Detecting varieties of cheating: How do people navigate between different cheating ploys?

What kinds of cheating-protection devices should individuals implement to avoid being victims of fraud? Using the Wason selection task as a cheating detection paradigm, we define three types of cheating: Cheating 1 (cost proves to be insufficient for obtaining the benefit), Cheating 2 (cost proves to be unnecessary for obtaining the benefit), and Ambiguous Cheating (type of cheating unclear). In Study 1 participants relied on world knowledge and showed equal sensitivity to both Cheating 1 and 2 by correctly selecting the most relevant threats in these versions. However, no dominant pattern appeared in the Ambiguous Cheating version. In Study 2 participants relied on contextual cues to detect the most relevant threat of cheating (either Cheating 1 or Cheating 2) and the efficacy of their detections increased in versions that included a syntactic manipulation that emphasised the cost-benefit relationship. We argue that efficient cheating detection requires flexibility, world knowledge, expertise, and a thorough understanding of the causal relationship between the cost and the benefit. All of these are essential cognitive tools that can assist people in navigating between different cheating ploys which may be embedded in the same social contract.