Academic dishonesty—to cheat, fabricate, falsify, and plagiarize in an academic context—is positively correlated with the dark traits, and negatively correlated with openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, & honesty-humility

Plessen, Constantin Y., Marton L. Gyimesi, Bettina M. J. Kern, Tanja M. Fritz, Marcela Victoria Catalán Lorca, Martin Voracek, and Ulrich S. Tran. 2020. “Associations Between Academic Dishonesty and Personality: A Pre-registered Multilevel Meta-analysis.” PsyArXiv. January 30. doi:10.31234/osf.io/pav2f

Abstract: Academic dishonesty—the inclination to cheat, fabricate, falsify, and plagiarize in an academic context—is a highly prevalent problem with dire consequences for society. The present meta-analysis systematically examined associations between academic dishonesty and personality traits of the Big Five, the HEXACO model, Machiavellianism, narcissism, subclinical psychopathy, and the Dark Core. We provide an update and extension of the only meta-analysis on this topic by Giluk and Postlethwaite (2015), synthesizing in total 89 effect sizes from 50 studies—containing 38,189 participants from 23 countries. Multilevel meta-analytical modelling showed that academic dishonesty was positively correlated with the dark traits, and negatively correlated with openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and honesty-humility. The moderate-to-high effect size heterogeneity—ranging from I2 = 57% to 91%—could only be partially explained by moderator analyses. The observed relationships appear robust with respect to publication bias and measurement error, and can be generalized to a surprisingly large scope (across sexes, continents, scales, and study quality). Future research needs to examine these associations with validated and more nuanced scales for academic dishonesty.