Is cheating ever prosocial? First, let's clear out extreme cases: hiding Jews in your attic from Nazis is cheating, and obviously good. A doctor falsifying paperwork to protect a woman whose life depends on a forbidden abortion is doing the right thing. Even the shopkeeper turning a blind eye to a hungry child stealing an apple is difficult to condemn.
But what about more mundane cases of cheating? Society generally judges cheating harshly. Cheaters, we're told, lack integrity, damage social trust, and leave victims in their wake. Often that's true. But in some cases, cheaters break rules without victimising anyone, not because the rules are evil, but because they are dumb.
Consider petty cases: sneaking a bottle of soda into the cinema, ignoring outdated safety regulations, or disregarding nonsensical religious dictates. Some condemn even these minor transgressions, but, increasingly, societies see them as victimless crimes.
But the stakes can be higher. Two kinds of cheating recently sparked intense debates: students using AI tools like ChatGPT to write college essays, and job applicants misrepresenting concurrent economic activity or embellishing past career details.
Critics — often gatekeepers protecting their status and authority — are quick to denounce such behaviour. Professors insist AI-written essays undermine education, despite knowing that traditional essays have never reliably measured workplace readiness or productivity. Employers label resume padding morally bankrupt, though hiring itself is notoriously rife with misinformation, bias, and arbitrary expectations. Gatekeepers point at the supposed victims — other students, honest applicants — while sidestepping the deeper issue: outdated systems and broken methods.
Is using AI to write an essay dishonest? Strictly speaking, yes. But what if the rule itself — relying on essays as a proxy for competence — is idiotic? AI-assisted essays may not show individual brilliance, but they reveal how pointless the old requirement has become. Far from harming society, these students might be nudging education towards genuine assessment methods, methods that truly indicate skill and potential.
Similarly, job application tricks reflect desperation born from a broken employment system. Candidates navigate a maze of meaningless credentials, irrelevant experience, inflated requirements, and tests that rarely reflect actual job demands. Their cheating highlights the absurdity of rules that evolved when work and productivity looked vastly different. They illuminate systemic dysfunction, pushing us to ask uncomfortable questions.
None of this fully excuses dishonesty. Individuals know the rules and choose deliberately to break them. But that doesn't mean society gains nothing from their infractions. Prosocial cheating doesn't just happen when rules are evil; it happens when rules become outdated, ineffective, or downright ridiculous.
