Watching colleagues get caught cheating improves our workplace performance, new study finds

New research reveals that employees who witness a coworker getting caught for unethical behavior not only feel satisfaction, but actually go on to perform better at their own work.

We’ve all experienced that subtle feeling of satisfaction when someone who’s been breaking the rules finally gets caught.

Maybe it was the student who always cheated on tests finally getting busted, or the coworker who consistently took credit for others’ work.

This feeling of elation has a name – “schadenfreude,” a German word that describes the pleasure we derive from witnessing someone else’s misfortune.

Now a new study by researchers from Hofstra University and the University of Arizona has examined how the specific brand of schadenfreude that people feel when watching someone get caught for their bad behavior affects actual workplace performance.

The paper, “Responses to observing others caught cheating: The role of schadenfreude,” was published on October 18, 2024, in the Journal of Management & Organization.

It was written by researchers Daphna Motro, Benjamin G. Perkins, and Aleksander P. J. Ellis.

The Study: Schadenfreude in Action

The research team ran two separate experiments.

The first took place at a U.S. business school, where they recruited 109 students (53% female, average age 21) to participate in what seemed like a simple word puzzle competition.

What the students didn’t know was that one of their competitors was actually a trained actor.

In this experiment, students sat down to unscramble 22 words in 10 minutes, with the top performers promised a $30 Amazon gift card.

The actor-student secretly used their phone to cheat, even though phones were explicitly forbidden.

The real participants typically solved about 5 words correctly, while the cheating actor managed to “solve” around 15.

In half the cases, the supervisor caught the cheater red-handed and removed them from the room.

In the other half, the cheating went unnoticed.

The researchers then measured both how satisfied the real students felt and how well they performed on their next task.

For the second experiment, the researchers recruited 252 working adults from across the United States through the online platform Prolific.

These participants were 57% women, with an average age of 39 and an average of 18 years of work experience.

Most held at least a bachelor’s degree.

These participants listened to recordings of sales calls where a representative made either ethical or unethical claims about a product.

In some scenarios, a supervisor caught and confronted representative about the unethical behavior; in others, the deception went unchallenged.

Results

The researchers measured the participants’ satisfaction levels after they had seen someone get caught cheating.

On a 7-point scale, people who saw the cheater get caught rated their satisfaction at 5.2, compared to just 4.3 for those who didn’t see justice served.

That’s a 21% increase in satisfaction.

After witnessing the cheater get caught, participants also had to complete a business-related task – either writing a business proposal or designing a marketing campaign.

Two independent experts, who didn’t know which participants had witnessed cheating, rated the quality of everyone’s work.

In the first study with college students, the quality scores jumped from 4.25 (out of 7) in the control group to 4.64 in the group that saw cheating caught – a 9% improvement.

The working adults in the second study showed even bigger gains, with their work quality rising from 2.34 to 2.74 on a 5-point scale – a 17% increase.

Breaking Down the Psychology

The researchers discovered that this boost in performance wasn’t just random – it followed directly from that feeling of satisfaction when seeing the cheater get caught.

When people saw unethical behavior go unpunished, their satisfaction levels stayed low and their work quality didn’t improve.

The research team originally thought that empathetic people – those who tend to understand and share others’ feelings – might feel less satisfied seeing someone get caught.

But this turned out to be wrong.

Even naturally empathetic people showed the same boost in performance after witnessing a cheater face consequences.

But why does this happen? The researchers explain that positive emotions, even those stemming from someone else’s misfortune, can enhance our cognitive abilities in several ways.

For example, these emotions can lead to an increased attention span and better focus on complex tasks, greater cognitive flexibility when approaching problems, and an improved ability to organize and present ideas clearly.

Real-World Impact

While feeling pleasure at others’ misfortune might sound mean-spirited, the researchers argue it’s actually a natural response that reflects our deep-seated desire for a fair and ethical world.

When people observe perpetrators getting caught for unethical behavior, it aligns with our fundamental goal to live in a society governed by moral values.

This research matters because cheating and unethical behavior cost companies millions of dollars every year.

Think about recent famous cases – like Elizabeth Holmes lying to investors at Theranos, or Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraud at FTX that led to a 25-year prison sentence.

When these people got caught, it made headlines.

But the same principle applies to everyday workplace situations.

When a coworker gets caught lying on sales calls, faking numbers in reports, or taking credit for someone else’s work, it doesn’t just stop that one person’s bad behavior.

It actually makes everyone else work better.

“People react happily when they evaluate that an event is conducive to their goal of living in an ethical world,” the researchers write.

As such, they continue, we generally “do not want to live in a ruthless or chaotic society where people get away with cheating.” There are ethical principles and boundaries we are expected to adhere, and we “feel a sense of pleasure when others are held accountable.”

The research suggests that companies shouldn’t hide it when they catch someone breaking rules.

Making it known that cheating was caught and addressed can create a positive ripple effect throughout the organization.

People don’t just feel better knowing justice was served – they actually do better work afterward.

Study details:

• Title: “Responses to observing others caught cheating: The role of schadenfreude“
• Authors: Daphna Motro, Benjamin G. Perkins, Aleksander P. J. Ellis
• Journal: Journal of Management & Organization
• Publication Date: October 18, 2024
• DOI: 10.1017/jmo.2024.45