Psychosocial factors facilitating use of cognitive enhancing drugs in education: a qualitative investigation of moral disengagement and associated processes

Abstract

Illicit use of prescription drugs (e.g. modafinil) to enhance academic performance – termed cognitive enhancement (CE) – is a legal, health, and ethical issue. Guided by Bandura’s social cognitive theory of moral thought and action, this study investigated whether student users of CE evidenced specific psychosocial mechanisms (i.e. mechanisms of moral disengagement) when explaining their reasons for CE. Following ethical approval from the lead author’s institution, in-depth-semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine students with experience of CE. Data were content analysed deductively, using definitions for the eight mechanisms of moral disengagement; six of the eight mechanisms were identified through data analysis: diffusion of responsibility (DR), advantageous comparison (AC), distortion of consequences (DCs), displacement of responsibility, moral justification, and euphemistic labelling. In addition, inductive data analysis identified three further themes; self-medication, family and friends, and institutional position. Overall, the study findings suggest students may morally disengage to justify and rationalise use of CE to minimise negative emotional responses (e.g. guilt) that may be expected to result given the potential legal-, health-, and ethics-based deterrents to CE.

Keywords:

• Performance enhancement
• interviews
• nootropics
• study drugs

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Economic and Social Research Council for the funding the studentship and associated research and also the students’ willing to give up their time to be interviewed for the study.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflict of interest.

Notes

1 In the UK the higher education system, the major degree classifications are first class (≥70%), upper second class (i.e. a 2:1; 60–69%), lower second class (i.e. 2:2; 50–59%, and third class (40–49%). A 2:1 classification is required for entry into many postgraduate courses in the UK.

2 The emergent theme here was related to disclosure and the distinctions made between different social groups when sharing knowledge of CE drug use, for clarity within the literature the current investigation maintains the same title of the theme.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [grant number ES/J50001X/1].