Cheating in primary school: Experimental evidence on ego-depletion and individual factors

Arbeitspapier

We contribute to the experimental literature on primary school students' cheating behavior by studying i) how cheating is influenced by ego depletion; ii) how it correlates with different individual factors. We carried out a large-scale, pre-registered experiment in the field of 28 Hungarian primary schools (126 classrooms) on a voluntary subsample of 1,143 students at grade levels 4 to 8. Students' cheating behavior was measured by the incentivized dice-roll experiment. We find suggestive evidence that our light-touch treatment on ego-depletion increased students' deceptive behavior. Cheating behavior correlated weakly with students' individual characteristics. In a multivariate context controlling for between-classroom differences, we document that students' cognitive ability correlated negatively, while their age positively, with their cheating behavior. We found students' social context (their classroom belonging) as a more decisive determinant of students' cheating behavior than individual characteristics.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: CERS-IE Working Papers ; No. CERS-IE WP - 2020/48

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Relation of Economics to Social Values ; Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Individual ; Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making‡
• Thema: honesty ; cheating ; individual factors ; ego depletion ; dice-roll exercise ; pre-registered experiment

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Keller, Tamás ; Kiss, Hubert János ; Számadó, Szabolcs
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies
• (wo): Budapest
• (wann): 2020

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/237537
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:41 MEZ