The Effectiveness of Moral Reminders in Preventing Academic Dishonesty: A Preregistered Experimental Study

Abstract

Academic dishonesty is one of the most severe threats to the quality of academic education worldwide. Among the various methods of addressing this issue, universities often employ moral reminders: oral or written statements that prompt students to adopt desirable ethical standards. Our experiment aims to shed new light on the actual effectiveness of this method, which seems equivocal given the contradictory results of many previous studies. We recruited a sample of 544 Polish students from different universities to participate in this online, between-subjects study with an experimental manipulation involving three moral reminders (standard, reflective, and self-created). The data from the behavioral honesty task (STD) test did not allow confirmation of the effectiveness of any of these moral reminders compared with the control group. We were, however, able to demonstrate several other factors associated with increased dishonesty among students, such as self-deceptive enhancement or a greater tendency to commit “small” cheats compared to “large” ones. We discuss all the results in the context of recommendations for further empirical studies and possible academic dishonesty interventions.