Social influences on unconscious plagiarism and anti-plagiarism

Abstract

People are more likely to unconsciously plagiarise ideas from a same-sex partner than a different-sex partner, and more likely to unconsciously plagiarise if recalling alone rather than in the presence of their partner [Macrae, C. N., Bodenhausen, G. V., & Calvini, G. (1999). Contexts of cryptomnesia: May the source be with you. Social Cognition, 17, 273–297. doi:10.1521/soco.1999.17.3.273]. Two sets of experiments explore these phenomena, using extensions of the standard unconscious plagiarism paradigm. In Experiment 1A participants worked together in same- or different-sex dyads before trying to recall their own ideas or their partner's ideas. More source errors were evident for same-sex dyads (Experiment 1A), but this effect was absent when participants recalled from both sources simultaneously (Experiment 1B). In Experiment 2A, participants recalled ideas from a single source either alone or in the presence of the partner, using an extended-recall task. Partner presence did not affect the availability of ideas, but did reduce the propensity to report them as task compliant, relative to a partner-present condition. Simultaneous recall from both sources removed this social effect (Experiment 2B). Thus social influences on unconscious plagiarism are apparent, but are influenced by the salience of the alternate source at retrieval.

Keywords:

• Memory
• Source-memory
• Social
• Unconscious plagiarism

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

We thank Daniel Zahra and Amy Richards for their help with data collection.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹Groups consisted of two males (M1, M2) and two females (F1, F2). Four pairings were used during the generation phases (M1–M2, M1–F2, F1–M2, F1–F2) each of whom generated responses to two categories. One pair generated responses to the first and fifth categories, the second pair responded to the second and sixth categories, the third pair responded to the third and seventh categories, and the last pair responded to the fourth and eighth categories.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK [grant number RES-062-23-2766].