This blog is a summary of our published article: Blais, J., Fazaa, G. R., & Mungall, L. R. (2023). A pre-registered examination of the relationship between psychopathy, boredom-proneness, and university-level cheating. Psychological Reports, online ahead of publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/00332941231184385
Written by: Samantha Williams
Photo by cottonbro via Canva
Academic cheating comes in many forms, including inventing or altering data, copying others’ work, sharing answers, and lying to professors to get extensions. Cheating is very common – up to 50% of students admit to some form of cheating![1] Cheating is present across cultures[2] and at different levels of education (e.g., high school, university).[3]
We also know that different personality traits might be related to cheating, such as psychopathy.[4] Psychopathy is made up of many “facets,” or parts, including interpersonal (e.g., manipulative, lying), affective (e.g., unemotional, lacking guilt), lifestyle (e.g., impulsive, irresponsible), and antisocial (e.g., rule-breaking) characteristics. While research has examined the relationship between psychopathy and cheating, there hasn’t been a study looking at how each of the facets might relate to academic cheating. Another unknown is the relationship between cheating and being prone to boredom, which simply refers to a person’s tendency to be bored with tasks.
For this study, we wanted to look at the relationship between the facets of psychopathy, boredom-proneness, and academic cheating among university students. We recruited 161 undergraduate students in Canada to participate in an online survey. The survey asked them about their personality and cheating behaviours, including whether they had cheated in the previous semester at school.
We found that…
People who were more emotional and anxious (lower on the affective facet) were more likely to cheat.
People who had a history of rule-breaking (higher on the antisocial facet) were more likely to cheat.
Proneness to boredom wasn’t related to cheating.
Because cheating is so common and there are many ways to cheat, it probably isn’t going to be easy to identify and punish cheating after it happens. Instead, it is a better idea to focus on creating a classroom environment that prevents cheating and encourages academic honesty. For example, setting clear rules around what is and isn’t cheating and providing open spaces for students to collaborate might reduce students’ Photo by Andy Barbour via Canva
likelihood of cheating.
References
[1] Raines, D. A., Ricci, P., Brown, S. L., Eggenberger, T., Hindle, T., & Schiff, M. (2011). Cheating in online courses: The student definition. The Journal of Effective Teaching, 11(1), 80–89. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1092169
[2] Adebayo, S. O. (2011). Common cheating behaviour among Nigerian university students: A case study of university of ado-ekiti, Nigeria. World Journal of Education, 1(1), 144–149. http://doi.org/10.5430/wje.v1n1p144
[3] Jensen, L. A., Arnett, J. J., Feldman, S. S., & Cauffman, E. (2002). It’s wrong, but everybody does it: Academic dishonesty among high school and college students. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 27(2), 209–228. https://doi.org/10.1006/ceps.2001.1088
[4] Cheung, Y. K., & Egan, V. (2021). The HEXACO-60, the Dark Triad and scholastic cheating. Interpretation, 124(6), 311–322. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033294120961071
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