Cheating on tests seems to be fairly widespread with some estimates indicating a lifetime prevalence of 80%. While an interesting statistic, it is important to realize this is based the admission of having been academically dishonest at least once during a school career. Given how virtually everyone is in school for at least a decade (and some, almost two), I am not sure this is terribly surprising.  As a result, it has often been thought that it would be difficult to identify the personality correlates of a behavior with such a high base rate (and is also most typically based upon self-report).

In an attempt to clarify the issue, a recent study from the University of British Columbia examined the personality correlates of individuals who engaged in plagiarism on a writing assignment.  Using a commercial tool employed by professors to detect cheating on essays, they were able to identify those essays (about 15%) which had a high degree of overlap with other essays that had been submitted or materials that can be found on the internet.  (It should be noted that plagiarism may differ from other forms of cheating because it is premeditated as opposed to copying on a multiple-choice test which may be unplanned and impulsive.)  They found that the authors of plagiarized essays had higher scores on a measure of what they call the “Dark Triad” (Machievellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) than did other students.

Reid Klion