Final Draft: Cheating and the Categorical Imperative

This topic submitted by Creighton Bradler, Tony Wentz (bradlecc@muohio.edu) at 1:41 pm on 5/3/01. Additions were last made on Thursday, May 3, 2001. Section: Myers.

We regret that tables and graphs are not included. We could not gain access to Hay's site at the time of this posting.
Abstract
This is an attempt to display the presence of Kant’s categorical imperative in the context of extra-relationship affairs. The reasons people choose not to cheat, and the difference between males and females in revealing infidelity were focused on. Surveys requesting both objective responses to questions and reactions to hypothetical situations were distributed to 107 Miami students and the results were analyzed using chi-squares.

Introduction
Evolutionary psychology seeks to explain human actions in terms of genetic success. This discipline states that all our seemingly conscious actions are actually dictated by subconscious/instinctual drives to become more reproductively successful. Our human feelings and emotions are nothing more than motivators to direct our action down more successful avenues. Many would argue that this is a bleak view of human nature, which gives no credence to man’s existential nature. (See Stevenson, chapter 9) We wish to investigate the evolutionary basis of cheating and cheating “mechanisms”.
In The Moral Animal, Wright draws a clear line between male and female sexual behavior. In reference to George William’s bookü Adaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of Some Current Evolutionary Thought, Wright writes: “For a male mammal, the necessary sacrifice (in sexual relations) is close to zero. His essential role may end with copulation, which involves a negligible expenditure of energy and materials on his part, and only a momentary lapse of attention from matters of direct concern to his safety and well-being….For the female…copulation may mean a commitment to a prolonged burden, in both the mechanical and physiological sense, and its many attendant stresses and dangers.” (41) Simply stated a female incurs more risks from sexual interaction than a male would. Because of this, we predict females would be less likely to cheat on their partners than males would. In context, when a male cheats on his partner, he does not incur the possible psychological and physical strains of pregnancy, nor does he necessarily have responsibility for any unwanted offspring, as a woman does. These factors (consciously or unconsciously) motivate women to cheat less in relationships.
It is unlikely that females consider the “mechanical and physiological” burdens they may incur in extra-relationship affairs every time they decide not to cheat. Wright would say that an emotional or mental process has likely taken shape that directs a female’s behavior down the most evolutionarily successful path.
In his description of human nature, Immanuel Kant details two processes, which one can use in deciding one’s actions. The hypothetical imperative states that we do things because we believe they are the most effective ways to bring about other things that we want – “I am doing A because I want to achieve B, and I believe that in the present circumstances A will be the most effective way to being about B.” (Stevenson, Haberman 118) In other situations, “we accept an obligation, a moral "ought", a reason for action that holds irrespective of one's self-interested desires and may even go against them." (Stevenson, Haberman 118) Kant calls this sense of obligation to do the "right thing" in certain situations the categorical imperative. We predict that females will act on the categorical imperative significantly more in deciding not to cheat than males will. As stated above, females have more to lose through cheating than men do; as a result, we predict a categorical imperative (CHEATING IS ALWAYS WRONG) has been hard-wired into females to stop them from cheating. Evolution “does the thinking” for the women, preventing them from partaking in an activity that would likely endanger themselves, or current or future offspring. On the other hand, males have less to lose from cheating so we believe they will choose case specific reasons for not cheating (hypothetical imperatives).
Lastly, we would like to touch on the subject of the Madonna-whore dichotomy. This theory, explained by Wright (72-74), states that men generally seek women who have had fewer sex partners and who wait longer to have sex, as long term partners. As part of our study, we would like to investigate how this concept affects a categorical imperative in a cheating situation. The cheating situation we would like to test is one where only sexual infidelity is committed, not emotional infidelity. We predict that after cheating women will be less likely to inform their male partners of their infidelity, than males will to females; a weak categorical imperative has evolved in women (never expose adulterous or promiscuous activity). When a women reveals her infidelity she runs the risks of losing multiple future sex partners, and incurring a large drop in social status; a women will hide her infidelity to avoid these things. Males have much less to suffer by revealing their infidelity than females; our society actually has positive euphemisms for males who are able to obtain many sex partners. (stud, Casanova, and player being a few) “Evolutionary psychologists have predicted differences in the arousal of men’s and women’s jealous reactions such that men are believed to be most threatened by their mate’s sexual infidelity, and women are believed to be most threatened by emotional infidelity.” (Nannini, 117) Men are more likely than women to become upset at sexual infidelity, so females are less likely to reveal their sexual infidelity than males. We do not predict that a particularly high number of males or females would reveal their infidelity, but we do believe that more males would than females.

Methods
In order to test our hypothesis we developed the following survey:

NS II Survey
Age
Sex
Major

Please answer the following questions honestly.
1. Have you ever cheated on a significant other? (If yes skip to question 4)

Yes No

2. If your answer was no, have you ever been tempted to cheat?

Yes No

3. If your answer to question 2 was yes, which of the following do you think was more influential in stopping you from cheating?

a. Because you believe that cheating is morally wrong

b. Because you feared that your partner and others would find out about it

4. The following is a hypothetical situation. What would you do? ( choose
from the options below)

Suppose you have been going out with your significant other for sometime, and
both of you are happy with the relationship. There have been no problems, until
one night you slip up. You have a one-night stand with an out-of-towner that
you will likely never see again. Your partner has adamantly stated many times
that if he/she found out that you had cheated on him or her, the relationship
would be over. You know that they frequently talk to their friends about the
relationship, and if he/she finds out that you have cheated on them, they will
likely tell their friends about it. Thus you run the risk of being ostracized
by their friends as well. Do you choose to...

a. Do the right thing and tell your significant other that you cheated on them

b. Save face and not tell your significant other that you cheated on them

We distributed this survey to 107 Miami Students in their respective residence halls. No explanation of the survey was provided prior to the participant taking it. We attempted to survey an equal amount of males and females, school/major/age was not a factor.
Question one was asked to test the hypothesis that males are more likely than females to cheat. Those answering yes to question one did not answer questions two or three. As we were not testing differences in temptations to cheat, question two was used only to eliminate those who should not answer question three. Question three tested our hypothesis that females are more likely than males to feel that cheating is morally wrong. Question four tested our hypothesis that males are more likely than females to reveal infidelity.

Results
Of the 107 distributed surveys we received 44 quantifiable surveys back from males and 47 quantifiable surveys back from females, a total of 91 quantifiable surveys. Of those rendered unusable, four had no entry for sex, and the rest were not filled out correctly. (i.e. a positive response for question 2, and no response for question 3) The responses to the surveys can be seen in Table 1. Generally speaking, slightly more males said they had cheated than females, 21% more females said they had not cheated because they felt it was morally wrong, and 22% more females said they would reveal their infidelity, in the given situation.
To determine statistical significance, we analyzed our results using chi-squares. The results of the chi-squared cells can be seen in Table 2. The responses to questions 1 and 3, were found not to differ significantly; females answered a to question 4 significantly more than males.
Our first hypothesis was found to be incorrect; according to our survey, males and females are equally likely to cheat. Our second hypothesis was also nullified; males and females are equally likely to refrain from cheating because they feel it is morally wrong. Our third hypothesis was found to be reversed; rather than significantly more males revealing infidelity than females, females were significantly more likely than males to reveal their infidelity, in the given situation.
Apparently, females were not influenced by the possible implications of an extra-relationship affair, such as unwanted pregnancy. Several explanations could be offered to explain why this is. First, in the ancestral environment, where our current behaviors partially evolved, there were no high-efficiency forms of birth control. In our society, women can easily and effectively avoid unwanted pregnancies through the employment of condoms, birth control pills, or one of several other contraception methods. By using these forms of contraception a women takes nearly non-existent risk or incurring the physiological and emotional strains of pregnancy. In addition, the actual physiological and mental strains associated with pregnancy have been greatly reduced, due to modern medicine and psychology. In addition to having a decreased chance of pregnancy, females also have a greater chance of having unproblematic pregnancy; both of these factors increase the likelihood of female infidelity.
These social factors may have enabled females to rise above what we predicted had been biologically programmed: the categorical imperative – do not cheat. Perhaps this categorical imperative is present in females, but current social factors have prevented its expression. The thinking human mind may have realized that the impulses that are present may be illogical in the present situation. The mind then adopts its own values, based on society, which are more workable in the situation. Specifically, a female, upon realizing that she will not incur any risks from an extra-relationship affair, may question the validity of the categorical imperative, and eventually disregard it. Of course, there is the possibility that this categorical imperative was never present in the first place. “Cultural materialists pursue a strategy that seeks to reduce the list of hypothetical drives, instincts, and genetically determined response alternatives to the smallest number of items compatible with the construction of an effective corpus of sociocultural theory.” (Reader, 127) That is, cultural materialism attempts to explain human behavior as much as possible in terms of cultural and social influences. If this is the case then how a female morally feels about cheating is determined by her surroundings not evolution. In our society, there is no difference in attitude towards male and female infidelity; as a result, males and females are equally as likely to cheat.
Our last test was the only one where significant difference was found between responses. We had predicted that females would be less likely than males to reveal sexual infidelity, because males are more likely than females to become upset at sexual infidelity. Contrary to our hypothesis, females were significantly more likely to reveal their infidelity than males. Our logic may have been reversed in formulating our hypothesis. Males are more likely to become upset at sexual infidelity than females; perhaps males assume that females feel the same way as they do, and to avoid ending the relationship males hide their sexual infidelity. Females are more likely than males to become upset at emotional infidelity; perhaps females assume that males feel the same way that they do, and they do not feel that exposing sexual infidelity will be a big deal. These results could also be explained by cultural materialism. Perhaps the Madonna-whore dichotomy does not exist, and our society tells females they should be faithful. As our society reinforces male infidelity, and stigmatizes female infidelity, females may come to believe that cheating is morally wrong. When a woman cheats, she feels more guilt than a male would about the act, so she is more inclined to come clean and unburden her conscience. Our society makes women feel worse about cheating, so they are more likely to try to redeem themselves by coming clean.
We found all our hypotheses to be invalid in the surveyed population. The only significant difference found in male and female infidelity was the tendency to reveal sexual infidelity; females are more likely than males to reveal this unfaithfulness.

Conclusion
We discovered that when trying to uncover innate human behavior many problems arise. Initially this lab was designed to question whether a categorical imperative to do the right thing existed in human beings. We set up several hypothetical scenarios in an attempt to test our hypothesis, which was “Humans are more likely to act on a categorical imperative when there is a likelihood of social gain or recognition”. Upon presenting our original design we realized our surveys were not testing our hypothesis, and our hypothesis was not really testing our question, so we decided to focus on a different question, the one asked in this investigation.
We felt that we would be able to test aspects of the categorical imperative in the context of cheating. As before, we constructed a survey, and as before this one contained many problems. Firstly, our survey was apparently visually confusing; almost 15% of the surveys we handed out we rendered unusable. Some did not see the sex category, and more had trouble figuring out which questions they should not answer. Our survey should have been easier to understand. We also used subjective terms in our survey, such as the right thing and cheated. Commonly respondents asked us what cheating was defined as, and many were surprised that we the labeled an action as unquestionably the right thing. We should have provided a definition for cheating to normalize people’s answers to question 1. As for labeling an action as right, we were labeling in the context of the categorical imperative, where some actions are always considered right- such as telling the truth. Without an understanding of Kantian ethics, many respondents had a hard time accepting our labeling of an action.
Our results may have also been influenced by the size and demographics of our respondents. We only received results from 91 surveys, an inadequate number. By handing out more surveys, we would have received more definitive results. By surveying only 18-23 year olds, we surveyed many people who had just begun becoming involved in romantic relationships (one survey had to be thrown out because the respondent had never been in a relationship). Many respondents had not been given the opportunity to cheat, or even the opportunity to be tempted to cheat. Had we tested an older demographic, with more experienced respondents, our results may have been different.
Lastly, there were some conceptual problems with our survey. In asking the last question we assumed that males and females would be intrinsically aware of the other’s values. We assumed that females would be less likely to reveal infidelity because their male partners would become angered. Here we assumed male attitude as the motivation behind female behavior, and this does not make sense; female attitude directs female behavior. Many people had problems understanding question 3. One respondent included the note “Because I knew it would really hurt him. So sort of A.” after saying she didn’t cheat because it was morally wrong. According to Kant, this respondent’s actions would not have been moral because this respondent acted on the hypothetical imperative. Many respondents probably answered A to question 3 without being in accordance with the categorical imperative, thus throwing off our results.
On the positive side we were happy to be doing empirical studies on the categorical imperative. We each found this topic interesting and were excited to investigate it. After administering surveys, and conducting analysis we realized that a survey was not the most effective way to test our hypotheses. As stated before, many respondents had trouble filling out the survey, and we think many were not answering the questions the way they should have. In order to more effectively investigate the categorical imperative we feel some sort of interviewing process must replace the survey. A survey was too superficial to test this involved concept. Each respondents unique feelings towards cheating, morals, and the categorical imperative would have to be recorded to obtain the most useful data.

References
Haberman, David L., Stevenson Leslie. Ten Theories of Human Nature. Oxford University Press, Oxford: 1998.

Nannini, Dawn K. Meyers, Lawrence S. “Jealousy in sexual and emotional infidelity: An alternative to the evolutionary explanation.” The Journal of Sex Research. Volume 37, Issue 2. May 2000.

‘Sociobiology and Biological Reductionism”. Cultural Materialism. (Course Reader 24-35)

Wright, Robert. The Moral Animal. Vintage Books, New York: 1994.

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