
Reputation for plagiarism
Plagiarism is certainly worthy of disdain when it constitutes actual theft — collecting payment that the original creator would have received — but why do we also tend to take a dim view of instances of plagiarism where there is no discernible material harm?
Plagiarism is in the news. It played a role in the resignation of Harvard president Claudine Gay, as significant portions of her academic output were allegedly copied from other papers, and all of a sudden everyone and their dog are looking for evidence of plagiarism in academia, journalism and beyond. Clearly, plagiarism that involves copying someone else’s work without permission and passing it as one’s own deprives the originator from rightful revenue, and this is widely disapproved, both on legal and moral grounds. But we also seem to despise plagiarism when nobody is actually being harmed — for example when, in a social setting, someone falsely passes of a joke they were told by a friend as their own. Why might that be?
Reputation, a possession more precious than money?
Our ideas contribute to our reputation, and a good reputation is of great importance for the social beings we are. It opens doors, encourages others to cooperate and share their resources with us, attracts potential mates, and helps us realize our goals. Unsurprisingly, we seek to enhance our reputation, but we also dislike it when others do so, for example by bragging (or, worse, humblebragging, making insincerely modest allusions to one’s qualities or achievements). Appropriating somebody else’s ideas or creations is especially worthy of contempt as it could cause reputational harm (by depriving the originator of the reputational benefits of their ideas). But might people denounce plagiarism also, or perhaps even specifically, regardless of any harm, because it seen as a deceptive reputation management tactic that falsely inflates the plagiarist’s reputation?
This is a question two psychologists, Ike Silver and Alex Shaw set out to investigate. They conducted six experiments based on vignettes to identify what is behind the moral condemnation of plagiarism in the absence of material (and indeed reputational) harm.
The first experiment features a story in which John, a Creative Writing student, discovers a handwritten notebook containing beautiful love poems. There is no indication of who the author might be, and John decides to have them published — in one variant under his own name, and in the other anonymously. Their participants evaluated John’s actions by rating the statement “John did something morally terrible” on a 1–7 scale with 1 indicating strong disagreement, 4 neutrality, and 7 strong agreement. The anonymous publication received a positive rating (2.74), while attributing the work to himself earned John a rating of 5.28. Clearly the misappropriation was deemed morally suspect, even though nobody got harmed. But perhaps the main concern was the money John would earn, which he was not really entitled to?
The second experiment added a fellow student, Frank, to the same story. The discovery is made jointly, but while John is not interested in money, but in the kudos of being an author, Frank doesn’t care about gaining reputation but only about the royalties. So they decide to publish it under John’s name, but Frank gets all the revenue. Here, the participants rated Frank’s moral position at 4.91, and John’s as 5.96 — suggesting that misappropriating the reputation without any financial gain is still plainly regarded as morally objectionable (in this case even more so than materially benefiting).
Still, while the writer of the poems was unknown and untraceable, and there was strictly no victim that could be harmed, the participants passing judgement might still have felt this anonymous person was wronged. A third experiment offered a direct comparison between plagiarizing a known friend and an unknown, anonymous source. The vignette features two friends, Sarah and Ruby, who both sing and play the guitar. Sarah is an aspiring singer-songwriter, while Ruby is strictly an amateur. One day, Ruby plays a song for Sarah she has been practising. In one variant, it is a traditional song; in the other it is her own composition. Sarah then decides to play the song at a gig, and either falsely claims credit for it, or truthfully attributes it to the original composer (i.e., either Ruby or an anonymous source). When Sarah credited the original composer, the participants gave her behaviour a rating of 3.90; when she claimed to have written the song herself, the ratings were 5.80 if it was actually a traditional, and 6.20 if her friend Ruby had composed it. The participants also gauged the benefit or harm the misappropriation caused on a 1 (strong benefit)-7 (strong harm) scale. To Ruby, they judged it fairly harmful (5.70); to the anonymous composer as neutral (3.90). This validates the assumption that plagiarizing an anonymous source causes no harm, yet is nonetheless denounced in the same way — any harm is not a material factor in the moral judgement.
The authors also considered the possibility that the moral disdain was driven by a general aversion to deception and lying, and adapted the previous vignette: alongside the existing scenario with Sarah performing Ruby’s song and falsely claiming credit for it, the alternative was that Sarah performed her own song, but lied to the audience by saying Ruby had composed it. Only the reputation-enhancing lie, i.e., taking false credit, was deemed bad (6.58), while the lie that gave Ruby false credit was seen as a ‘good lie’ (2.76). Lying is clearly not the issue.
What if Ruby explicitly gave Sarah permission to claim the song as her own? The penultimate experiment looked at three scenarios: one in which no specific permission is given (and Ruby is ignorant of what Sarah does); one in which Ruby gives Sarah permission to perform the song and claim it as her own; and one in which the same permission is given, with Sarah purchasing the rights to the song from Ruby. In the three scenarios, crediting the song to Ruby got rated as morally positive (3.38, 2.21 and 2.04, respectively), but falsely claiming credit, while rated the worst when no permission was given (6.44), was also frowned upon when permission was given (4.97) or purchased (4.51). Permission plays a moderating role, but false credit is always condemned.
A final experiment investigated the most extreme situation: plagiarism that doesn’t harm, but actually benefits the originator. Here, the vignette is set in academia: during the clearing out of the office of a retiring professor (Dr Kim), her younger, incoming successor (Dr Mark) discovers an unpublished manuscript that Dr Kim never intended to submit. Three scenarios are offered: Dr Mark publishes it with both of them as co-authors (even though he made no contribution to it); he publishes it under Dr Kim’s name alone; or he does not publish it at all. Participants were asked to rate the benefit or harm to Dr Kim’s reputation on a 1–7 scale. The ratings were neutral (3.94) for leaving it unpublished, and positive for publication under Dr Kim’s name alone (1.94), and for publication as joint authors (2.14) — i.e., publication was seen to serve the original author’s reputation, even with false co-authorship. Yet even in this case, the morality rating for Dr Mark’s falsely claiming credit was 5.69 (it was 4.04 for publishing it under Dr Kim’s name, and 3.26 for leaving it unpublished). In judging Dr Mark, the beneficial effect of his action to the originator did not prevent him from being condemned for misappropriating credit for the work.
This research suggests that the dominant element in our damning judgement of plagiarists is the unmerited reputational gain they falsely acquire. The fact that reputation is so defining in a relatively obscure matter as plagiarism demonstrates the profoundly important role it plays in our social context. Whether it is our immediate ties with friends and colleagues, the more arms’ length rapport with shopkeepers and brands, or the distant relationships with organizational or political leaders, their reputation is their bond of trust. It is not surprising that evolution has shaped in us an ability to spot signs of faking reputation, and a deep aversion to it. (For the record, I also want to state that, to the best of my knowledge, this article does not plagiarize any other material.)
Originally published at http://koenfucius.wordpress.com on January 12, 2024.
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