Groups affect cheating in a variety of ways. While it is typically assumed that third party scrutiny decreases cheating, there is scarce evidence as to whether members of a team cheat more or less if their individual actions are disclosed to their peers. To fill this gap, we run a lab-in-the-field experiment with boy and girl scouts during their summer camps. Scout troops are organized into patrols: these are naturally occurring and persistent groups that own common goods and are very different from the minimal groups typically used in lab experiments. While we find a very low overall level of cheating, our results show that disclosure to peers induces more cheating. In a follow-up experiment, we are able to replicate this finding within a population of students of the same age. Our results are somehow in contrast with other studies showing that hierarchical scrutiny decreases cheating but are aligned with ample evidence from different social science fields on the adverse effects of peer interactions among adolescents. Finally, our findings suggest that this adverse peer effect is independent from whether cheating rewards the team or the individual.

团体以多种方式影响作弊。虽然通常假设第三方审查会减少作弊，但很少有证据表明如果团队成员的个人行为向同行披露，他们作弊的程度是更多还是更少。为了填补这一空白，我们在夏令营期间对男童子军和女童子军进行了实地实验室实验。侦察部队被组织成巡逻队：这些是自然发生且持久的群体，拥有共同的物品，与实验室实验中通常使用的最小群体大不相同。虽然我们发现作弊的总体水平非常低，但我们的结果表明，向同行披露会导致更多的作弊。在后续实验中，我们能够在同龄学生群体中复制这一发现。我们的结果在某种程度上与其他研究形成对比，这些研究表明等级审查减少了作弊，但与来自不同社会科学领域的关于青少年同伴互动不利影响的大量证据一致。最后，我们的研究结果表明，这种不利的同伴效应与作弊是奖励团队还是个人无关。