Academic Misconduct: A Goals–Plans–Action Approach to Peer Confrontation and Whistle-Blowing

Academic misconduct is a serious, pervasive, communication phenomenon on college campuses. In this study, the goals–plans–action model (Dillard, 1990) was used as a theoretical framework to investigate peer confrontation of cheating and whistle-blowing to a course instructor. In an experiment, participants were asked to respond to measures of primary and secondary goals, plans, explicit confrontation of a peer, and whistle-blowing. The primary goal and secondary goal predicted explicit confrontation. Whistle-blowing was predicted by either the primary goal and the affect management secondary goal (for same-group peers) or the personal resource secondary goal (for peers in other class groups).