Cheating and Moral Judgment in the College Classroom: A Natural Experiment

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a natural experiment involving academic cheating by university students. We explore the relationship of moral judgment (as measured using the defining issues test) to actual behavior, as well as the relationship between the honesty of students self-reports and the extent of cheating. We were able to determine the extent to which students actually cheated on the take-home portion of an accounting exam. The take-home problem was not assigned with the intent of inducing cheating among students. However, the high rate of observed cheating prompted the instructor to return to class and ask the students to provide information on their motivation. The students' responses are the data analyzed in this natural experiment. We found that in a simple regression the relationship between moral judgment scores and cheating behavior was insignificant. However, when we tested whether including Utilizer scores (i.e. the extent to which people select actions based on notions of justice) affected the relationship of cheating and moral judgment we found that Utilizer affected the relationship significantly. Finally, we found that moral judgment and honesty were not related, but higher levels of cheating behavior related to less honesty. KeywordsAccounting, accounting students, cheating, defining issues test, ethics, honesty, moral judgement is a manuscript of an article from Journal of Business Ethics 54 (2004): 173, doi: 10.1007/s10551-004-9463-x. Posted with permission. The final publication is available at Springer Cheating and Moral Judgment in the College Classroom:A Natural Experiment AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to present the results of a natural experiment involving academic cheating by university students. We explore the relationship of moral judgment (as measured using the Defining Issues Test) to actual behavior, as well as the relationship between the honesty of students self-reports and the extent of cheating. We were able to determine the extent to which students actually cheated on the take-home portion of an accounting exam. The take-home problem was not assigned with the intent of inducing cheating among students. However, the high rate of observed cheating prompted the instructor to return to class and ask the students to provide information on their motivation.The students' responses are the data analyzed in this natural experiment.We found that in a simple regression the relationship between moral judgment scores and cheating behavior was insignificant. However, when we tested whether includingUtilizer scores (i.e. the extent to which people select actions based on notions of justice)affected the relationship of cheating and moral judgment we found that Utilizer affected the relationship significantly. Finally, we found that moral judgment and honesty were not related, but higher levels of cheating behavior related to less honesty.

Undergraduate Student Perceptions Regarding Cheating: Tier 1 Versus Tier 2 AACSB Accredited Business Schools

“…While Tier 2 students agreed that moral and ethical people cheat, Tier 1 students only moderately agreed. This is in line with the findings of West et al (2004) that the relationship between judgment scores and cheating behavior was insignificant. Tier 1 students believe that sanctioned threats are a significant deterrent to cheating, whereas Tier 2 students only moderately agreed.…”

An Examination of the Association Between Gender and Reporting Intentions for Fraudulent Financial Reporting

“…Consistent with this perspective, researchers have found that females tend to reach more severe ethical judgments than males (Beu et al, 2003;Dawson, 1997;Harris and Sutton, 1995;Hoffman, 1998;Mason and Mudrack, 1996;Ritter, 2006;Smith and Oakley, 1997). However, other studies do not find an association between ethical judgments and gender (Barnett and Karson, 1989;Coate and Frey, 2000;Hegarty and Sims, 1979;Radtke, 2000;Stanga and Turpen, 1991;Van Kenhove et al, 2001;West et al, 2004). Hoffman (1998) contends that these inconsistent findings suggest that ethical judgments and ethically related behaviors are situation specific.…”

A New Methodological Approach for Studying Moral Reasoning Among Managers in Business Settings

“…In addition, decision making is assessed by placing individuals into pre-determined definable groups, namely, business students (Abdolmohammadi and Baker, 2007;West et al, 2004), managers (Kracher and Marble, 2008;Weber, 1990), cross-cultural ethnic groups (Monga, 2007;Srnka et al, 2007), auditors (Brown et al, 2007;Herron and Gilbertson, 2004;Warming-Rasmussen and Windsor, 2003), and for populations outside traditional business groups, such as nursing, counseling, and dentistry and veterinary medicine (Rest and Narvaez, 1994). Often subcategories or subgroups are designated, such as ''X% of managers reason at stage Y.…”