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Can Priming Legal Consequences and the Concept of Honesty Decrease Cheating During Examinations?

Cheating on exams is a very common phenomenon that causes great harm. Various measures, such as chastisement and direct punishment, have been employed to reduce cheating. Previous studies have found that increasing punishment and activating “self-concept maintenance” can reduce this behavior. This s...

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Autores principales: Wu, Yu-Wei, Zhong, Lu-Lu, Ruan, Qian-Nan, Liang, Jing, Yan, Wen-Jing
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6985441/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32038348
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02887
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author Wu, Yu-Wei
Zhong, Lu-Lu
Ruan, Qian-Nan
Liang, Jing
Yan, Wen-Jing
author_facet Wu, Yu-Wei
Zhong, Lu-Lu
Ruan, Qian-Nan
Liang, Jing
Yan, Wen-Jing
author_sort Wu, Yu-Wei
collection PubMed
description Cheating on exams is a very common phenomenon that causes great harm. Various measures, such as chastisement and direct punishment, have been employed to reduce cheating. Previous studies have found that increasing punishment and activating “self-concept maintenance” can reduce this behavior. This study employed a priming paradigm to investigate whether priming legal consequences and the concept of honesty would reduce cheating in examination situations. In experiment 1, a total of 402 freshmen from 17 classes were included in this study. The 185 students in experimental condition were primed for legal consequences. The cheating behaviors and employed analysts were defined to count the number of cheaters. The results show that the number of students cheating in the primed group did not decrease compared to those in the controlled condition. In experiment 2, a total of 386 freshmen from 16 classes participated in this experiment. The 171 students in experimental condition were primed for the concept of honesty. The results also show that the number of students cheating in the primed group did not decrease. This study shows that priming legal consequence and the concept of honesty were not significant in certain situations, such as during examinations. It is suggested that some psychological manipulations in decreasing dishonesty behaviors should be further tested in ecological situations.
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spelling pubmed-69854412020-02-07 Can Priming Legal Consequences and the Concept of Honesty Decrease Cheating During Examinations? Wu, Yu-Wei Zhong, Lu-Lu Ruan, Qian-Nan Liang, Jing Yan, Wen-Jing Front Psychol Psychology Cheating on exams is a very common phenomenon that causes great harm. Various measures, such as chastisement and direct punishment, have been employed to reduce cheating. Previous studies have found that increasing punishment and activating “self-concept maintenance” can reduce this behavior. This study employed a priming paradigm to investigate whether priming legal consequences and the concept of honesty would reduce cheating in examination situations. In experiment 1, a total of 402 freshmen from 17 classes were included in this study. The 185 students in experimental condition were primed for legal consequences. The cheating behaviors and employed analysts were defined to count the number of cheaters. The results show that the number of students cheating in the primed group did not decrease compared to those in the controlled condition. In experiment 2, a total of 386 freshmen from 16 classes participated in this experiment. The 171 students in experimental condition were primed for the concept of honesty. The results also show that the number of students cheating in the primed group did not decrease. This study shows that priming legal consequence and the concept of honesty were not significant in certain situations, such as during examinations. It is suggested that some psychological manipulations in decreasing dishonesty behaviors should be further tested in ecological situations. Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-01-21 /pmc/articles/PMC6985441/ /pubmed/32038348 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02887 Text en Copyright © 2020 Wu, Zhong, Ruan, Liang and Yan. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Wu, Yu-Wei
Zhong, Lu-Lu
Ruan, Qian-Nan
Liang, Jing
Yan, Wen-Jing
Can Priming Legal Consequences and the Concept of Honesty Decrease Cheating During Examinations?
title Can Priming Legal Consequences and the Concept of Honesty Decrease Cheating During Examinations?
title_full Can Priming Legal Consequences and the Concept of Honesty Decrease Cheating During Examinations?
title_fullStr Can Priming Legal Consequences and the Concept of Honesty Decrease Cheating During Examinations?
title_full_unstemmed Can Priming Legal Consequences and the Concept of Honesty Decrease Cheating During Examinations?
title_short Can Priming Legal Consequences and the Concept of Honesty Decrease Cheating During Examinations?
title_sort can priming legal consequences and the concept of honesty decrease cheating during examinations?
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6985441/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32038348
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02887
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