cheating environments by having confederates complete the task along with the test subjects and use phones, instruction books, etc., and also tested then likelihood of subjects to cheat when nobody else around them was cheating. We found that many of our test subjects were very concerned with their own tasks and didn't have much motivation to cheat. While some of the subjects did cheat when they felt pressured and not as confident, we could not successfully prove that lower confidence levels led to more cheating.
Exploring Confidence and Conformity with Legos.
The point of this experiment was to test our hypothesis of whether or not confidence influences an individual's likeliness to cheat. We started with behavioral observations and one of the more common ones was cheating. Then we started to think about why people cheat and if environment influences cheating. Our hypothesis was: If a person has a higher confidence level, then they will be less likely to cheat. This also can be said for the fact if others cheat. If others are cheating, is the individual more likely to cheat? We conducted a series of tests involving the building of legos. We saw a wide variety of results. We noticed that if people in the group knew the other people in their group then they were more willing to talk with each other to help build their Lego pieces. It was more difficult for them to build Lego pieces if they weren't comfortable with each other.