Tricks & Scams

Its about doing tricks and cheating people. Bbreaking the rules or achieving personal gain through fraud or deceit.
Cheating is defined as the intentional act of breaking the rules, or attempting to achieve personal gain through fraud or deceit. With children, cheating usually refers to academic fraud, such as copying answers from another student while taking an exam, or breaking the rules in a game.

Cheating as a concept is not understood by children until around age seven. Preschoolers often change the rules to a game as they play, innocent of the fact that rules must remain consistent to have any meaning. By seven, however, children have gained an understanding of rules, fairness, and honesty, and cheating then becomes intentional

The tendency to cheat is inversely related to the expectation of success. If a person has experienced repeated successes in a certain area, she will be much less likely to consider cheating in that area than one who has experienced repeated failures. Some early studies of cheating appeared to show that cheating was related to intelligence, with "less intelligent" students cheating at a much higher rate than "more intelligent" students. However, the tests used in these early studies were academically oriented, an area in which the better students had experienced repeated success while the poorer students had experienced failures. Therefore, the poorer students were more likely to consider cheating when faced with the academic tests. New studies have been conducted using nonacademic tests with which academically oriented students are unfamiliar. In these studies, "smart" students were at least as likely, if not more likely, to cheat when given the opportunity. In fact, when tests were given that were geared to areas in which poorer academic students had experienced greater success than academically oriented students, the poorer students rarely considered cheating while the academically oriented students cheated.

So many have been pressured to sell their souls for some personal benefits. According to David Callahan, author of "The Cheating Culture", cheating has increased dramatically in the past two decades in almost every segment of American society: sports, the education system, mass media, and the Corporate world. Bribery, insider trading, improper billings, false advertising, tax evasions, plagiarism, copy-right violations and just some of the common dishonest practices.

Problem of cheating and corruption also exist in organized religion. How many respected religious leaders have resigned in disgrace because of sexual scandals and corruptions! How many more live a double life without being exposed! The number would be staggering, when you include all the seriously flawed religious leaders, who hide themselves behind holy masks. No wonder organized religion has acquired the dubious reputation of being the breeding ground for hypocrites.

To Prevent Cheating :

There are several solutions to the problem of cheating. Society needs to reinforce honesty and cooperation in homes, schools and businesses. Parents need to teach and model ethical behavior for their children. Governments should be more vigorous in policing and punishing serious cheaters.

These are helpful suggestions. But who will be responsible for initiating these curative measures? Since cheating has been institutionalized and encouraged implicitly by corporations, how can we make corporate cultures more transparent and honest? Can a mandatory course on Business Ethics or Personal Integrity transform the corporate culture? How can we make parents and teachers examples of honesty? What is the incentive for people to sign on to a new social contract? How can we prevent individuals from cheating, when dishonesty pays? Since cheating has permeated every aspect of our culture, it will take nothing less than a culture revolution to cure this social malaise. We need to look for a remedy that deals with the root-cause of cheating rather than the symptoms.