Student Moral Foundations in the Context of Research Misbehavior: An Experimental Study

Abstract

The study aimed to examine whether the use of words related to different moral foundations can predict the perceived severity of research misconduct. We gave two groups of participants, undergraduate medical students, the same hypothetical scenarios of research misconduct cases containing words related to different aspects of morality, and asked them to assess how inappropriate the described behavior was. Students ranked the described behaviors differently by the inappropriateness of the behavior, but the group wording was not a significant predictor of appropriateness. The reasons for the ranking were not related to any standardized procedures for research integrity but were related to the moral assessment of the students, which was assessed using qualitative approach. The results of this study implicate that personal moral views are an important part in research integrity training.