Behavioral dishonesty in multiscenes: Associations with trait honesty and neural patterns during (dis)honesty video-watching.

Cross-situational inconsistency is common in the expression of honesty traits; yet, there is insufficient emphasis on behavioral dishonesty across multiple contexts. The current study aimed to investigate behavioral dishonesty in various contexts and reveal the associations between trait honesty, behavioral dishonesty, and neural patterns of observing others behave honestly or dishonestly in videos (abbr.: (dis)honesty video-watching). First, the results revealed limitations in using trait honesty to reflect variations in dishonest behaviors and predict behavioral dishonesty. The finding highlights the importance of considering neural patterns in understanding and predicting dishonest behaviors. Second, by comparing the predictive performance of seven types of data across three neural networks, the results showed that functional connectivity in the hypothesis-driven network during (dis)honesty video-watching provided the highest predictive power in predicting multitask behavioral dishonesty. Last, by applying the feature elimination method, the midline self-referential regions (medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and anterior cingulate cortex), anterior insula, and striatum were identified as the most informative brain regions in predicting behavioral dishonesty. In summary, the study offered insights into individual differences in deception and the intricate connections among trait honesty, behavioral dishonesty, and neural patterns during (dis)honesty video-watching.

High consistency of cheating and honesty in early childhood.

Three preregistered studies examined whether 5-year-old children cheat consistently or remain honest across multiple math tests. We observed high consistency in both honesty and cheating. All children who cheated on the first test continued cheating on subsequent tests, with shorter cheating latencies over time. In contrast, 77% of initially honest children maintained honesty despite repeated failure to complete the tests successfully. A brief integrity intervention helped initially honest children remain honest but failed to dissuade initially cheating children from cheating. These findings demonstrate that cheating emerges early and persists strongly in young children, underscoring the importance of early prevention efforts. They also suggest that bolstering honesty from the start may be more effective than attempting to remedy cheating after it has occurred. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Our research examines whether 5-year-old children, once they have started cheating, will continue to do so consistently. We also investigate whether 5-year-old children who are initially honest will continue to be honest subsequently. We discovered high consistency in both honesty and cheating among 5-year-old children. Almost all the children who initially cheated continued this behavior, while those who were honest stayed honest. A brief integrity-boosting intervention successfully helped 5-year-old children maintain their honesty. However, the same intervention failed to deter cheaters from cheating again. These findings underscore the importance of implementing integrity intervention as early as possible, potentially before children have had their first experience of cheating.

The path of dishonesty: identification of mental processes with electrical neuroimaging.

Much research finds that lying takes longer than truth-telling. Yet, the source of this response time difference remains elusive. Here, we assessed the spatiotemporal evolution of electrical brain activity during honesty and dishonesty in 150 participants using a sophisticated electrical neuroimaging approach-the microstate approach. This uniquely positioned us to identify and contrast the entire chain of mental processes involved during honesty and dishonesty. Specifically, we find that the response time difference is the result of an additional late-occurring mental process, unique to dishonest decisions, interrupting the antecedent mental processing. We suggest that this process inhibits the activation of the truth, thus permitting the execution of the lie. These results advance our understanding of dishonesty and clarify existing theories about the role of increased cognitive load. More broadly, we demonstrate the vast potential of our approach to illuminate the temporal organization of mental processes involved in decision-making.

Parenting by lying and children's lying to parents: The moderating role of children's beliefs.

How are children socialized about lying? One way is parental modeling of lying given that parents tell various lies to their children for parenting purposes, which is a practice known as parenting by lying. Importantly, how children perceive and interpret the lying behavior around them may be crucial to how they then learn to lie. Yet, we do not know how children's perceptions of different types of parental lies drive this socialization. In a comprehensive birth cohort of parent-child dyads (N = 564; children aged 11 and 12 years) in Singapore, we collected multi-informant reports of instrumental lies (parental lies told for child compliance) and white lies (parental lies told to instill positive emotions), children's belief in parental lies, and children's lying to parents. We found greater consistency in parent and child reports of instrumental lies than of white lies and that children reported greater belief in instrumental lies than in white lies. Children's reported exposure to instrumental lies was associated with greater lying to parents. However, for white lies this relationship was evident only when children had moderate to low beliefs in parental lies. Examining the interplay between parental lies and children's beliefs in those lies, the current study illuminates the potential pathways to children's lying behaviors.

Cheating in childhood: Exploring the link between parental reports of problem behaviors and dishonesty on simulated academic tests.

This study investigated the relationship between parental reports of children's behavioral problems and their cheating behaviors on simulated academic tests, addressing a significant gap in understanding early childhood academic cheating and its potential links to broader behavioral issues. We hypothesized that children's early problem behaviors would be predictive of their academic cheating. To test these hypotheses, children aged 4 to 12 years took part in six unmonitored academic tests that measured their cheating behaviors while their parents completed the Child Behavior Checklist and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire elsewhere. Separate hierarchical linear regressions revealed that children's problem behaviors, as reported by parents, overall significantly predict children's cheating behaviors even after accounting for demographic variables such as age, gender, ethnicity, and parental religiosity. Specifically, the Conduct Problems subscale of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire showed a significant and unique association with children's cheating behaviors above and beyond the common contributions of all predictors. However, the Child Behavior Checklist scores and the scores on the other Strengths and Difficulties subscales were not significantly or uniquely related to cheating. These findings offer new insight into simulated childhood academic cheating and its relation to problem behaviors observed by parents.

Self-efficacy and cheating among young children.

This research, comprising three preregistered studies, investigated the link between self-efficacy and cheating on an academic test in 5- and 6-year-old children. Study 1 assessed children's general self-efficacy and found it to be unrelated to their cheating behavior. Study 2 assessed task-specific self-efficacy, which was not found to be associated with cheating. In Study 3, children were randomly assigned to either an experimental group, which received brief positive feedback on task-specific self-efficacy, or a control group, which received no feedback. The experimental group demonstrated significantly less cheating. These findings, for the first time, identify a specific connection between young children's self-efficacy and academic dishonesty and suggest that positive feedback on task-specific efficacy could be a simple effective strategy for fostering academic integrity early on.

Academic cheating in early childhood: Role of age, gender, personality, and self-efficacy.

The current study investigated the association of children's age, gender, ethnicity, Big Five personality traits, and self-efficacy with their academic cheating behaviors. Academic cheating is a rampant problem that has been documented in adolescents and adults for nearly a century, but our understanding of the early development and factors influencing academic cheating is still weak. Using Zoom, the current study recruited children aged 4 to 12 years (N = 388), measured their cheating behaviors through six tasks simulating academic testing scenarios, and assessed their Big Five personality traits and self-efficacy through a modified Berkeley Puppet Interview paradigm, as well as age and gender. We found that children cheated significantly less with increased age and that boys cheated significantly more than girls. However, neither Big Five personality traits nor self-efficacy were significantly correlated with children's cheating. These findings suggest that academic cheating is a developing issue from early to middle childhood and that factors such as gender socialization may play a role in such development. Personal characteristics such as personality traits and self-efficacy may undergo additional development before their associations with cheating become robust, as reported in the adult literature.

A concept analysis of misconduct: Application to nursing education.

BACKGROUND: Behavior is known as misconduct when individuals do not adhere to ethical standards, rules, or regulations. Several factors lead to misconduct, including the lack of understanding of what misconduct is among undergraduate students. However, misconduct as a concept needs more clarity and specificity. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to examine the concept of misconduct from the literature and establish an operational definition for application to nursing education. RESEARCH DESIGN: A concept analysis using Rodger's evolutionary view was used to analyze the literature from the disciplines of: academics, business, law, and religious perspectives. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION: An operational definition was developed based on the multidisciplinary concept analysis. A concept map was designed to help visualize the antecedents, attributes, and consequences and to assist in the conceptualization of misconduct. Implications for nursing science, administration, and education are provided. CONCLUSION: Understanding misconduct is necessary for nurse educators to ensure ethical practice within the academic context.

The Ethics of Publishing Biomedical and Natural Products Research.

Given that the essence of Science is a search for the truth, one might expect that those identifying as scientists would be conscientious and observant of the demands this places on them. However, that expectation is not fulfilled universally as, not too surprisingly, egregious examples of unethical behavior appear and are driven by money, personal ambition, performance pressure, and other incentives. The reproducibility-, fact-, and truth-oriented modus operandi of Science has come to face a variety of challenges. Organized into 11 cases, this article outlines examples of compromised integrity from borderline to blatant unethical behavior that disgrace our profession unnecessarily. Considering technological developments in neural networks/artificial intelligence, a host of factors are identified as impacting Good Ethical Practices. The goal is manifold: to raise awareness and offer perspectives for refocusing on Science and true scientific evidence; to trigger discussion and developments that strengthen ethical behavior; to foster the recognition of the beauty, simplicity, and rewarding nature of scientific integrity; and to highlight the originality of intelligence.

The Effect of Sexual Objectification on Dishonesty.

In daily life, women often experience various forms of sexual objectification such as being stared at in public settings and receiving unsolicited sexual remarks on social media. These incidents could have damaging effects on women's physical and mental health, necessitating ways to respond to the experience. Researchers have provided burgeoning evidence demonstrating the effects of sexual objectification on various psychological, emotional, and cognitive outcomes. However, relatively few researchers have tested how sexually objectified people behaviorally react to the objectification experience. To address this knowledge gap, we aimed to test whether sexual objectification increases dishonesty among women and reveal one potential underlying psychological mechanism. We predicted that sexual objectification increases dishonesty serially through higher levels of relative deprivation and lower levels of self-regulation. We conducted two experiments (valid N = 150 and 279, respectively) to test the predictions and found that participants who experienced sexual objectification reported greater dishonest tendencies than those who did not (Experiments 1 and 2). Moreover, relative deprivation and self-regulation serially mediated the effect of sexual objectification on dishonesty (Experiment 2). In the current experiments, we highlight the essential role of relative deprivation and self-regulation in explaining how sexual objectification increases dishonesty and various related forms of antisocial behavior.

Cheating to benefit others? On the relation between Honesty-Humility and prosocial lies.

OBJECTIVE: Among basic personality traits, Honesty-Humility yields the most consistent, negative link with dishonest behavior. The theoretical conceptualization of Honesty-Humility, however, suggests a potential boundary condition of this relation, namely, when lying is prosocial. We therefore tested the hypothesis that the association between Honesty-Humility and dishonesty weakens once lying benefits someone else, particularly so if this other is needy. METHODS: In two online studies (Study 1: N = 775 in Germany; Study 2: N = 737 in the UK, preregistered), we measured self-reported Honesty-Humility and dishonest behavior in incentivized cheating paradigms in which the beneficiary of participants' dishonesty was either the participants themselves, a "non-needy" other (e.g., another participant), or a "needy" other (e.g., a charity). RESULTS: We found support for the robustness of the negative association between Honesty-Humility and dishonesty, even if lying was prosocial. CONCLUSION: Individuals high in Honesty-Humility largely prioritize honesty, even if there is a strong moral imperative to lie; those low in Honesty-Humility, by contrast, tend to lie habitually and thus even if they themselves do not directly profit monetarily. This suggests that (un)truthfulness may be an absolute rather than a relative aspect of Honesty-Humility, although further systematic tests of this proposition are needed.

Unethical amnesia responds more to instrumental than to hedonic motives.

Humans care about morality. Yet, they often engage in actions that contradict their moral self. Unethical amnesia is observed when people do not remember or remember less vividly these actions. This paper explores two reasons why individuals may experience unethical amnesia. Forgetting past unethical behavior may be motivated by purely hedonic or affective reasons, such as the willingness to maintain one's moral self-image, but also by instrumental or strategic motives, in anticipation of future misbehavior. In a large-scale incentivized online experiment (n = 1,322) using a variant of a mind game, we find that hedonic considerations are not sufficient to motivate the forgetting of past cheating behavior. This is confirmed in a follow-up experiment (n = 1,005) in which recalls are elicited the same day instead of 3 wk apart. However, when unethical amnesia can serve as a justification for a future action, such as deciding on whether to keep undeserved money, motivated forgetting is more likely. Thereby, we show that motivated forgetting occurs as a self-excuse to justify future immoral decisions.

Cognitive control increases honesty in cheaters but cheating in those who are honest.

Every day, we are faced with the conflict between the temptation to cheat for financial gains and maintaining a positive image of ourselves as being a "good person." While it has been proposed that cognitive control is needed to mediate this conflict between reward and our moral self-image, the exact role of cognitive control in (dis)honesty remains elusive. Here we identify this role, by investigating the neural mechanism underlying cheating. We developed a task which allows for inconspicuously measuring spontaneous cheating on a trial-by-trial basis in the MRI scanner. We found that activity in the nucleus accumbens promotes cheating, particularly for individuals who cheat a lot, while a network consisting of posterior cingulate cortex, temporoparietal junction, and medial prefrontal cortex promotes honesty, particularly in individuals who are generally honest. Finally, activity in areas associated with cognitive control (anterior cingulate cortex and inferior frontal gyrus) helped dishonest participants to be honest, whereas it enabled cheating for honest participants. Thus, our results suggest that cognitive control is not needed to be honest or dishonest per se but that it depends on an individual's moral default.

Research Integrity: Where We Are and Where We Are Heading.

The concept of research integrity (RI) refers to a set of moral and ethical standards that serve as the foundation for the execution of research activities. Integrity in research is the incorporation of principles of honesty, transparency, and respect for ethical standards and norms throughout all stages of the research endeavor, encompassing study design, data collecting, analysis, reporting, and publishing. The preservation of RI is of utmost importance to uphold the credibility and amplify the influence of scientific research while also preventing and dealing with instances of scientific misconduct. Researchers, institutions, journals, and readers share responsibilities for preserving RI. Researchers must adhere to the highest ethical standards. Institutions have a role in establishing an atmosphere that supports integrity ideals while also providing useful guidance, instruction, and assistance to researchers. Editors and reviewers act as protectors, upholding quality and ethical standards in the dissemination of research results through publishing. Readers play a key role in the detection and reporting of fraudulent activity by critically evaluating content. The struggle against scientific misconduct has multiple dimensions and is continuous. It requires a collaborative effort and adherence to the principles of honesty, transparency, and rigorous science. By supporting a culture of RI, the scientific community may preserve its core principles and continue to contribute appropriately to society's well-being. It not only aids present research but also lays the foundation for future scientific advancements.

Student and Teacher Views on Cheating in High School: Perceptions, Evaluations, and Decisions.

Why do so many adolescents cheat despite judging that cheating is wrong? Two studies tested a new model of cheating in high school. In Study 1, 85 high schoolers in the Western U.S. reported their perceptions, evaluations, and motivations surrounding their own and hypothetical cheating. In Study 2, 83 teachers reported their views about cheating; we also analyzed course syllabi. About half of the adolescents reported unintentional cheating, and many judged their own cheating-but not hypothetical cheating-as acceptable. Decisions to cheat were responses to competing pressures, low value placed on the assignment, and other considerations. Study 2 revealed teacher-student disagreements about cheating, and minimal content about academic integrity in syllabi. The findings supported the proposed model of adolescent cheating.

Factors associated with the perception of university professors about academic dishonesty in dental students from two peruvian universities: analysis under multivariable regression model.

BACKGROUND: Academic dishonesty is an intentional behavior that transgresses ethics in the teaching-learning process. The present study aimed to evaluate the factors associated with the perception of university professors about academic dishonesty in dental students from two universities in the Peruvian capital. METHODS: This cross-sectional, analytical study evaluated 181 professors from two Peruvian universities between March and July 2022. A validated 28-item questionnaire was used to measure the perceived academic dishonesty of their students. A logit model was used to evaluate the influence of the variables gender, marital status, place of origin, academic degree, specialization, academic area, years of teaching experience, scientific publications, ethical training and university of origin, considering a significance level of p < 0.05. RESULTS: According to the median, professors perceived that their students sometimes had attitudes and motivations to commit academic dishonesty. The professors whose origin was the capital city were twice as likely to perceive dishonest attitudes in dental students as those whose origin was a province (OR = 2.04; 95% CI: 1.06-3.93). University professors in pre-clinical courses were 0.37 times less likely to perceive dishonest attitudes than those teaching in the dental clinic (OR = 0.37; CI: 0.15-0.91). University professors in basic science courses and professors in preclinical courses were 0.43 times (OR = 0.43; CI: 0.19-0.96) and 0.39 times (OR = 0.39; CI: 0.15-0.98) less likely to perceive dishonest motivations in their students compared to university professors in the dental clinic. Gender, marital status, academic degree, specialty, years of teaching experience, scientific publications and ethical training were not found to be influential factors (p > 0.05). CONCLUSION: Although all university professors surveyed perceived dishonest attitudes and motivations in their students, university professors from the capital city perceived such attitudes more. In addition, being a preclinical university professor was a hindered factor for perceiving such dishonest attitudes and motivations. It is advisable to implement and constantly disseminate regulations that empower academic integrity as well as to manage a system for reporting misconduct and to make students aware of the impact of dishonesty in their professional training.

Evaluation of Self-Reported professionalism lapses among dental undergraduate students: A cross-sectional study from a Malaysian dental faculty.

INTRODUCTION: Professionalism and academic integrity are important components of dental education as they influence not just the present-day learning process, but also the practice of dentistry in future. This study evaluated self-reported professional lapses, academic dishonesty behaviours among peers and recommended sanctions for such lapses. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Dundee Polyprofessionalism Inventory I: Academic Integrity questionnaire was administered to BDS students of a private dental institution in Malaysia. Differences in the level of recommended sanctions were assessed by Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis test. RESULTS: There was unanimous agreement that all 34 statements of lapses of academic integrity as unacceptable. The highest agreement (95.6%) was related to threatening or abusing university employees or students and involvement in paedophilic activities, whereas the lowest agreement was observed for getting or giving help for coursework against rules (47.3%). The most frequent behaviours observed among peers were lack of class punctuality (55.1%) and providing and receiving proxy attendance services (49.3%). About 36% admitted to not being punctual themselves, 26.8% for accepting or providing help for course work and 22.9% for receiving and providing proxy attendance. Female students displayed stricter recommended sanctions, with the most significant difference relating to joking disrespectfully about body parts (p < .001). More lenient recommended sanctions were observed among Year 1 students compared with other years, with the most significant difference (p < .001) observed for exchanging information about the exam, forging a signature, plagiarising and cut-pasting materials without acknowledgement. CONCLUSION: The majority of academic lapses were well comprehended. Significant differences were observed in sanctions imposed in terms of gender and year of study.

Academic Integrity Perceptions Among Health-Professions' Students: A Cross-Sectional Study in The Middle East.

A high level of professional integrity is expected from healthcare professionals, and literature suggests a relationship between unethical behavior of healthcare professionals and poor academic integrity behavior at medical school. While academic integrity is well researched in western countries, it is not so in the Middle East, which is characterized by different cultural values that may influence students' academic integrity conduct. We conducted a cross-sectional study among health-professions students at a university in the Middle East to assess perceptual differences on various cheating behaviors, as well as to explore the reasons underlying the cheating behavior. A validated survey instrument disseminated among first and second-year undergraduate students resulted in 211 complete responses and this data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Pearson's Chi-square/ Fischer's exact test was applied to test the association of various factors with academic misconduct. The major determinants of academic misconduct were investigated using Binary Logistic regression model. The conducted analysis and the results showed that preceding cheating behavior was the only factor significantly associated with cheating in the university (p < 0.001). No association was found between cheating behavior and age, college/major, awareness regarding academic integrity, or perception of faculty response. The reasons provided by students for cheating behavior were mainly academic workload and pressure to get a good grade. Various suggestions are made to enhance academic integrity among health-professions students including organizing workshops and events by the university to increase awareness and create an academic integrity culture, providing peer guidance as well as emotional and social support. Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10805-022-09452-6.

Guilt, Shame and Academic Misconduct.

Moral and self-conscious emotions like guilt and shame can function as internal negative experiences that punish or deter bad behaviour. Individual differences exist in people's tendency to experience guilt and shame. Being disposed to experience guilt and/or shame may predict students' expectations of their emotional reactions to engaging in immoral behaviour in the form of academic misconduct, and thus dissuade students from intending to engage in this behaviour. In this study, students' (n = 459) guilt and shame proneness, their expectations of feeling guilt and shame if they engaged in academic misconduct, and their intentions to engage in academic misconduct were measured. Three of the four facets of the guilt and shame proneness scale [GASP: Guilt-Negative-Behavior-Evaluation (NBE), Guilt-Repair, Shame-Negative-Self-Evaluation (NSE)] had significant negative correlations with academic misconduct intentions, and these relationships were mediated by anticipating shame and guilt related to engaging in academic misconduct. These results suggest that for some students expecting to experience negative moral emotions when engaging in academic misconduct may protect them from breaching ethical assessment rules.

Contract Cheating and Student Stress: Insights from a Canadian Community College.

This article presents results from a self-report survey of misconduct behaviours and the stress students (n = 916) experienced at one Canadian community college. Results showed that students engaged in a variety of contract cheating behaviours, and experienced a myriad of stressors both in and outside the college context, including traumatic life events. Those who engaged in commercial contract cheating and inappropriate sharing behaviours experienced significantly higher levels of stress. This result differed by type of stress suggesting that not all stress may lead to violation behaviour. Results also suggest that some students are exposed to more stress than others, which could put them at higher risk for engaging in contract cheating. Understanding contract cheating using the stress process framework draws our attention to how a student's location in the social institutions of work, family, and school, how their positions of advantage or disadvantage, and their involvement in social relationships may produce stress which we have found to be associated with contract cheating. Seeing stress in this way allows post-secondary institutions to address the structural conditions which lead to stress through the development of policy, procedure, and supports for students as they navigate academic integrity throughout their programs.