Cheating has become a global problem that is ubiquitous in various facets of human life. While previous literature has suggested a link between cheating and competition, another type of social relation, that is, collaboration, could arguably promote cheating behavior, particularly with a sample of participants who held collectivistic values. To examine whether competition, collaboration, or a combination of both caused participants to overreport the dice score, we designed a novel experimental dice-rolling paradigm in a lab setting. Across 4 studies, we found that collaboration but not competition triggered potential cheating behavior. Participants were inclined to overreport their scores when they were paired with cheating partners; this pattern was not evident when they did it individually or when they were paired with honest partners. This behavioral change was also accompanied by a change in participants’ perception of the experimental conditions. Furthermore, we found that the dice score overreporting behavior was exclusively contingent upon their partner’s influence. In a collectivistic society, potential cheating seems to be triggered by collaboration as opposed to competition, as previous literature has suggested. Our findings suggest that the determinant of potential cheating behavior is rather culturally specific.

Covid-19 pandemic has altered students' sleep patterns due to increasing academic demands as a compromise to switching the learning mode from direct classroom interaction to online learning. As a result, some believed it would affect the quality of cognitive functions. We conducted one experiment involving ~200 undergraduate students to measure their inhibitory control -a segment of cognitive process that allows controlling the unnecessary but often striking impulses – under two conditions, i.e., sufficient sleep and lack of sleep. Participants were asked to record their regular sleeping hours a week before the measurement period to get the baseline condition. Lack of sleep condition was determined by taking only partitions (less than 85%) of the regular sleeping hours overnight. Inhibitory control was measured using the online version of Simon Task about 30 minutes after the participants woke up in the morning. We found no direct effect of sleep deprivation on the performance of the Simon Task. Participants performed the Simon Task comparably well between the Sleep Deprived and Sufficient Sleep conditions. However, sleep deprivation inhibited the learning process required to perform identical Simon Task on the subsequent measurement intake. Our finding demonstrates that despite no empiric evidence of the direct impact of sleep deprivation on cognitive function per se, it affects the covert learning process required to perform well in future assignments.

Cheating behavior in a school setting has become a major problem in many countries, including those with a dominantly religious population (e.g., Indonesia). This creates a paradox since previous literatures suggest eminent role of spirituality in constructing morality. This study is intended to investigate the interplay between spirituality and cheating behavior in religious high school students in Yogyakarta using multi-methods approach. Self-report questionnaires to measure the perception toward cheating, spirituality level, and locus of control were distributed to a total of 691 participants using random sampling method. Participants were also given an open-ended questionnaire asking the rationale behind their past cheating behavior. The findings suggested that the role of spirituality in ethical behavior was rather contextual, such as the link between spirituality and awareness of cheating was more robust in the respondents from religious schools. It was found that the participants viewed spirituality as an internal moral compass which may in turn facilitate overt ethical behavior.   Perilaku kecurangan di sekolah telah menjadi permasalahan besar di berbagai negara, termasuk di negara-negara yang mayoritas penduduknya religius (misalnya di Indonesia). Hal ini menimbulkan sebuah paradoks mengingat penelitian terdahulu menyatakan bahwa spiritualitas berperan dalam proses pembentukan moralitas. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menelaah interaksi antara spiritualitas dan perilaku kecurangan pada siswa sekolah menengah di Yogyakarta menggunakan pendekatan multi-metode. Kuesioner laporan diri untuk mengukur persepsi terhadap kecurangan, tingkat spiritualitas, dan lokus kendali dibagikan kepada total 691 partisipan menggunakan metode random sampling. Partisipan juga diberikan kuesioner dengan butir-butir pertanyaan terbuka yang menanyakan alasan di balik perilaku curang mereka di masa lampau. Temuan menunjukkan bahwa peran spiritualitas dalam perilaku etis cenderung bersifat kontekstual, misalnya hubungan antara spiritualitas dan kesadaran akan perilaku kecurangan lebih kuat pada responden dari sekolah berbasis agama. Ditemukan bahwa partisipan dalam kajian ini memandang spiritualitas sebagai kompas moral internal yang dapat berperan dalam memfasilitasi perilaku etis yang terbuka.