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Literature Review: Academic Dishonesty – What Causes It, How to Prevent It

by Thomas Keith | Nov 16, 2018 | Instructional design

Note: For further information on academic dishonesty and academic integrity, please see our series Combating Academic Dishonesty . Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Academic dishonesty, which encompasses behaviors such as cheating, plagiarism, and falsification of data or citations, is a widespread and troubling phenomenon in higher education. (For the full spectrum of behaviors that qualify as academic dishonesty, see Berkeley City College’s What Is Academic Dishonesty? ) It may be as simple as looking over a classmate’s shoulder during a quiz or as elaborate as hiring a ghostwriter online for a course paper, but whatever the method employed, academic dishonesty harms the learning experience and gives cheaters an unfair advantage over those who abide by the rules. This post examines some of the chief factors that lead to academic dishonesty among college students, as determined by empirical research in the field, and offers suggestions to faculty and instructors on ways to reduce the likelihood of dishonest conduct among their students.

What Causes Academic Dishonesty?

There is no single explanation for the occurrence of dishonest behavior in college. Studies suggest that most students realize academic dishonesty is morally wrong, but various outside factors or pressures may serve as “neutralizers,” allowing students to suppress their feelings of guilt and justify their dishonest acts to themselves (Baird 1980; Haines et al. 1986; Hughes and McCabe 2006). In certain cases, dishonest behavior may arise not from willful disregard for the rules of academic integrity, but from ignorance of what those rules are. Some common reasons for students’ engaging in academic dishonesty are given below.

Poor time management

Particularly in their early years of college, many students have difficulties with managing their time successfully. Faced with demands on their out-of-class time from athletics, extracurricular clubs, fraternities and sororities, etc., they may put off studying or working on assignments until it is too late for them to do a satisfactory job. Cheating then appears attractive as a way to avoid failure (Haines et al. 1986).

Academic pressures

Sometimes a student must maintain a certain GPA in order to receive merit-based financial aid, to participate in athletics, or even to continue receiving financial support from his/her family. Even high-achieving students may turn to academic dishonesty as a way to achieve their target GPA. Academic pressures can be worsened in courses that are graded on a curve: with the knowledge that only a fixed number of As can be awarded, students may turn to dishonest methods of surpassing their classmates (Whitley 1998; Carnegie Mellon University ).

In very large classes, students may feel anonymous; if the bulk of their interaction is with teaching assistants, they may regard the instructor as distant and unconcerned with their performance. This can increase the temptation to cheat, as students rationalize their dishonest behavior by assuming that the instructor “doesn’t care” what they do. Not surprisingly, this can often be a danger in online courses, since course sizes can be huge and students do not normally interact with their instructors face-to-face ( Carnegie Mellon University ).

Failure to understand academic conventions

The “rules” of academic writing often appear puzzling to students, particularly those who have not had extensive practice with academic writing in high school. The Internet has arguably exacerbated this problem; the easy availability of information (accurate or otherwise) on websites has led many students to assume that all information sources are de facto public property and need not be cited, which leads to unintentional plagiarism. Faculty and instructors should not take for granted that their students simply “know” when they must cite sources and how they should do so (Perry 2008). In addition, the ready availability of websites on every topic imaginable has had a deleterious effect on students’ ability to assess sources critically. Some students simply rely upon whichever site comes up at the top of a Google search, without considering the accuracy or potential biases of the information with which they are being presented.

Cultural factors

Related to the above, international students may face particular challenges in mastering the conventions of academic writing. They do not necessarily share Western/American understandings of what constitutes “originality,” intellectual property rights, and so forth, and it often takes time and practice for them to internalize the “rules” fully, especially if English is not their first language. In addition, students who come from cultures where collaborative work is common may not realize that certain assignments require them to work entirely on their own (Currie 1998; Pecorari 2003; Hughes and McCabe 2006; Abasi and Graves 2008).

The academic pressures common to all college students can be particularly acute for international students. In some cultures (e.g. those of East Asia) excellent academic performance at the university level is vital for securing good jobs after graduation, and students may therefore believe that their futures depend upon receiving the highest possible grades. When a student’s family is making sacrifices to send him/her overseas for college, s/he may be concerned about “letting the family down” by doing poorly in school, which can make academic dishonesty all the more tempting.

Low-Stakes Assignments

While some people may think of cheating as a risk only on high-stakes assignments (course papers, final exams, and the like), it can easily occur on low-stakes assignments as well. In fact, the very lack of grade weight that such assignments bear can encourage dishonesty: students may conclude that since an assignment has little or no bearing on their course grade, it “doesn’t matter” whether or not they approach it honestly. For this reason, it is vital to stress to students the importance of honest conduct on all assignments, whether big or small. The University does not take grade weight into account when deciding whether academic dishonesty has occurred; plagiarism is plagiarism and cheating is cheating, even if the assignment in question is worth zero points.

Technology and Academic Dishonesty

The rapidly increasing sophistication of digital technology has opened up new avenues for students bent on academic dishonesty. Beyond simply cutting-and-pasting from webpages, an entire Internet economy has sprung up that offers essays for students to purchase and pass off as their own. Students may also use wireless technology such as Bluetooth to share answers during exams, take pictures of exams with their smartphones, and the like (McMurtry 2001; Jones, Reid, and Bartlett 2008; Curran, Middleton, and Doherty 2011). Research suggests that the use of technology creates a “distancing” effect that makes students’ guilt about cheating less acute ( Vanderbilt University ).

How Can Faculty and Instructors Combat Academic Dishonesty?

There is no panacea to prevent all forms of dishonest behavior. That said, at each step of the learning design process, there are steps that faculty and instructors can take to help reduce the likelihood of academic dishonesty, whether by making it more difficult or by giving students added incentive to do their work honestly.

Course Management and Syllabus Design

The sooner students are informed about the standards of conduct they should adhere to, the greater the likelihood that they will internalize those standards (Perry 2010). This is why it is worthwhile for faculty to devote a portion of their syllabus to setting standards for academic integrity. Consider setting the tone for your course by offering a clear definition of what constitutes academic dishonesty, the procedure you will follow if you suspect that dishonest behavior has occurred, and the penalties culprits may face. Include a link to UChicago’s statement on Academic Honesty and Plagiarism . If you have a Canvas course site, you can create an introductory module where students must read a page containing your academic integrity policies and “mark as done,” or take a quiz on your policies and score 100%, in order to receive credit for completing the module.

If your syllabus includes many collaborative assignments, it can also be useful to explain clearly for which assignments collaboration is permitted and which must be done individually. You can also specify what you consider acceptable vs. unacceptable forms of collaboration (e.g. sharing ideas while brainstorming is allowed, but copying one another’s exact words is not).

Finally, consider including information in your syllabus about resources available to students who are having academic difficulties, such as office hours and tutoring. Students who are facing difficulties with time management, executive function, and similar issues may benefit from the Student Counseling Service’s Academic Skills Assessment Program (ASAP) . The University’s Writing Center offers help with mastering academic writing and its conventions. Encourage your students to avail themselves of these resources as soon as they encounter difficulties. If they get help early on, they will be less likely to feel desperate later and resort to dishonest behavior to raise their grade (Whitley 1998).

In general, making your expectations clear at the outset of your course helps to build a strong relationship between you and your students. Your students will feel more comfortable coming to you for help, and they will also understand the risks they would be running if they behaved dishonestly in your course, which can be a powerful deterrent.

Assignment Design

When crafting assignments such as essays and course papers, strive for two factors: originality and specificity. The more original the topic you choose, and the more specific your instructions, the less likely it is that students will be able to find a pre-written paper on the Internet that fits all the requirements (McMurtry 2001). Changing paper topics from year to year also avoids the danger that students may pass off papers from previous years as their own work. You might consider using a rubric with a detailed breakdown of the factors you will be assessing in grading the assignment; Canvas offers built-in rubric functionality .

If an assignment makes up a large percentage of your students’ final grade (e.g. a course paper), you might consider using “scaffolding”. Have the students work up to the final submission through smaller, lower-stakes sub-assignments, such as successive drafts or mini-papers. This has the double benefit of making it harder for students to cheat (since you will have seen their writing process) and reducing their incentive to cheat (since their grade will not be solely dependent upon the final submission) ( Carnegie Mellon University ).

In the case of in-class exams, you may find it worthwhile to create multiple versions of an exam, each with a separate answer key. Even as simple an expedient as placing the questions in a different order in different versions makes it harder for students to copy off one another’s work or share answer keys ( Carnegie Mellon University ).

Technological Tools to Prevent Academic Dishonesty

Even as students have discovered more sophisticated ways to cheat, educational professionals and software developers have created new technologies to thwart would-be cheaters. Canvas, the University’s learning management system, includes several features intended to make cheating more difficult.

By default, the Files tab in Canvas is turned off when a new course is created. This prevents students from accessing your course files and viewing files they should not, such as answer keys or upcoming exam questions. If you choose to enable Files in your course, you should place all sensitive files in locked or unpublished folders to render them invisible to students. For more details, see this post .

If you are using Canvas Quizzes in your course, you can choose from a number of options that increase the variation between individual students’ Quizzes and thus decrease the chances of cheating. These including randomizing answers for multiple-choice questions; drawing randomly selected questions from question groups; and setting up variables in mathematical questions, so that different students will see different numerical values. For more details, see this post .

Several different computer programs have been developed that claim to detect plagiarism in student papers, usually by comparing student submissions against the Internet, a database of past work, or both, and then identifying words and phrases that match. Viper follows a “freemium” model, while the best-known subscription-based plagiarism checker, Turnitin , is currently licensed only by the Law School at the University of Chicago. These programs can be helpful, but bear in mind that no automatic plagiarism checker is 100% accurate; you will still need to review student work yourself to see whether an apparent match flagged by the software is genuine plagiarism or not (Jones, Reid, and Bartlett 2008). Also be aware that Turnitin and some other plagiarism checkers assert ownership rights over student work submitted to them, which can raise issues of intellectual property rights.

In addition to detecting plagiarism after the fact, there are technological tools that can help prevent it from occurring in the first place. Citation managers such as Endnote and Zotero are excellent ways to help students manage their research sources and cite them properly, especially when writing longer papers that draw on a wide range of source material. The University of Chicago Library offers a detailed guide to citation managers , along with regular workshops on how to use them .

What to Do if You Suspect Academic Dishonesty

If you suspect that academic dishonesty may have occurred in one of your courses, the University has resources to which you can turn. For undergraduates, it is best to begin by speaking to the student’s academic adviser . You can find out which adviser is assigned to a student in your course by visiting Faculty Access and looking at the “Advisor” column in the course roster. If you have questions about disciplinary procedures specific to the College, you can contact the Office of College Community Standards, headed by Assistant Dean of Students Stephen Scott . For graduate students, the appropriate area Dean of Students can provide information about the correct disciplinary procedures to follow.

The fight against academic dishonesty is a difficult one, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. But if faculty and instructors give careful thought to the causes of student misconduct and plan their instructional strategies accordingly, they can do much to curb dishonest behavior and ensure that integrity prevails in the classroom.

Bibliography

Journal articles.

Abasi, Ali R., and Barbara Graves. “Academic Literacy and Plagiarism: Conversations with International Graduate Students and Disciplinary Professors.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes 7.4 (Oct. 2008), 221-233.
Baird, John S., Jr. “Current Trends in College Cheating.” Psychology in the Schools 17 (1980), 515-522.
Curran, Kevin, Gary Middleton, and Ciaran Doherty. “Cheating in Exams with Technology.” International Journal of Cyber Ethics in Education 1.2 (Apr.-Jun. 2011), 54-62.
Currie, Pat. “Staying Out of Trouble: Apparent Plagiarism and Academic Survival.” Journal of Second Language Writing 7.1 (Jan. 1998), 1-18.
Haines, Valerie J., et al. “College Cheating: Immaturity, Lack of Commitment, and the Neutralizing Attitude.” Research in Higher Education 25.4 (Dec. 1986), 342-354.
Hughes, Julia M. Christensen, and Donald L. McCabe. “Understanding Academic Misconduct.” Canadian Journal of Higher Education 36.1 (2006), 49-63.
Jones, Karl O., Juliet Reid, and Rebecca Bartlett. “Cyber Cheating in an Information Technology Age.” In R. Comas and J. Sureda (coords.). “Academic Cyberplagiarism” [online dossier]. Digithum: The Humanities in the Digital Era 10 (2008), n.p. UOC. [Accessed: 26/09/18] ISSN 1575-2275.
McMurtry, Kim. “E-Cheating: Combating a 21st Century Challenge.” Technological Horizons in Education Journal 29.4 (Nov. 2001), 36-40.
Pecorari, Diane. “Good and original: Plagiarism and patchwriting in academic second-language writing.” Journal of Second Language Writing 12.4 (Dec. 2003), 317-345.
Perry, Bob. “Exploring Academic Misconduct: Some Insights into Student Behaviour.” Active Learning in Higher Education 11.2 (2010), 97-108.
Whitley, Bernard E. “Factors Associated with Cheating among College Students: A Review.” Research in Higher Education 39.3 (Jun. 1998), 235-274.

Web Resources

Berkeley City College: http://www.berkeleycitycollege.edu/wp/de/what-is-academic-dishonesty/
Carnegie Mellon University: https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/solveproblem/strat-cheating/index.html
University of Chicago: https://college.uchicago.edu/advising/academic-honesty | https://studentmanual.uchicago.edu/Policies
Colorado State University: https://tilt.colostate.edu/integrity/resourcesFaculty/whyDoStudents.cfm
Harvard University (Zachary Goldman): https://www.gse.harvard.edu/uk/blog/youth-perspective
Oakland University: https://www.oakland.edu/Assets/upload/docs/OUWC/Presentations%26Workshops/dont_fail_your_courses.pdf
Vanderbilt University (Derek Bruff): https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/2011/02/why-do-students-cheat/

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Definitions and Types

Academic Dishonesty Definition and Types

"Good academic work must be based on honesty" ( NIU, 2023a ). Promoting honesty in academic work requires understanding the definition of academic dishonesty, its different types, and its causes and consequences.

According to NIU's undergraduate and graduate catalogs ( NIU, 2023b ),

The attempt of any student to present as his or her own work that which he or she has not produced is regarded by the faculty and administration as a serious offense. Students are considered to have cheated if they copy the work of another during an examination or turn in a paper or an assignment written, in whole or in part, by someone else. Students are responsible for plagiarism, intentional or not, if they copy material from books, magazines, or other sources without identifying and acknowledging those sources or if they paraphrase ideas from such sources without acknowledging them.

Good academic work is expected not only in classroom activities, but also in research and related activities. As NIU's Graduate Catalog ( NIU, 2023b ) emphasizes, research misconduct includes "falsification of data, improper assignment of authorship, claiming another person's work as one's own, unprofessional manipulation of experiments or of research procedures, [and] misappropriation of research funds".

Academic Dishonesty Defined

Academic dishonesty refers to committing or contributing to dishonest acts by those engaged in teaching, learning, research, and related academic activities, and it applies not just to students, but to everyone in the academic environment (Cizek, 2003; Whitley, Jr. & Keith-Spiegel, 2002). NIU considers academic dishonesty a serious offense, regardless of whether it was committed intentionally or not ( NIU, 2023a ; NIU, 2023b ).

Academic dishonesty can take many forms, which can be broadly classified as follows (Whitley & Keith-Spigel, 2002; Pavela, 1978; Stern & Havelick, 1986):

Fabrication or falsification

Cheating involves unauthorized use of information, materials, devices, sources or practices in completing academic activities. For example, copying during an exam that should be completed individually is an unauthorized practice, and, therefore, is considered cheating. A student who allows another student to copy from his or her work is considered to be facilitating or contributing to cheating.

The NIU Student Code of Conduct ( NIU, 2023c ) states that the term "cheating" includes, but is not limited to:

Use of sources beyond those authorized by the instructor in writing papers, preparing reports, solving problems, or carrying out other assignments; Acquisition, without permission, of tests or other academic material belonging to a member of the university faculty or staff; Engagement in any behavior specifically prohibited by a faculty member in the course syllabus or class discussion.

Check Your Understanding

What if the cheating or plagiarism committed was unintentional?

Reveal Answer

It is still considered as academic dishonesty even if it was committed unintentionally.

Plagiarism is a type of cheating in which someone adopts another person's ideas, words, design, art, music, etc., as his or her own without acknowledging the source, or, when necessary, obtaining permission from the author. For example, copying and pasting material from a web site into your own document without proper citation is considered plagiarism.

Per the NIU Student code of Conduct ( NIU, 2023c ):

The term “plagiarism” includes but is not limited to the use, by paraphrase or direct quotation, of the published or unpublished work of another person without full and clear acknowledgment. Plagiarism also includes the unacknowledged use of materials prepared by another person or agency engaged in the selling of term papers or other academic materials.

Fabrication or falsification involves the unauthorized creation or alteration of information in an academic document or activity. For example, artificially creating data when it should be collected from an actual experiment or making up a source of information that does not exist is considered fabrication or falsification.

Sabotage involves disrupting or destroying another person's work so that the other person cannot complete an academic activity successfully. For example, destroying another person's artwork, experiment, or design is considered sabotage. Failure to contribute as required to a team project can also be considered academic sabotage.

Keep in Mind

The two key ideas to remember in understanding the four types of academic dishonesty are:

Unauthorized practices
Improper use of another person's work in the course of completing an academic activity

Even if a student unintentionally uses another person's work improperly or does something that was unauthorized while completing an academic activity, he or she is still guilty of academic dishonesty. Instructors have the responsibility to educate students on these issues in order to promote academic integrity.

Two key issues to keep in mind regarding academic dishonesty are:

Improper use of other person's work

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Definition and Types
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How Students Commit Academic Dishonesty
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Plagiarism & Academic Integrity

Academic Integrity

Types of Academic Dishonesty

How to Avoid Plagiarism: Citing
Citing Direct Quotes
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Try It! Identifying Plagiarism
Understanding a Turnitin Report

There are many types of academic dishonesty - some are obvious, while some are less obvious.

Misrepresentation ;
Conspiracy ;
Fabrication ;
Collusion ;
Duplicate Submission ;
Academic Misconduct ;
Improper Computer/Calculator Use ;
Improper Online, TeleWeb, and Blended Course Use ;
Disruptive Behavior ;
and last, but certainly not least, PLAGIARISM .

We will discuss each of these types of academic dishonesty in more detail below. Plagiarism is the most common type of academic dishonesty, and also the easiest type to commit on accident! See the plagiarism page for more info about what plagiarism is and how to avoid it in your work.

Cheating is taking or giving any information or material which will be used to determine academic credit.

Examples of cheating include:

Copying from another student's test or homework.
Allowing another student to copy from your test or homework.
Using materials such as textbooks, notes, or formula lists during a test without the professor's permission.
Collaborating on an in-class or take-home test without the professor's permission.
Having someone else write or plan a paper for you.

Bribery takes on two forms:

Bribing someone for an academic advantage, or accepting such a bribe (i.e. a student offers a professor money, goods, or services in exchange for a passing grade, or a professor accepts this bribe).
Using an academic advantage as a bribe (i.e. a professor offers a student a passing grade in exchange for money, goods, or services, or a student accepts this bribe).

Misrepresentation

Misrepresentation is any act or omission that is intented to deceive an instructor for academic advantage. Misrepresentation includes lying to an instructor in an attempt to increase your grade, or lying to an instructor when confronted with allegations of academic dishonesty.

Conspiracy means working together with one or more persons to commit or attempt to commit academic dishonesty.

Fabrication

Fabrication is the use of invented or misrepresentative information. Fabrication most often occurs in the sciences, when students create or alter experimental data. Listing a source in your works cited that you did not actually use in your research is also fabrication.

Collusion is the act of two or more students working together on an individual assignment.

Duplicate Submission

A duplicate submission means a student submits the same paper for two different classes. If a student submits the same paper for two different classes within the same semester, the student must have the permission of both instructors. If a student submits the same paper for two different classes in different semesters, the student must have the permission of their current instructor.

Academic Misconduct

Academic misconduct is the violation of college policies by tampering with grades or by obtaining and/or distributing any part of a test or assignment. For example:

Obtaining a copy of a test before the test is admisistered.
Distributing, either for money or for free, a test before it is administered.
Encouraging others to obtain a copy of a test before the test is administered.
Changing grades in a gradebook, on a computer, or on an assignment.
Continuing to work on a test after time is called.

Improper Computer/Calculator Use

Improper computer/calculator use includes:

Unauthorized use of computer or calculator programs.
Selling or giving away information stored on a computer or calculator which will be submitted for a grade.
Sharing test or assignment answers on a calculator or computer.

Improper Online, TeleWeb, and Blended Course Use

Improper online, teleweb, and blended course use includes:

Accepting or providing outside help on online assignments or tests.
Obtaining test materials or questions before the test is administered.

Disruptive Behavior

Disruptive behavior is any behavior that interfers with the teaching/learning process. Disruptive bahavior includes:

Disrespecting a professor or another student, in class or online.
Talking, texting, or viewing material unrelated to the course during a lecture.
Failing to silence your cell phone during class.
Posting inappropriate material or material unrealted to the course on discussion boards.
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Academic Honesty Essay

Introduction, academic honesty, dishonest conduct, preventing academic dishonesty.

Lately, academic honesty has become a major issue among the elite in the academic environments. It can no longer be simply defined as the carrying of illegal materials into the exam rooms or copying someone else’s work. Indeed, with growth in technology like smart phones and emergence of the use of internet in research work has caused administrators in universities and colleges to extend the definition of academic honesty or dishonesty.

Academic honesty involves the students submitting work that is originally theirs and inclusion of the cited sources in their work. The academic community is generally aware that it is not possible for students to come up with their own original work and therefore, allow inclusion of other people’s work in form of direct quotes of paraphrases only if the original author is appropriately acknowledged. Academic honesty takes different forms and addresses in various aspects in schools and colleges.

Academic honesty is considered important because the results obtained from schools or colleges are referred to in future. Future employers refer to these documents when assessing the abilities and gifts of the students before actual employment.

Therefore, high levels of integrity should be adhered to in order to ensure quality reports and accurate assessment of the student’s abilities and potential (Vegh, 2009). Students commit academic dishonesty when they engage in activities that are classified in four general types; namely, cheating, dishonest conduct, plagiarism and collusion.

Cheating is the most ancient form of academic dishonesty known in history. It takes different forms whereby the rules and regulations governing formal or informal examinations are violated. For instance, copying other people’s work during examination, sharing one’s answers with another during examinations, or submission of other people’s work, as one’s own original work.

During examinations, invigilators are placed strategically in the exam room to monitor the behavior of students but some students attempt to share answers (Vegh, 2009). A student is not allowed to communicate to their fellow students in an exam room without the express permission of the invigilator and a violation of these rule amounts to cheating. Taking an examination on behalf of another student also amounts to cheating. Generally, cheating offers unfair advantage to the students involved over the rest.

Unfair advantage could also be meted on students when they commit dishonest conducts like stealing examination or answer keys from the instructor. Desperate times call for desperate measures and students are capable of doing anything to rescue their dreams of scooping first class honors.

Such cases have been reported severally and they can be classified as dishonest conduct (“What is Academic Dishonesty”, 1996, p.77). Further, students who try to change official academic results without following the procedures laid by the respective academic institutions commit dishonest conducts. Obtaining answers before the actual exam or altering records after certification leads to low academic standards.

Plagiarism is the recent form of violating academic honesty and defined as intellectual theft. The crime comes in when one makes use of another person’s findings, as if his/hers, without giving the due credit to the source. Plagiarism takes the form of stealing other people’s ideas or words and the form of use of other people’s work without crediting the source properly.

The sources mentioned here include articles from electronic journals, newspaper articles, published books, and even websites (Bouchard, 2010). The internet has become a source of information for research and the easy accessibility and convenience of the same provides a temptation to the students to copy and paste other people’s work.

However, it amounts to plagiarism and is classified as a violation of academic honesty. Though plagiarism can be either intentional or unintentional on the part of the student, it still amounts to academic dishonesty either way. Students should therefore be careful to ensure that their work is free of any form of plagiarism.

Academic institutions have come up with measures to curb the spread of academic dishonesty to maintain the credibility of their programs. Academic dishonesty leads to production of half-baked graduates who lower the standards of education hence that of the university (Staats, Hupp, & Hagley, 2008, p.360).

Students who commit academic dishonesty do not think on their own hence they do not develop the art of thinking which is critical for quality education. Ensuring enough spacing between students in the exam rooms and adhering to silence during exams reduces the rate of cheating in institutions. Instructors should also participate fully in ensuring that the work presented by students meets the set standards in respective academic institutions.

Instructors should be able to call the students and ask them questions regarding their submitted work to ensure that they wrote the work themselves. Technological developments also assist in fighting these vices in institutions. Software development in the computer science field has developed software able to detect plagiarism. This software, known as anti-plagiarism software, runs scans through the internet by comparing the submitted articles with various databases in the internet.

The sentences are compared and any of them found matching in a particular percentage is classified as plagiarism. Academic institutions use this software to ensure that students do not copy directly and they appropriately acknowledge their sources (Celik, 2009, p.275). In some institutions, violation of anti-plagiarism or academic honesty rules in general amount to punishment of different forms that in worst-case result to expulsion from these academic institutions.

The forms of academic dishonesty and methods of prevention discussed above are only general descriptions. However, they can be discussed further into way that is more specific and forms that would help improve the standards of education in academic institutions through policy research by the concerned institutions. Academic honesty is crucial to the growth of a country’s economy because integrity defines the character of future graduates.

Bouchard, K. (2010). Discipline in Schools: Technology tests academic honesty. McClatchy – Tribune Business News . Web.

Celik, C. (2009). Perceptions of University Students on Academic Honesty as Related to Gender, University Type, and Major in Turkey. Journal of American Academy of Business , 14(2), 271-278.

Staats, S., Hupp, J., & Hagley, A. (2008). Honesty and Heroes: A Positive Psychology View of Heroism and Academic Honesty. The Journal of Psychology , 42(4), 357-72.

Vegh, G. S. (2009). Academic honesty for a new generation. McClatchy – Tribune Business News. Web.

“What is Academic Dishonesty” (1996). In Teaching Resources Guide 1996-1997 (pp. 77-78). Irvine, CA: Instructional Resources Center, University of California.

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Everyday Examples of Academic Dishonesty

Clone - copying material verbatim.

Josiah has been very busy for the past week and pushed off a ten-page paper due at midnight. He texts his friend who took the class last semester for his old paper. Josiah promptly changes his name at the top and submits it for grading, passing it off as his own.

Copying portions of another person’s work.

Maria stumbled upon a research paper that had a chart relating to her project. Being crunched for time, she copied and pasted it into her document, but did not provide an in-text or full citation.

Find and replace – replacing words to try to bypass plagiarism detectors.

Molly didn’t feel like writing her research paper but found an essay online that fit the prompt. She used the “find and replace” feature to substitute synonyms for words to try and prevent SafeAssign from detecting plagiarism.

Remix – paraphrasing material, in your own words, from multiple sources.

Tyler is stuck on a sociology paper and decides to Google a summary of what he plans to write. He browses Wikipedia, a research paper he found on Google, and an article pertaining to the topic and decides to rewrite bits and pieces from each source to use in his paper.

Mashup – copy and pasting material from multiple sources.

Steven must write an essay on the history of the Cold War. He finds six different books while researching and concludes that they have summed up the material he needs for the essay. He meticulously takes bits and pieces from each book transitioning between each piece with his own words falsely illustrating individual work.

Citing sources incorrectly or fabricating sources.

Grant is writing a paper for his economics class and is struggling to find enough sources to meet the requirements of the assignment. He concludes that the only way to get the paper done and meet the requirements is to use the information he got from a different source and just create a new, false citation for the information to help him reach the citation requirements for the paper.

Citing an excess of sources to meet a word or page count.

Jacob is overdue on an essay in his Dance Theory class. He has a rough outline of the work he needs to do and how to organize his essay. To save time and meet his word count, he decides to include a full sentence(s) quote/citation approximately every three sentences. His works cited page is present, accurate, and comprehensive for all his sources. But in doing this, the essay is more than doubled in length.

Mirroring the structure/organization of another essay.

Elaina has an essay that is due tomorrow. She has done her own research and has her own information, but she does not know how to organize the essay correctly. She finds a paper on the same subject online and copies the exact order of the main points for her own paper. She submits the essay without citing the paper whose organization she copied.

Using past work that is your own (you need professor discretion to do so).

Mark is writing an essay about a topic he had previously studied in a different class. He decides he has a lot of other work to do and his last paper was fully original and well-written. He decides he wants to use the paper he previously wrote for this new assignment. Mark should first reach out to the professor and look through the syllabus for the policy rules on this issue. If the professor allows Mark to use the old paper, he should still make sure to develop the paper further, ensure it is all original work, and meets all the guidelines for the new assignment.

NOTE: You need to check with your professor for their specific policies regarding using past work.

Paying online services or someone else to complete an assignment for you.

Stephen is stressing out about a paper for his Ag Business class that is due in two days. Stephen is behind on the material and doesn’t think he has enough time to finish the paper and do his other homework. He decides the best option to get the paper done and get a good grade is to pay a friend who took the class last semester to write his paper for him. The friend agrees and writes the paper for Stephen that he then submits for a grade.

Syntax Similarities:

Jacob is stuck on step 16 of a coding assignment due the next day. He has his friend Steven over at his dorm helping him and Steven simply does that step for him. While Steven can’t remember exactly what he did to get past it, what he does do for Jacob’s assignment is so similar in syntax that the auto grader flags Jacobs assignment for academic dishonesty.

Group Work & Collaboration

Excessive Continuity on Assignments

Sarah must submit an essay on the literary work: War and Peace. She decides to work on portions of the assignment with three other friends. A Google Doc among them is formed for brainstorming ideas. After a while, all the group members simply copy and paste content from the shared Google Docs into each of their individual essays. Despite Sarah having a hand in the conceptualization of this content, it is flagged for academic dishonesty.

Traditional Exams

Phones are prohibited on any exams. If your phone goes off during an exam, then you will most likely be given a 0%. Many professors will make you put your backpack at the front of the room before an exam, and we recommend that you stow away your phone in your bag to ensure it won’t be a distraction.

Open Book Exams

If your professor classifies that an exam is “Open Book”, the only resource you are permitted to use is the book. If you try to use your notes, you risk being reported to the professor. Use your notes only on “Open Note” exams and where otherwise stated.

Storing Notes in a Calculator

With the calculators that are often allowed in many classes that have graphing capability, it is also very easy to store information as notes in a section of the calculator and be able to quickly and discreetly access them during the exam. Jorge decided that this was a viable alternative to studying the night before his statistics final, and as he begins to take the exam, he runs across a question that he needs to know how to apply a specific formula. Naturally since he saved his notes to his fancy calculator, he opens it up and begins to work. This is considered academically dishonest behavior.

Unpermitted Calculators

Math 162, Calculus 2, is historically a very difficult class at Purdue. Most professors require students to only use a simple four function calculator on exams and homework assignments because more advanced calculators can do the more complex work for the students. Diana is really struggling on Calculus 2 and decides to take a graphing calculator into her second exam. She programs in equations and uses the advanced features to finish her exam and gets a very good grade, but when her professor reviews the exam, they notice that Diana was able to somehow skip steps as if she was using short cuts that haven’t been taught yet in class. Diana is called into the professor’s office and she is asked if she got an advanced tutor or how she was able to do the steps. She admits that she took in her graphing calculator and she ends up receiving an F for the entire class.

Taking an Exam for Someone Else

Alex was very unprepared for his upcoming stats exam. However, his friend, Stephen, passed the class last semester with an A+. Alex asks Stephen to take the exam for him, and Stephen agrees. When Stephen finishes Alex’s exam, he goes to turn it in to the professor, and is asked to show his ID. After the professor realizes what has happened, both Alex and Stephen are caught.

Non-Traditional Exams

Locked Down Browsers

When Claire takes her weekly quizzes for her online EAPS class, they require the use of the Lockdown Browser Software. She proceeds to run the software inside a virtual machine so she can still browse the Internet and other applications for the answers while she takes the quiz.

Open Book & Take-Home Exams

A professor makes a portion of each exam a take-home section for students to complete on their own time. He permits the use of notes, study materials, the Internet, and even collaboration on this take-home exam. Nathan works on some of the questions but is stuck on two main points. After texting his lab group, several students in the class get together to discuss the difficult problems.

Online Exams

Steven is taking an online exam that is not open book or open notes. He has quite a few friends in the class and they decide to take the exam together so they can talk about each question before submitting the exam. This is academically dishonest collaboration on an exam and has happened at Purdue. All students submitted the exam at the same time and received the same grade, so the professor was able to notice the collaboration. It turned out that over one third of the class took the exam this way and all these students were disciplined for their actions.

Online Resources

Using Chegg dishonestly is very easy to do which is why it is important to understand proper and improper uses of this platform. Looking up answers to homework assignments or accessing the answers to assignments in teacher versions of textbooks is not an appropriate use of the site. While Chegg can be helpful to access textbooks and more practice problems, using this resource to find assignment answers is considered academic dishonesty because it is a form of copying and plagiarism.

Intellectual Property

Joe is working on a philosophy paper and is confused about how to answer the writing prompt for the assignment. He decides that he will just use the audio recording from his professor’s lecture to help him answer the prompt. He can’t come up with any of his own original thought for the paper, so he simply combines a bunch of the professor’s.

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Academic dishonesty among university students: The roles of the psychopathy, motivation, and self-efficacy

Lidia baran.

1 Institute of Psychology, University of Silesia in Katowice, Katowice, Poland

Peter K. Jonason

2 Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

3 Institute of Psychology, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland

Associated Data

The database was uploaded to Open Science Framework and is available under the following address: https://osf.io/frq9v/ .

Academic dishonesty is a common problem at universities around the world, leading to undesirable consequences for both students and the education system. To effectively address this problem, it is necessary to identify specific predispositions that promote cheating. In Polish undergraduate students ( N = 390), we examined the role of psychopathy, achievement goals, and self-efficacy as predictors of academic dishonesty. We found that the disinhibition aspect of psychopathy and mastery-goal orientation predicted the frequency of students’ academic dishonesty and mastery-goal orientation mediated the relationship between the disinhibition and meanness aspects of psychopathy and dishonesty. Furthermore, general self-efficacy moderated the indirect effect of disinhibition on academic dishonesty through mastery-goal orientation. The practical implications of the study include the identification of risk factors and potential mechanisms leading to students’ dishonest behavior that can be used to plan personalized interventions to prevent or deal with academic dishonesty.

Introduction

Academic dishonesty refers to behaviors aimed at giving or receiving information from others, using unauthorized materials, and circumventing the sanctioned assessment process in an academic context [ 1 ]. The frequency of academic dishonesty reported in research indicates the global nature of this phenomenon. For example, in a study by Ternes, Babin, Woodworth, and Stephens [ 2 ] 57.3% of post-secondary students in Canada allowed another student to copy their work. Similarly, 61% of undergraduate students in Sweden copied material for coursework from a book or other publication without acknowledging the source [ 3 ]. Working together on an assignment when it should be completed as an individual was reported by 53% of students from four different Australian universities [ 4 ], and copying from someone’s paper in exams at least once was done by 36% of students from four German universities [ 5 ]. Research shows that academic dishonesty is also a major problem at Polish universities. In the study by Lupton, Chapman, and Weiss [ 6 ] 59% of the students admitted to cheating in the current class, and 83.7% to cheating at some point during college. According to a report on the plagiarism in Poland, prepared by IPPHEAE Project Consortium, 31% of students reported plagiarizing accidentally or deliberately during their studies [ 7 ].

Existing academic dishonesty prevention systems include using punishments and supervision [ 8 ], informing students about differences between honest and dishonest academic actions [ 9 ], adopting university honor codes [ 10 ], and educating students on how to write papers and conduct research correctly [ 11 ]. Although these methods lead to a reduction of academic dishonesty (see [ 12 ]), their problematic aspects include the possibility of achieving only a temporary change in behavior, limited impact on students' attitudes towards cheating, and a long implementation period [ 13 , 14 ]. Possible reasons for these difficulties include the fact that conventional prevention methods rarely address differences in students’ personality and academic motivations, which may be associated with a tendency to cheat. For example, previous studies have reported that negative emotionality was associated with positive attitudes toward plagiarism [ 15 ]; intrinsic motivation was associated with lower self-reported cheating [ 16 ]; and socially orientated human values were negatively, while personally focused values were positively correlated with academic dishonesty [ 17 ].

It is also important to remember that implementing the aforementioned methods of prevention will not lead to a reduction in academic dishonesty if faculty members do not follow and apply the established rules [ 18 ]. Faculty members often prefer not to take formal actions against dishonest students [ 19 ], and in many cases do not use the methods available to them to detect and prevent cheating [ 20 ]. However, when they do respond to academic dishonesty it is often in inconsistent ways [ 21 ]. This might suggest that, while dealing with students’ dishonesty, faculty members prefer to choose their own punitive and preventative methods, which may differ depending on the particular student and professor. If that is the case, then examining the role of individual differences in academic dishonesty could be useful not only to better understand the nature of academic transgressions but also to address faculty's informal ways of dealing with students' cheating.

The aim of the current study was to investigate relationships between personality, motivation, and academic dishonesty to understand the likelihood of cheating in academia more effectively and potentially inform faculty's personalized interventions. Of all the personality traits under investigation, psychopathy appears to be useful for this purpose, because it includes a tendency to be impulsive, to engage in sensation-seeking, and resistance to stress, all of which are associated with academic dishonesty [ 2 ]. Indeed, psychopathy is the strongest—albeit moderate in size ( r = .27)—predictor of academic dishonesty according to a recent meta-analysis of 89 effects and 50 studies [ 22 ]. In the present study, we wanted to further examine the relationship between academic dishonesty and psychopathy by using the triarchic model of psychopathy distinguishing its three phenotypic facets: boldness, meanness, and disinhibition [ 23 ] which may reveal added nuance to how this personality trait relates to academic dishonesty.

Within the triarchic conceptualization of psychopathy, boldness represents self-assurance, fearlessness, and a high tolerance for stress and unfamiliarity; meanness captures interpersonal deficits such as lack of empathy, callousness and exploitativeness; and disinhibition represents the tendency towards impulsivity, poor self-regulation and focus on immediate gratification. Because of the different neurobiological mechanisms leading to the shaping of those aspects [ 24 ], it seems likely that the tendency towards academic dishonesty may have a different etiology depending on their levels. For students with high disinhibition, cheating may result from low self-control; for those with high meanness from rebelliousness with propensity to use others; and for bold ones from emotional resiliency and sensation-seeking [ 25 – 27 ]. However, because boldness constitutes fearlessness without failed socialization [ 28 ], breaking academic rules might not be the preferred way to look for excitement among bold students. Thus, our first goal was to examine the predictive power of boldness, meanness, and disinhibition in academic dishonesty.

Furthermore, we were interested if the relationships between the psychopathy facets and academic dishonesty would be mediated by individual differences in motivations for mastery and performance. Mastery motivation is fostered by the need for achievement and associated with learning to acquire knowledge, whereas performance motivation is geared towards reducing anxiety and related to learning to prove oneself to others [ 29 ]. We expect mediation for several reasons. First, undertaking actions motivated by achievement goals is predicted by the level of positive and negative emotionality and also by activity of the behavioral activation and inhibition system [ 30 ], which also correlate with the dimensions of the triarchic model of psychopathy [ 31 ]. Second, unrestrained achievement motivation partially mediates the relationship between psychopathy and academic dishonesty, suggesting a role of achievement in understanding the relationship between psychopathy and individual differences in the propensity to cheat [ 32 ]. Third, meanness and disinhibition are negatively and boldness positively correlated with conscientiousness and its facets [ 33 , 34 ]. This fact may play an important role in students’ willingness to exert and control themselves to achieve academic goals and the particular way to do it [ 35 ]. Moreover, research on mastery-goal orientation suggests it is correlated negatively with academic dishonesty and views of the acceptability of academic dishonesty [ 36 – 38 ] and that the change from mastery to performance-based learning environment lead to increased levels of dishonesty [ 39 ].

Therefore, we hypothesized that students with a high level of disinhibition may have difficulties studying because of their need for immediate gratification and lack of impulse control, and in turn, cheat to pass classes. Bold students could want to acquire vast knowledge and high competences because of their high self-assurance, social dominance, and a high tolerance for stress without resorting to fraud. Lastly, students with a high level of meanness may be less prone towards mastery through hard work and learning because of their susceptibility to boredom, tendency to break the rules, and to exploit others to their advantage, perhaps by copying or using other students’ work. Because performance-goal orientation can be driven by the fear of performing worse than others, no specific hypothesis was generated regarding its relation to psychopathy (characterized by a lack of fear).

Besides behavioral tendencies based on personality traits and specific motives to learn, another closely related predictor of academic dishonesty is general self-efficacy. People with high levels of general self-efficacy exercise control over challenging demands and their behavior [ 40 ] and perform better in academic context because of their heightened ability to solve problems and process information [ 41 ]. On the other hand, low levels of general self-efficacy in the academic context can lead to reduced effort and attention focused on the task, which may result in a higher probability of frauds to achieve or maintain a certain level of academic performance [ 42 , 43 ]. Because competence expectancies are important antecedents of holding an achievement goal orientation [ 44 , 45 ] it seems possible that general self-efficacy might moderate the relation between psychopathy facets and academic dishonesty mediated by achievement goals. Thus, we hypothesize that high general self-efficacy will reduce the indirect effects for disinhibition and meanness (i.e., negative moderation effect) and amplify it for boldness (i.e., positive moderation effect).

In sum, we examine the relationships between three facets of psychopathy and academic dishonesty, the possible role of achievement goals as a mediators for those relations, and lastly the possible role of general self-efficacy as a moderator of those mediation models. By analyzing the facets of psychopathy independently, we can determine their unique relationship with the tendency to cheat and thus more accurately predict the risk of dishonest behavior for students with a high level of each of the facet. In addition, investigating indirect effects and interactions between personality and motivation may describe the psychological processes that may lead to cheating and can potentially be used in planning preventive actions.

Materials and methods

Participants and procedure.

The participants were 390 Polish university students and residents (100% White, 74% female) with an average age of 23 ( SD = 3.39, Range = 19–56) years. Participants self-identified as students in social sciences (17%), humanities (12%), science and technology (24%), law and administration (22%), and medical sciences (23%); 7 failed to respond (2%). In addition, participants were first-year (19%), second-year (16%), third-year (31%), fourth-year (13%), fifth-year (13%), and doctoral students (2%); 23 failed to respond (6%).

We established the required sample size as 290 participants, following Tabachnick and Fidell [ 46 ] guidelines and gave ourselves three months to collect it to avoid concerns with power and p- hacking, respectively. The study was approved by Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Pedagogy and Psychology (University of Silesia in Katowice) and was conducted online through the Webankieta platform to maximize the anonymity and security of the participants. An invitation to participate in the project was sent to 28 largest Polish universities by enrollment, with a request to publish it on the universities' websites. The link to the survey directed the participants to a detailed description of the research and the rules of participation. After consenting to participate, students completed online questionnaires and, at the end, they were asked if they wanted to receive a summary of the general results and take part in a prize drawing (after the end of the study, five randomly chosen participants received vouchers for online personal development courses). The present study was part of a larger investigation that aimed to examine psychological determinants and predictors of academic dishonesty.

Psychopathy was measured with the TriPM-41 [ 34 ], the shortened Polish adaptation of the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure [ 47 ]. Participants rated statements on a 4-point scale (0 = completely false ; 1 = somewhat false ; 2 = somewhat true ; 3 = completely true ). Items were summed to create indexes for three subscales: disinhibition (16 items, e.g., “I jump into things without thinking”; Cronbach’s α = .83), meanness (10 items, e.g., “I don't have much sympathy for people”; α = .92), and boldness (15 items, e.g., “I'm a born leader”; α = .88).

Achievement goals were measured with the Polish translation of the Achievement Goals Questionnaire-Revised [ 29 ]. Participants reported their agreement (1 = strongly disagree ; 5 = strongly agree ) with statements such as “My aim is to completely master the material presented in this class” (i.e., mastery-goal orientation, 6 items) or “My aim is to perform well relative to other students” (i.e., performance-goal orientation, 6 items). Items were summed to calculate mastery (α = .80) and performance (α = .87) goal orientation indexes.

The Polish translation of the New General Self-Efficacy Scale [ 48 ] was used to measure general self-efficacy (e.g., “Even when things are tough, I can perform quite well”). Participants were asked how much they agreed (1 = strongly disagree ; 5 = strongly agree ) with eight items, which were summed to create the general self-efficacy index (α = .89).

Academic dishonesty was estimated with the Academic Dishonesty Scale [ 49 ], which is a list of 16 academically dishonest behaviors (e.g., “Using crib notes during test or exam” or “Falsifying bibliography”). Participants rate the frequency (0 = never ; 4 = many times ) of committing each behavior during their years of studies. Items were summed to create the academic dishonesty index (α = .83).

Data analysis

Descriptive statistics were calculated with JASP (v0.9.0.0), correlations with STATISTICA (v13.1), and regression, mediation, and moderated mediation with SPSS (v25). In the mediation analysis we used model 4 in macro PROCESS 2.16.3 (10,000 bootstrapped samples) and for the moderated mediations model 7 in macro PROCESS 2.16.3 (10,000 bootstrapped samples). Analyzes were carried out on the responses from 390 fully completed surveys. Because of mixed results in previous studies concerning psychopathy and academic dishonesty levels in men and women (see [ 50 , 51 ]) we conducted analyses on the overall results and also separately in each sex. The database was uploaded to Open Science Framework and is available under the following address: https://osf.io/frq9v/

Descriptive statistics, sex differences tests (see Bottom Panel), and correlations (see Top Panel) for all measured variables are presented in Table 1 . Academic dishonesty was positively correlated with meanness and disinhibition, and negatively correlated with mastery-goal orientation and general self-efficacy. Mastery-goal orientation was positively correlated with boldness and general self-efficacy, and negatively correlated with meanness and disinhibition. Performance-goal orientation was positively correlated with meanness. General self-efficacy was positively correlated with boldness and negatively correlated with meanness and disinhibition. We found only three cases where these correlations were moderated by participant’s sex. The correlation between performance and mastery-goal orientation was stronger ( z = -1.85, p = .03) in men ( r = .51, p < .01) than in women ( r = .34, p < .01). The correlation between mastery-goal orientation and meanness was stronger ( z = 2.00, p = .02) in men ( r = -.28, p < .01) than in women ( r = -.05, ns ). And the correlation between disinhibition and academic dishonesty was stronger ( z = 1.72, p = .04) in women ( r = .39, p < .01) than in men ( r = .20, p < .01). If we adjust for error inflation for multiple comparisons ( p < .007) for these moderation tests, none of the Fisher’s z tests were significant. Therefore, we conclude the correlations were generally similar in the sexes. Men scored higher than women on meanness and disinhibition.

We report Hedges’ g for effect size to adjust for unequal group sizes. Its interpretation is the same as the more common Cohen’s d .

* p < .05

** p < .01

To test the contribution of personality and motivation variables in predicting academic dishonesty, we conducted a standard multiple regression where the model explained 23% of the variance in academic dishonesty [ F (6, 383) = 18.60, p < .001]. The residuals for boldness ( β = .12, p = .04), disinhibition ( β = .27, p < .01), and a mastery-goal orientation ( β = -.39, p < .01) were correlated with academic dishonesty. Additional regression analysis revealed that both mastery-goal orientation and disinhibition strengthened the association between boldness and academic dishonesty, which on its own was not a predictor of the frequency of cheating–suppressor effect (results of hierarchical regression showed that after adding boldness to the model explained variance increased by 1% [Δ F (1, 383) = 4.40, p = .04]).

To examine whether achievement goals mediated the associations between psychopathy and academic dishonesty we conducted a series of mediation analyses.

As shown in Table 2 (see Left Panel), mastery-goal orientation mediated the relation between facets of psychopathy and academic dishonesty (i.e., none of the indirect effects CIs contained zero), and performance-goal orientation was not a mediator of those relations (see Right Panel; all of the indirect effects CIs contained zero). Mastery-goal orientation mediated relation between disinhibition and academic dishonesty (i.e., initial 𝛽 Step 1 = .32, p < .001; 𝛽 Step 2 = .24, p < .001), and the relationship between meanness and academic dishonesty (i.e., 𝛽 Step 1 = .10, p < .05; 𝛽 Step 2 = .05, p = .29). Initial non-significant negative relation between boldness and academic dishonesty (𝛽 = -.0001, p = .99) stayed unrelated after adding mastery-goal orientation to the model, but the value for the relation coefficient was higher and positive (𝛽 = .07, p = .12) suggesting a nonsignificant suppression effect.

ab = coefficient for the indirect effect; 95%CI = 95% confidence intervals; z = Sobel’s test for indirect effect.

* p < .01

To test if the level of general self-efficacy moderated the aforementioned relationships between psychopathy, achievement goals, and academic dishonesty we ran a series of moderated mediations. Index for moderated mediation was significant only for the model with disinhibition and mastery-goal orientation ( - 0.03; 95% CI: -0.70, -0.003), however, the same analyses ran separately for men ( - 0.03; 95% CI: -0.13, 0.05) and women ( - 0.04; 95% CI: -0.08, -0.01) revealed moderated mediation only in women (therefore, we do not report these analyses in men; they can be obtained from the first author). Estimates for that model are presented in Table 3 .

B = regression coefficients; SE = standard error; 95% CI = 95% confidence intervals; A1, A2, A3, B, and C’ are the paths in the moderated mediation model.

* * p < .001

Women with high levels of disinhibition manifesting low level of mastery-goal orientation (see Left Panel, line A1) declared higher levels of academic dishonesty (see Right Panel, line B). An interaction between disinhibition and general self-efficacy (see Left Panel, line A3) with the significant, negative index for moderated mediation means that the indirect effect of disinhibition on academic dishonesty through mastery-goal orientation is negatively moderated by general self-efficacy. The higher the level of the moderator, the weaker the effect of mediation, and for moderator values above one standard deviation from mean mediation become non-significant (95% CI: -0.01, 0.09). In sum, the mastery-goal orientation partially mediated the associations that disinhibition had with academic dishonesty, however, this effect was absent for people with high levels of general self-efficacy.

Discussion and limitations

Psychopathy is an important predictor of engaging in unethical behaviors [ 52 ], including in an academic context [ 53 ]. In the present study, we examined the relationships between facets of psychopathy, as described in the triarchic model of psychopathy (i.e. disinhibition, meanness, and boldness), and the frequency of academic dishonesty among students. We revealed that students with higher levels of meanness and disinhibition, but not boldness, reported more frequent academic dishonesty during their tertiary study.

In the case of meanness, this relationship may indicate a tendency for dishonesty resulting from a lack of fear and, consequently, a diminished impact of the perceived risk of being caught cheating, sensation-seeking that involves engaging in destructive behavior regardless of possible negative consequences of such actions, and a propensity to exploit other student’s work or knowledge to pass classes [ 23 , 54 ]. The association between disinhibition and academic dishonesty may indicate impulsive cheating resulting from self-control problems (see [ 55 ]), and an inability to predict possible negative consequences of cheating [ 26 ]. The fact that academic dishonesty and boldness were uncorrelated may indicate that even though bold students can perform successfully in stressful situations and have high levels of sensation-seeking, those features are unrelated to the tendency to cheat in the academic context. It confirms that the “successful psychopath” [ 56 ] may be characterized by boldness but not antisocial behavior. Of all the facets of psychopathy, disinhibition was the strongest predictor of academic dishonesty, which confirms the role of impulsivity in predicting risky behavior [ 57 , 58 ], and the role of delaying gratification in refraining from academic transgressions [ 59 ].

Beyond these basic associations, we also examined the role of achievement goals as mediators for the relationships between psychopathy facets and academic dishonesty. Mastery-goal orientation mediated the relationships between two psychopathy facets and academic dishonesty. Both meanness and disinhibition led to low levels of students’ mastery-goal orientation which, in turn, contributed to cheating in the academic context. Low mastery-goal orientation might result from the fact that those who are characterized by meanness may have a propensity to be rebellious (e.g., disregard for formal responsibilities, low diligence, and sensitivity to rewards) and those who are characterized by disinhibition may have a propensity for impulsivity (e.g., inability to postpone gratification or control impulses, high behavioral activation system). Without motivation to acquire knowledge, students may cheat to achieve academic goals with no regard to the fairness (i.e., high meanness) or the consequences (i.e., high disinhibition) of their actions [ 31 – 33 ]. In the case of boldness, the result of the mediation analysis might indicate a cooperative or reciprocal suppression effect, however, it should not be trusted because the main effect path did not pass the null hypothesis threshold when the potential suppressor was included in the model. Nonetheless, it seems possible that a particular configuration of boldness and disinhibition could lead to the interactive effect of those facets on the other variables [ 26 ]. Performance-goal orientation did not mediate the relationships between psychopathy facets and academic dishonesty, probably because bold, mean, and disinhibited students are not motivated by the fear to perform worse than others [ 60 ].

Lastly, we tested if general self-efficacy acts as a moderator of these mediation models and found evidence that it moderated the indirect effect of disinhibition on academic dishonesty through mastery-goal orientation. This means that disinhibited students who have a high sense of perceived ability to control their chances for success or failure, might be able to overcome the tendency to cheat resulting from their personality (i.e., high impulsiveness), and motivational (i.e., low motivation to learn) predispositions. However, that effect was found only for women, limiting any insights that can be drawn about men. Previous research showed that an increase in general self-efficacy reduced the risk of suicide among women [ 61 ]. Moreover, Portnoy, Legee, Raine, Choy, and Rudo-Hutt [ 62 ] found that low resting heart rate was associated with more frequent academic dishonesty in female students, and that self-control and sensation-seeking mediated this relationship. Thus, along with the observed lower level of disinhibition for female students, it appears that self-regulation abilities may play a different role for men and women’s performance, and also that deficits in self-control might not lead to the same behavioral tendencies in the sexes (see [ 63 ]). However, because of the cross-sectional nature of our study and an uneven number of men and women in the sample, this needs to be investigated further.

In the present study, we aimed to combine personality and motivation variables to describe the possible process leading to academic dishonesty assessed with a behavioral measure. Because Polish students do not constitute a typical W.E.I.R.D. sample (i.e., Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic), presented results can be used to generalize conclusions from research on academic dishonesty beyond typical W.E.I.R.D cultures. However, our study is not without limitations. First, the measurement of academic dishonesty was based on self-report, which, even after maximizing anonymity of the measurement, might have attenuated our results concerning the frequency of cheating. Thus, future studies should focus on measuring actual dishonest academic behavior. Second, we examined academic dishonesty as an overall frequency of committing different acts of cheating, which reflects the general propensity to cheat. It could be useful to further investigate the predictive power of described models in experiments, focused on the specific type of dishonest behavior. Third, the obtained range of academic dishonesty scores might result from sampling bias, which would require using different sampling procedure in future studies, or from non-normal distribution of academic dishonesty, which would be consistent with the results of the previous studies [ 2 – 4 ]. Fourth, we tested mediation models in a cross-sectional study with a one-time point measurement, which require cautious interpretation. Future studies could use longitudinal methods; starting at the beginning of the first year and continuing over the course of their studies to capture the influence of personality, achievement goals, and general self-efficacy on the academic dishonesty of students in a more robust manner. Despite these shortcomings, our study is the first attempt (we know of) to integrate the triarchic model of psychopathy, general self-efficacy, and achievement goals to predict academic dishonesty, showing potential for further investigation in this area.

Implications and conclusions

Preventing academic dishonesty is often made difficult by the lack of centralized and formalized university policies concerning cheating, faculty reluctance to take formal action against dishonest students, and limited attention paid to students’ personal characteristics associated with a tendency to cheat [ 64 ]. Based on the results of our study, lecturers might overcome those difficulties by: maximizing the amount of oral examinations to deal with the risk of cheating by disinhibited and mean students; enhancing students’ mastery-goal orientation, for example, by increasing use of competency-based assessment; enhancing students’ self-efficacy in academic context, for example, by providing spaced assessed tasks, and the opportunity to practice skills needed for their fulfillment. In the case of dealing with actual dishonest behavior, the fact that teachers prefer to warn students rather than fail them [ 19 ] might suggest indifference to academic integrity rules, reluctance to initiate time-consuming formal procedures against cheating, or teachers’ preference toward autonomy to deal with dishonesty. Therefore, a useful solution could be to assess which areas need to be improved for a particular student (e.g., knowledge about plagiarism, ability to delay gratification, or treating acquisition of knowledge as a value) and to allow the teacher to choose an effective way to remedy them.

In sum, we presented evidence that disinhibition and meanness are associated with the frequency of committing academic dishonesty. We described the possible underlying mechanism of those relations involving mediation effects of the mastery-goal orientation and, in the case of disinhibition, also a moderation effect of the general self-efficacy. Our research can be used by teachers to better identify factors conducive to dishonesty and to modulate their responses to fraud based on the personality and motivational predispositions of students.

Supporting information

Acknowledgments.

We would like to thank Dr Guy Curtis for his comments and suggestions on the article.

Funding Statement

Funding was provided by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange ( https://nawa.gov.pl/en/ ) to P.K.J under Grant number PPN/ULM/2019/1/00019/U/00001. This funding source had no role in the study conception, design, analysis, interpretation, or decision to submit for publication.

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Academic Dishonesty Essay Examples

How to reduce academic dishonesty.

Academic dishonesty is one of the major issues in not only in every school around the world but also in prestigious universities. It ranges from plagiarizing homework to cheating in tests. There are several reasons why students cheat on tests or homework. The reasons include...

Discussion About Moral and Academic Integrity

In our country, integrity is greatly valued. The dictionary defines integrity as adherence to ethical and moral principles; soundness of moral character; honesty. Integrity is the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles. In an academic integrity essay I will discuss the importance...

Plagiarism: a Current Issue of Modern College Students

Plagiarism is a world-wide mission faced through higher training companies. Infinite instances of plagiarism are detected across the global higher education sector every year and topics have escalated with advances in era and the emergence of a developing settlement dishonest industry. For plagiarism essay there...

The Issue of Academic Dishonesty in Nursing

The field of Nursing is a highly valued and honorable profession. Honesty begins in the academic school setting where learning practices are formed. It is found that students from colleges around different parts of the country have participated in some type of academic honesty. Researchers...

Why Academic Dishonesty is a Serious Problem

Cheating in schools impacts pupils, educators, any school and the education system. Academic dishonesty is such a serious and complicated problem because it results in a destroyed image of your individual self, professional and academic reputation, legal and monetary repercussions, and plagiaristic work. First of...

Actions I Would Take as a Nurse Educator if My Student Was Involved in a Case of Academic Dishonesty

Students especially those in institutions of higher learning are expected to follow set rules and regulations when it comes to the integrity of their work. Plagiarism can be both intentional and accidental yet both cases carry dire consequences for the student. In this paper, I...

Cheating is not Worth the Consequences

It was freshmen year in Mrs. Orozco’s English 1 Pre AP-class I knew it was going to be a bad year when I began to struggle with every essay we were to write. So, until the 9-weeks final essay I had done okay but was...

Methods of Preventing Academic Dishonesty

Teachers should encourage students to be academically honest through positive reinforcement, support, trust, and a combined effort. Cheating is a global phenomenon that happens too often, and all over the world, schools strive for academic integrity. We all want to be successful, and some of...

Academic Dishonesty and the Importance of Avoiding It

Academic dishonesty is one type of cheating on assignments or on examinations. There are many forms of academic dishonesty which includes sharing the homework with another student, collaborating with other students in unauthorized way, altering or constructing any sensitive university related documents, assisting other student...

Laziness Or Dishonesty is Ruining Reputation

Plagiarism A study by the Center for Academic Integrity found that almost 80% of college students admit to cheating at least once, while this is between 75% and 98% of high school students. You might not believe this, but the statistics of 2018 show that....

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Literature Review: Academic Dishonesty – What Causes It, How to Prevent It

What Causes Academic Dishonesty?

Poor time management

Academic pressures

Failure to understand academic conventions

Cultural factors

Low-Stakes Assignments

Technology and Academic Dishonesty

How Can Faculty and Instructors Combat Academic Dishonesty?

Course Management and Syllabus Design

Assignment Design

Technological Tools to Prevent Academic Dishonesty

What to Do if You Suspect Academic Dishonesty

Bibliography

Web Resources

Search Blog

Recent Posts

Northern Illinois University Academic Integrity Tutorials

Academic Dishonesty Definition and Types

Academic Dishonesty Defined

Fabrication or falsification

Check Your Understanding

Reveal Answer

Keep in Mind

Plagiarism & Academic Integrity

Types of Academic Dishonesty

Misrepresentation

Fabrication

Duplicate Submission

Academic Misconduct

Improper Computer/Calculator Use

Improper Online, TeleWeb, and Blended Course Use

Disruptive Behavior

Academic Honesty Essay

Everyday Examples of Academic Dishonesty

Group Work & Collaboration

Traditional Exams

Non-Traditional Exams

Online Resources

Intellectual Property

Communication

Academic dishonesty among university students: The roles of the psychopathy, motivation, and self-efficacy

Peter K. Jonason

Associated Data

Introduction

Materials and methods

Data analysis

Discussion and limitations

Implications and conclusions

Supporting information

Funding Statement

Data Availability

Academic Dishonesty Essay Examples

Discussion About Moral and Academic Integrity

Plagiarism: a Current Issue of Modern College Students

The Issue of Academic Dishonesty in Nursing

Why Academic Dishonesty is a Serious Problem

Actions I Would Take as a Nurse Educator if My Student Was Involved in a Case of Academic Dishonesty

Cheating is not Worth the Consequences

Methods of Preventing Academic Dishonesty

Academic Dishonesty and the Importance of Avoiding It

Laziness Or Dishonesty is Ruining Reputation

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