Abstract：Academic cheating is a serious worldwide problem that begins during childhood. However, to date there has been little research on academic cheating with children before high school age. The current study used a naturalistic experimental paradigm to evaluate the possibility that systematically manipulating messages about the diffificulty of a test can affect whether middle school children (N = 201) would cheat by reporting a falsely inflflated test score. We found that test diffificulty messaging signifificantly affected children’s cheating behavior. Specififically, telling children that a test was either easy or hard produced higher rates of cheating than telling them that the diffificulty level was on par with their current skills. In addition, among the children who chose to cheat, telling them that the test was easy led to a greater degree of cheating. These fifindings are consistent with theories of academic cheating that point to the importance of approach and avoidance motives in achievement motivation. The fifindings also suggest that simple messaging can have a signifificant impact on children’s moral behavior and that seemingly innocuous messages such as describing the diffificulty of a test can inflfluence children’s decisions about whether and how much to cheat.

Keywords：Academic cheating, Self-scoring,  Diffificulty messaging, Approach achievement motivation, Avoidance achievement motivation,  Moral behavior

Published journal: Journal of Experimental Child Psychology（SSCI） Revised 11 February 2022

附件：

Effects of test difficulty messaging on academic cheating among middle school children