A lunch date with my niece (a lecturer) and nephew (A level student) gave us opportunity to chit chat about life as academicians and university life. Inadvertently, our chat took a different turn when my niece told us about a recent cheating incident that happened last week. Her student. Her course. My mind keeps on thinking this phenomenon “Cheating during final examination” and about psychology theories to explain why people cheat, lie etc. Well, there are many theories and one of them is by Albert Bandura called moral disengagement theory. To explain about cheating phenomenon, students may justify cheating through mechanisms such as moral justification: “I need to pass for my future. I cheat because this is my final semester so I need to get good grades”, diffusion of responsibility: “I am not the only one who cheat. Everyone else is doing it too but they are not caught.” and minimizing consequences: “It is just a small note. It does not help me much to answer all questions.” The trivialization is utilized to temporarily separate students from their moral standards in order to lessen guilt and justify cheating. Trivialization in this context suggests that cheating is not a big concern. “Why should we make such a big fuss? Chill. Relax. No harm was done.”
In his book, Bandura proposed eight mechanisms that people use to disengage from moral convention. So, what is moral disengagement? It means people mentally reframe their behavior so it doesn’t feel wrong when they do something which is clearly violates ethical norms. It is a cognitive process. We have a choice either to follow or disconnect ourselves with moral and ethical standards. Essentially, it is a choice.
