Certainty of Punishment and Criminal Thinking: Do the Rational and Non-rational Parameters of a Student’s Decision to Cheat on an Exam Interact?

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine whether criminal thinking interacts with the rational requirements of human decision-making in a group of college students. A convenience sample of 315 undergraduates (114 males, 201 females) completed self-report measures of criminal thinking and estimated their likelihood of cheating on an exam given different levels of certainty of apprehension. A repeated-measures analysis of covariance revealed that students were significantly more likely to seize on the opportunity to cheat when the certainty of getting caught was 10% than when it was 50% and that students with higher levels of criminal thinking were more likely to take the opportunity to cheat than students with lower levels of criminal thinking. In addition, students exhibiting moderate proactive criminal thinking and moderate to high reactive criminal thinking were significantly less likely to be deterred from cheating when the odds of getting caught were low.

Keywords:

• Rational choice
• certainty of apprehension
• criminal thinking
• cheating on an exam

Disclosure Statement

Glenn D. Walters is the author of the Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS) and has received a small amount of remuneration from sales of the PICTS manual in the past.

Notes

1 Participants were presented with two other scenarios (opportunity to steal a $50 bill lying on a table in a dorm room and being asked by a friend to sell a pound of marijuana) but endorsement rates were too low (<10% indicated greater than a low likelihood of engaging in the behavior when the odds of getting caught were 10%) to allow meaningful analysis.

2 The results changed only slightly when SRO was defined by the single cheating item. Whereas the significant between-subject effects were once again restricted to SRO and R, SRO became a significant moderator of Certainty, along with P and R, in the within-subject contrasts and Certainty went from statistically significant to approaching significance (p = .06).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Glenn D. Walters

Glenn D. Walters, PhD, is a full professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Kutztown University in Kutztown, Pennsylvania. His research interests center around criminal thinking and decision-making, correctional psychology, and causal mediation analysis.

Robert D. Morgan

Robert D. Morgan, PhD, is the John G. Skelton Jr. regents endowed professor and chair in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Texas Tech University. His research interests are in correctional mental health treatment, effects of incarceration, and forensic mental health assessment.