Personality, Attitude, and Demographic Correlates of Academic Dishonesty: A Meta-Analysis

• Published in: Psychological bulletin 2020-11, Vol.146 (11), p.1042-1058
• Main Authors: Lee, Samuel D., Kuncel, Nathan R., Gau, Jacob
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Academic misconduct; Adult; Agreeableness; Antisocial personality disorder; Antisocial Personality Disorder - psychology; Attitude; Attitudes; Cheating; Conscientiousness; Deception; Demographic Characteristics; Demography; Dishonesty; Female; Five factor model; Human; Humans; Impulsive Behavior; Impulsivity; Integrity; Male; Meta-analysis; Morality; Morals; Neutralization; Personality; Psychopathy; Self Efficacy; Student Attitudes; Student Characteristics; Students - psychology; Systematic review; Values; Young Adult
• ISSN: 0033-2909; 1939-1455
• DOI: 10.1037/bul0000300

Over a century of research has focused on the relationship between student characteristics and academic dishonesty. Here we conduct a meta-analysis of this extensive literature across three broad domains: personality, academic attitudes, and historical information including demographic and prior accomplishments. After analyzing correlations from over 27,000 participants across 75 samples, several relationships stand out. Although measures of conscientiousness (ρ¯ = −.25) and agreeableness (ρ¯ = −.13) from the popular five-factor model demonstrate important relationships with dishonesty, equal or greater effects were found for specific personality scales including impulsivity (ρ¯ = .39) and psychopathy (ρ¯ = .40). Both morality (ρ¯ = −.24) and academic self-efficacy (ρ¯ = −.28) were related to less dishonest behavior but demonstrated substantially smaller effects than measures of neutralization (ρ¯ = .43), a tendency to justify and deflect immoral behavior as reasonable given the circumstances. Hypotheses were developed and results are framed by two competing models of academic dishonesty. Public Significance Statement This study examined how the personality, values, and demographic characteristics of students are related to engaging in academically dishonest behaviors during college. Many characteristics are related to academic dishonesty with the impulsivity, morality, and a tendency to justify inappropriate behavior as being understandable demonstrating the largest reliable effects.