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Lab 3- Research Critic

Student's Name

Tutor's Name

Institution

Course

Date of Submission
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Moral Identities, Social Anxiety, and Academic Dishonesty Among American College

Students

Academic dishonesty is a persistent problem In America. Even though many students

are aware of the negative repercussions of academic dishonesty, three out of the four

undergraduates occasionally cheat in their examinations. The prevalence of student

dishonesty represents a thought problem that communicates a psychological gap between

moral understanding and moral function. Wowra (2007) explained the prevalence of cheating

through two hypotheses social anxiety hypothesis and the moral identity hypothesis. Under

the explanation of the social anxiety hypothesis, Wowra (2007) argued that students cheat

because their concerns about making a good impression override the need to realize academic

integrity. On the other hand, the moral identity hypothesis holds that college students

concerned with upholding their integrity instead of pleasing others are less likely to cheat.

Previous Research

The frequency of academic dishonesty among college students varies with the

student's ability to cope with social anxiety. This implies that although some students may

have coping abilities to deal with grade issues, some may fall short of the latter. In support of

social anxiety hypotheses, Wowra (2007) used Crowne & Marlowe laboratory experiments

that employed Marlowe–Crowne Social Desirability Scale. The study's findings indicated

that students cheated, lied, and stole from the investigation to avoid appearing below average.

This affirms the hypothesis that academic cheating and feeling of social anxiety are linked to

avoidance approaches where students try to avoid bad impressions. The application of moral

identity theory in explaining academic dishonesty focuses on measuring the importance of a

student's moral identity as defined in the universal ideologies of justice, fairness, and

benevolence. Citing Lapsley & Narvaez (2004), Worwa (2004) found that moral identity
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theory predicted students' involvement in academic dishonesty through two paradigms: the

peripheral and central moral identities. While peripheral moral identity allows students to

cheat without minding the moral implications of their behaviors, central moral identity has

high levels of personal responsibility that restrains students from cheating.

Current Study

The previous studies on academic dishonesty emphasize how to conceptualize and

operationalize the moral identity theory. The studies do not differentiate between the concepts

of self and identity. This implies that students can justify their academic dishonesty using

their personal ethic theories as long as they can justify their cheating behaviors. Replicating

the past studies, the support of the moral identity hypothesis and social anxiety hypothesis is

limited to sample size, age, and type of students used to communicate the findings. Under the

explained situation, the current study. Even though past studies found that academic cheating

positively correlated with other forms of anti-social behavior, it is unclear how moral

dishonesty is related to anti-social behavior. An additional shortcoming in the paper arises

from its findings based on participants' ability to recall their last involvement in anti-social

behavior. Irrespective of the noted shortcomings, the study intended to study to address a

thesis that academic dishonesty is strongly related to social anxiety.

Methods

Participants

A total of seventy undergraduate college students (30 females and 40 males) enrolled

in introductory psychology courses took part in the study. Participants' average age was

M=18.57 and SD = 0.90

Procedure
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The selected students completed the Integrity Scale in a pretesting session during the

first week of introductory psychological classes in August 2004. The participants were

separated into two groups, the expedient students (those in lower tercile) and principled

students ( in upper tercile), based on their performance on anti-social behavior defiance and

T-test analyses. The selected students were consulted for the psychological lab one week after

the phone invitation.

Material

Students completed three surveys integrity scale, a symptom checklist of social

phobia, and anti-social behavior scale.

Integrity Scale

This scale evaluates students' commitment to ethical principles such as justice,

fairness, and honesty. It is an 18-scale-based tool whose high scores define a strong

endorsement of principled ethics, whereas low scores reveal an endorsement of ethnic

expediency. The application of the scale supported (Schlenker, 2006) findings, proving its

effectiveness in evaluating the causes of student academic dishonesty. The scale items

utilized in the study used a 5-point agree-disagree whose totals ranged to 90 since its ranges

started from 0-18.

Social Phobia Symptom Checklist

The tool was used to evaluate the differences in social anxiety. According to Wowra (2007),

social anxiety represents feelings of aversive tension from worries over real or imagined

social evaluation. The tool comprises 15 true or false items requiring participants to recall

social anxiety symptoms over six months. The tool was reliable because it has a media

alpha=90 median-retest k= 0.95. The tool anxiety scores were calculated by adding up all true

responses range= 0 low social anxiety to 15 high social anxiety. The application of this tool is
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glued on the ideology that respondents who endorse more than four systems are deemed at

more risk of social phobia and likely to engage in anti-social behavior.

Anti-Social Behavior Scale

The tool contains five reliable subsections of anti-social behavior that include lying

(14 items alpha =0.92), stealing (15 items; alpha = 0.84), academic cheating (4 items; alpha

0.69), broken promises (4 items; alpha = 0.77), aggression (8 items; alpha = 0.80). The fact

that contacted students were in their first week of college life had the investigators examine

their academic dishonesty from two subscales of academic cheating: cheating on exams and

cheating on paper in high school. The frequency of academic cheating was evaluated by

examining unethical behaviors five years before the study. The employed scale includes 0

(never), 1 (once or twice), 2 (about once a year), 3 (a few times a year), 4 (nearly every

month), 5 (nearly every week), 6 (several times a week), 7 (nearly every day), and 8 (several

times a day).

Results

Seventy college students in their first week of introduction to psychology class

estimated their frequency of engaging in various types of anti-social behaviors five years

before joining the college. Table 1 depicts the descriptive statistics of the Anti-social

Behavior Scale. This section provides an overview of results achieved in various approaches

used to expound on the proposed hypothesis.

Descriptive analysis of anti-social behavior

As mentioned earlier, Table 1 is a descriptive statistic of anti-social behaviors. The second

column in Table 1 (% Yes ) is the fraction of students who reported anti-social behavior

unrelated to academics once or twice. Borrowings insights from the prior investigation, the

most common form of anti-social behavior alcohol and drug, infidelity, and fraud 99.7%).
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Followed by stealing at 98,8%. The latter findings align with Blankenship & Whitley, 2000;

Schlenker, 2006 that academic cheating is correlated with other forms of unethical behavior.

Table 1-Descriptive Statistics of anti-social behavior scale

Table 2. Correlations of individual scales on ASBS.

The data in Table two replicates previous studies demonstrating a positive association

between academic cheating and other anti-social behaviors. The table's contents align with

(Blan-Kenship & Whitley 2000; Schlenker, 2006) findings that a positive relationship exists

between academic cheating and anti-social behaviors. Precisely, the strongest relationship

exists between academic dishonesty and stealing (r=0.80), followed by aggression (r=0.77),

and thirdly, lying (r=0.74). The noted findings support a hypothesis that academic cheating is

positively related to anti-social behavior. In addition to the latter findings, the table also

illustrates that the positive relationship between anti-social behavior scale groups is not as

high as in the relationship between each group and social anxiety. For instance, the
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association between stealing and ASBS (r=0.80) is lower than the association between

stealing and lying (r=0.36). NB explanation provided to nearest two decimal places.

Anti-social ASBS Lying Stealing Alcohol Aggressio Academic Fraud Broken

Behavior & n Dishonesty Promises
Drugs

Lying 0.744 -

Stealing 0.797 0.361 -

Alcohol 0.644 0.335 0.497 -

&Drugs

Aggressio 0.765 0.339 0.579 0.546 -

n
Academic 0.682 0.406 0.414 0.480 0.53 -
Dishonesty

Fraud 0.684 0.324 0.564 0.384 0.569 0.578 -

Broken 0.708 0.347 0.555 0.416 0.584 0.484 0.675 -

Promises
Infidelity 0.631 0.297 0.531 0.384 0.507 0.453 0.665 0.786

Table 3- Group Comparisons on Anti-social Behavior Scale

Table 3 compares expedient and principled groups' performance in anti-social behavior. The

table illustrates that students in the expedient group remembered more instances of anti-social

behaviors in high school (M= 1.42) as compared to the principled group M= 0.90. These

findings support a hypothesis that principled students are less likely to involve in academic

dishonesty.

Anti-social Expedient (M) Principled (M) p

Behavior
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ASBS 1.42 0.91 <0.001

Lying 2.38 1.79 <.0.001
Stealing 0.74 0.31 <0.001
Alcohol & Drugs 1.50 1.11 <0.001
Aggression 1.23 0.76 <0.001
Academic 1.69 1.05 <0.001
dishonesty
Fraud 1.03 0.44 <0.001
Broken Promises 1.25 0.70 <0.001
Infidelity 1.07 0.44 <0.001

Table 4-Correlations of Anti-social Behavior Scale and Subscales to Social Anxiety

Table 4 depicts weak support for the social anxiety hypothesis of academic dishonesty.

Anti-social Behavior Social Anxiety P

ASBS 0.170 <.001
Lying 0.232 <.001
Stealing 0.110 <.001
Alcohol & Drugs 0.057 0.019
Aggression 0.047 0.056
Academic dishonesty 0.102 <.001
Fraud 0.079 0.001
Broken Promises 0.099 <.001
Infidelity 0.070 0.004

Discussion

The above results provide enough support for the moral identity hypothesis of

academic cheating. This implies that the moral identity hypothesis is better positioned to
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expound on the issue of academic dishonesty and thus locate evidence-based solutions to

combat academic dishonesty. Even though the honest social hypothesis of academic

dishonesty is applicable in explaining it, it reveals a weaker relationship and weak statistical

support. The latter findings align with Lapsley & Narvaez 2004 that principled students are

less likely to get involved in academic dishonesty. Even though the social anxiety hypothesis

does not depict a significant relationship between academic dishonesty and the prevalence of

anti-social behavior, its application denotes a connection between social phobia and academic

dishonesty.

The study's findings are applicable in defining practical interventions to combat

academic dishonesty among American students. The data illustrates that academic cheating is

a multifaceted occurrence resulting from various anti-social behaviors. Under the explained

situation, American colleges should define moral philosophy courses that clarify how various

ethical beliefs transform and moral beliefs into ethical and unethical actions. The study

identifies the connection between anti-social behaviors and academic dishonesty as a

stepping stone towards urging the government to incorporate screening centers in colleges to

evaluate students' emotional and behavioral problems before punishing students for academic

dishonesty.
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Reference

Blankenship, K. L., & Whitley, B. E. (2000). Relation of general deviance to academic

dishonesty. Ethics & Behavior, 10, 1–12.

Lapsley, D. K. (Ed.). (2004). Moral development, self, and identity. Psychology Press.

Schlenker, B. R. (2006). Principled and expedient ideologies: The Integrity Scale as a

measure of ethical orientations. Unpublished manuscript, University of Florida,

Gainesville.

Wowra, S. A. (2007). Moral identities, social anxiety, and academic dishonesty among

American college students. Ethics & Behavior, 17(3), 303-321.