Academic Cheating is Contagious: the Influence of the Presence of Others on Honesty. a Study Report

The main aim of the study was to investigate the determinants of academic dishonesty. Its scope was limited to the specific kind of dishonest behavior which is commonly present among students: the phenomenon of academic dishonesty, manifested in cheating (colloquially: cribbing) on tests, exams, etc. The author predicted that an agreement between each participant and the experimenter would induce participants to remain honest. The research was conducted in the form of a laboratory experiment. The results indicated that the presence of the experimenter's confederate was significant. Participants cheated more often when the other person cheated than they did when writing the test individually. However, it turned out that the agreement had no influence on the participants' behavior. Another research problem concerned the influence of person- ality determinants on dishonesty. The effect of self-esteem and attitude towards disloyalty on disloyal behavior was inves- tigated. The main results showed that the participants who cheated had lower self-esteem in comparison with those who did not cheat. As regards attitude towards disloyalty, it was found that loyalty had a low value for the participants who cheated, while non-cheaters valued it highly.