Honor Among Students: The Effects of Punishment Severity on Whistleblowing

The current study used a classroom cheating paradigm to investigate how severity of punishment affects the rate at which bystanders report a transgression to an authority. Participants were asked to read and memorize a literary passage before taking a memory and comprehension quiz about its contents. The instructions included one of three conditions: low, medium, or high severity of punishment for cheating during the quiz. During the memorization and testing time, a confederate student cheated by using their phone. As predicted, participants' rate of reporting the observed cheating to the proctor was significantly different across the punishment conditions, with participants reporting least often in the high severity punishment condition. These findings suggest that severe punishments for transgressions may discourage whistleblowing behavior, highlighting the impact of punishment severity on whistleblowing decisions. Future work should further explore the motivations underlying this effect to elaborate on the link between punishment severity and whistleblowing.