Cheating has been a problem for as long as I can remember, and rather than wondering why I’ve been wondering how. If it has been an issue for as long as it has, I would think there would be more research going into it and how to prevent it. A few experiments have been done explaining both why and how people cheat.
There are many reasons people decide to cheat and one is in high stress environments. In a study George M. Diekhoff led he surveyed a group of American students and then later a group of Japaese students and the results determined that 26% of American students admitted to cheating as opposed to 55% of Japanese students. The researchers concluded that this was because Japanese students have less tests throughout the year therefore their final is a large percentage of their grade. This causes a higher stress environment than in American schools causing them to cheat more often than the American students.
In conclusion, what teachers should do to further prevent cheating is change their curriculum. By adding more exams, assessments, and assignments students are less pressured to cheat because it has less of an effect on their grade as it would if there were only one exam. Studies have shown that frequent tests and quizzes help learning, so it would be beneficial for both the teacher and the student.
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