Moral psychology
Why do students cheat even when they know it's wrong?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Students are less likely to cheat when they view it as a moral issue, but this relationship depends on whether they take personal responsibility and avoid making excuses for their behavior.
Key findings
The study found that students who judged cheating as morally wrong reported the lowest rates of cheating, while those who saw it as a personal choice reported the highest. Furthermore, moral judgment did not directly stop students from cheating. Instead, moral judgment and personal responsibility worked together to reduce a student's tendency to make excuses for dishonest behavior, which directly predicted actual cheating rates and explained a portion of the variance with an R-squared value of 0.28.
Methodology
The researcher surveyed 380 high school students from a private school in the northeastern United States. Participants completed questionnaires measuring whether they viewed academic dishonesty as a personal choice, social rule violation, or moral issue. They also reported their sense of personal responsibility, their tendency to rationalize cheating, and how often they cheated during the school year.
Limitations
First, because this study used a cross-sectional design, it cannot prove that moral beliefs actually cause changes in cheating behavior over time. Second, the data relied entirely on self-reports, which may be biased by students wanting to present themselves in a favorable light. Finally, the findings are limited because the participants were recruited from a single, highly selective private high school in the northeastern United States, meaning these patterns might not apply to students in other types of schools.
How this study connects
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