Specialist degree in school psychology, Eastern Illinois University, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 29-33).

Despite a wealth of studies, no consistent personality predictors of scholastic cheating have been identified. However, several highly-relevant variables have been overlooked. I address this void with a series of three studies. Study 1 was a large-scale survey of a broad range of personality predictors of self-reported scholastic cheating. The significant predictors were psychopathy, Machiavellianism, narcissism, low Agreeableness and low Conscientiousness. However, only psychopathy remained significant in a multiple regression. Study 2 replicated this pattern using a naturalistic, behavioural indicator of cheating -- plagiarism as indexed by the internet service Turn-It-In. The psychopathy association still held up after controlling for intelligence. Finally, Study 3 examined possible motivational mediators of the association between psychopathy and cheating. Unmitigated achievement and moral inhibition were successful mediators whereas fear of punishment was not. Implications for researchers and educators are discussed. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to describe the frequencies and types of cheating behaviors occurring within proctored and unproctored testing environments for students enrolled in online courses and taking assessments through an online format. In addition, this study sought to examine relationships between demographic variables of gender, age, GPA, discipline of study, undergraduate/graduate status and knowledge of the institutional honor code and online cheating behaviors for students who had taken online assessments through proctored methods. Participants in this study included students enrolled as distance learning campus students who took online courses and online assessments through a large, 4-year, public, degree-granting institution located in the southeastern region of the United States during the spring 2015 semester. Participants were asked to report their frequency in engaging in online cheating behaviors through the Online Assessment Cheating Behaviors Survey (OACBS). The study found that distance students who took unproctored exams reported more frequently engaging in overall cheating behaviors than proctored students. No differences were found in overall cheating behaviors for those taking exams through face to face and remotely proctored methods. Individual item analyses revealed that those taking unproctored exams reported more frequently using web searches during online exams to search for answers than those taking proctored exams. The study also found differences in overall cheating behaviors for those taking proctored online exams based on gender, with female distance students more frequently reporting engaging in cheating behaviors than male distance students. Individual level item analyses revealed females, those with a “C” GPA, and undergraduate distance students more frequently utilized web searches during an online proctored exam and used brain dump sites to obtain test questions and answers.

Across four experiments, we show that when people can serve their self-interest, they are more likely to refrain from reporting the truth ( lie of omission) than actively lie ( lie of commission). We developed a novel online "Heads or Tails" task in which participants can lie to win a monetary prize. During the task, they are informed that the software is not always accurate, and it might provide incorrect feedback about their outcome. In Experiment 1, those in the omission condition received incorrect feedback informing them that they had won the game. Participants in commission condition were correctly informed that they had lost. Results indicated that when asked to report any errors in the detection of their payoff, participants in the omission condition cheated significantly more than those in the commission condition. Experiment 2 showed that this pattern of results is robust even when controlling for the perceived probability of the software error. Experiments 3 and 4 suggest that receiving incorrect feedback makes individuals feel more legitimate in withholding the truth, which, in turn, increases cheating.

In this dissertation, I examine changes in risk-taking behavior, beliefs, and self-deception induced by changes in policy and behavior. Specifically, Chapter II examines player performance and risk-taking behavior in tournament environments which include eliminations in the middle of the tournament. I find that when players face elimination, they perform better and take risks more often. In addition, when facing elimination, players are more likely to have those risks pay off. Turning to the interaction between public policy and personal beliefs, Chapter III explores how public policy affects beliefs in the context of same-sex marriage. Exploiting the timing of the legalization of same-sex marriage, I find that legalization induces an increase in the proportion of people who have strong beliefs on same-sex marriage. I also find a substantial increase in measured state-level polarization due to legalization. Finally, Chapter IV presents the results of an experiment designed to uncover how self-confidence and self-deception change after performing dishonest behavior. In an online experimental laboratory, participants who cheated have higher confidence in their ability even when the opportunity to cheat is not present. In addition, participants who cheated, and were rewarded for cheating with a high reward, had higher beliefs in their ability. This dissertation includes unpublished co-authored material.

Counterplay is a way of playing digital games that opposes the encoded algorithms that define their appropriate use and interaction. Counterplay is often manifested within the social arena as practices such as the creation of incendiary user generated content, grief-play, cheating, glitching, modding, and hacking. It is deemed damaging to normative play values, to the experience of play, and detrimental to the viability of videogames as mainstream entertainment products. Counterplay is often framed through the rhetoric of transgression as pathogen, as a hostile, infectious, threatening act. Those found conducting it are subject to a range of punishments ranging from expulsion from videogames to criminal conviction. Despite the steps taken to manage counterplay, it occurs frequently within contemporary videogames causing significant disruption to play and necessitating costly remedy. This thesis argues that counterplay should be understood as a practice with its own pleasures and justifying rhetorics that problematise the rhetoric of pathogen and attenuate the threat of penalty. Despite the social and economic significance of counterplay upon contemporary videogames, relatively little is known of the practices conducted by counterplayers, their motivations, or the rhetorics that they deploy to justify and contextualise their actions. Through the use of ethnographic approaches, including interview and participant observation, alongside the identification and application of five popular rhetorics of transgression, this study aims to expose the meanings and complexities of contemporary counterplay. It examines counterplayer testimonies that articulate the practices and rhetorics underpinning the creation of incendiary user generated content, grief play, glitching, modding, and hacking on the Xbox 360 platform in particular. This study represents a contribution to the field of game studies in an area so far underresearched, offering voice to a previously silent demographic, that of counterplayers. In focussing upon their practices, communities and motivations, this study challenges the framing of counterplay as reductively oppositional or hostile. Instead, counterplay is shown to be an act of seduction, a means of articulating identity, status and recognition, as an expression of hacker ideology, and as a re-engagement with the carnivalesque. These meanings, in addition to the rhetoric of pathogen, offer an expanded image of counterplay and the counterplayer that highlights the significance of counterplay within the context of contemporary popular and youth culture.

The current program of research investigated factors that influence students’ perceptions of everyday moral violations, as well as their own inclinations to engage in immoral behaviours. In Experiment 1, I demonstrated that participants’ evaluations of a hypothetical student who contemplated plagiarizing an assignment depended on both the choice that was ultimately made and the length of time spent deliberating about it (cf., Tetlock et al., 2000). Specifically, when participants were informed that the student ultimately elected to refrain from cheating, the length of time that this individual spent considering the decision had no impact on their subsequent behavioural or character evaluations. However, when participants were informed that the student had succumbed to the temptation to cheat, they evaluated the individual more harshly if the decision to cheat had been made after a period of deliberation than if the decision had been made blithely, without any forethought. Experiment 2 extended this program of research by showing that stable and transient variations in construal level interact to influence participants’ perceptions of students who engage in acts of plagiarism. Specifically, participants with low levels of personal agency evaluated a hypothetical student who had plagiarized an assignment relatively charitably, regardless of how they were prompted to construe the situation. Furthermore, these participants felt a greater affinity for the student after being induced to construe the student’s actions in low-level terms. On the other hand, participants with high levels of personal agency who were induced to construe the student’s actions in high-level terms were less positive in their evaluations, and also felt less of an affinity for the student. Experiment 3 assessed the extent to which stable and transient variations in construal level interact to predict actual cheating behaviour during an evaluative task. The results of this investigation revealed that priming participants with low levels of personal agency to adopt high-level construals lessened the incidence of cheating among members of this group. In sum, the results associated with the current program of research suggest that transient shifts in construal level interact with stable levels of personal agency to influence students’ perceptions of peers who engage in academic dishonesty. Furthermore, they provide evidence that these two factors play a role in the extent to which students behave dishonestly in evaluative settings themselves. Potential applications that could be derived from the current findings and possible avenues for future research are discussed. / Thesis (Ph.D, Psychology) -- Queen's University, 2010-01-12 12:56:11.965

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2004. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 141-157). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2004. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 141-157). Also available on the Internet.