The Relationship of Attitudes and Normative Beliefs to Cheating in College

Current research on cheating in American colleges is concerned primarilywith demonstrating the importance of certain biographical variables in deter-mining cheating behavior. Thus, Hetherington and Feldman (5), and Bowers(1) have shown that, as might be expected, grade-point average (GPA) isinversely related to amount of cheating. Similarly, a positive correlation hasbeen found between religiosity (as measured by church attendance) and fre-quency of cheating (5). These investigators also found that men tended tocheat more than women. Finally, Bowers (1) found a small positive correla-tion between the number of years in school and amount of cheating.However, it has also become evident (1, 7, 8) that the amount of cheatingdisplayed by a given individual will depend on the particular kind of cheatingbehavior under consideration. Thus, previous studies have indicated, for exam-ple, that a person who looks at another student's paper during a test may notuse a book or notes during a closed book test.Considering the number of studies that have been reported on cheating incollege, it is surprising to realize how little attention has been given to cogni-tive aspects of cheating behavior. Clearly, we may expect that an individual'sattitude toward cheating, as well as his perception of social norms governingsuch behavior in college, should be predictive of cheating behavior.Of particular interest in this context is a theoretical model recently pro-posed by Fishbein (3) for the prediction of behavioral intentions and corre-sponding overt behavior. The model is essentially an adaptation of Dulany's(2) theory of propositional control to social behavior. Its immediate con-cern, like that of the original formulation, is the prediction of specific behav-ioral intentions which are assumed to mediate overt behavior. In its simplestform the model holds that a person's behavioral intentions in any given situa-