Determinants of Moral Judgments about Academic Dishonesty: An Experimental Approach

The current investigation is an attempt to define the determinants of moral judgments about academic dishonesty. Factorial experiment with the use of hypothetical vignettes was conducted to examine the effects of description of presented situation (subjective vs. intersubjective vs. objective) in Study 2, protagonist’s gender (male vs. female), language of instruction (native vs. non-native), social origins (high vs. low) and geographical origins (urban vs. rural) in Study 1 on first-year university students’ judgment about acceptability and dishonesty of cheating. As hypothesized, decreasing the level of subjectivity in description increases students’ assessment of acceptability and honesty of transgressive behavior in Study 2. We did not accept most of the alternative hypothesis in Study 1, however, the main hypothesis that the assessment of acceptability significantly differs from the assessment of honesty was confirmed in both Studies. We explain such results through the theory of moral judgments. The “first-order” judgments are more principle and rely on internal feelings of rightness and wrongness, while “second-order” judgments are personal obligations to act accordingly with a “first-order” judgments. Participants find cheating dishonest but acceptable under some circumstances. Current investigation illustrates that deontic understanding of academic dishonesty is rather problematic since students perceive cheating and plagiarism as quite honest and acceptable behavior.