Lying and Cheating: Fraudulent Excuse Making, Cheating, and Plagiarism

Abstract

Undergraduates reported their use of fraudulent excuses; 72% of the student participants claimed to have used a fraudulent excuse in college at least once. This activity was correlated with an independently obtained self-report measure of cheating (r = .38) and plagiarism (r = .27). Grade point average was negatively correlated with all 3 measures but did not reach statistical significance with the measure of plagiarism.

Keywords:

• academic dishonesty
• cheating
• excuse making
• plagiarism