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Free AccessOriginal Article

Psychopathic Traits, Academic Fraud, and the Mediating Role of Motivation, Opportunity, Rationalization and Perceived Capability

Published Online:https://doi.org/10.1027/1614-0001/a000349

Abstract

Abstract. This study provides initial insights on the relation between psychopathic traits (disinhibition, meanness, and boldness) and academic fraud (prevalence and severity), while considering important mediators of fraud (perceived capability, opportunity, motivation, and rationalization). Based on a large sample of university students (N = 967), two structural equation models (test and replication) were built to test the study’s main hypothesis and probe the robustness of the results. A direct link from disinhibition to prevalence was found, suggesting that disinhibition is associated with social deviance in the academic context. Higher motivation for cheating exclusively mediated this path. In meanness, rationalization explained lower rates of perceived severity of academic fraud, indicating that cognitive self-justifications trigger dishonest behavior in meanness. Boldness explained the prevalence of academic fraud via perceived capability, suggesting that low-fear, although adaptive in evaluation contexts, may increase the perceived capability for cheating. The reported significant associations support that academic fraud is part of the nomological network of psychopathy and unveil the complexity of the phenomenon.

Undergraduate students experience a lot of pressure in academic contexts, as the number of available workplaces reduces and the competitiveness for desired jobs increases (McCabe et al., 2006). Since grades are important measures in society, the concern to achieve success may be associated with different forms of academic fraud. Academic fraud includes any misconduct that allows someone to achieve a personal advantage in the academic context (e.g., cheating on exams and plagiarism) while compromising meaningful learning (Anderman & Murdock, 2007). The prevalence of students cheating at least once during enrollment has reached 87% (e.g., Muhney et al., 2008) and it is set forth that students are cheating in higher levels (Jones, 2011). Interestingly, risk factors for cheating are associated with a low perception of the seriousness of cheating (Taradi et al., 2012). As such, higher rates of cheating may substantially reduce the perceived severity of academic fraud and gradually normalize this behavior.

The Triangle Fraud Theory (Clinard & Cressey, 1954) is a theoretical model that attempts to describe the main causes of fraud based on three assumptions: (1) every unethical behavior has some financially, socially, or politically attractive incentive or pressure to be committed (motivation); (2) individuals take advantage of perceived circumstances, namely ineffective control (opportunity); and (3) individuals tend to generate cognitive self-justifications to make the behavior morally acceptable (rationalization) (Brown et al., 2016). Wolfe and Hermanson (2004) have recently introduced a fourth element into the so-called Diamond Fraud Theory: perceived capability, which overlaps self-efficacy (Bandura, 1993; Doménech-Betoret et al., 2017). The efficacy expectations regarding the perceived personal capacities to perform a given behavior (Doménech-Betoret et al., 2017) represent a relevant aspect to commit fraud since, in order to take advantage of the situation, individuals need to trust their skills and knowledge of the system (Wolfe & Hermanson, 2004).

Individual differences in some aspects of personality interfere with different levels of motivation and confidence to cheat, as well as proneness to disregard moral transgressions and to take risks. Psychopathy is one example of a personality disorder that may influence the prevalence and severity of academic fraud.

Psychopathy and Academic Fraud

Academic fraud is a precursor of corruption such that academic dishonesty and favorable attitudes toward students who cheat are associated with country corruption indexes (Magnus et al., 2002; Teixeira, 2013). The persistence of cheating over time has high repercussions on society; therefore, it is important to study the factors related to dishonest behavior at the university level. For instance, there is growing evidence that psychopathy not only relates to violent crimes (e.g., theft and physical aggression), but also to white-collar crimes, fraud, and corruption (Babiak et al., 2010; Gao & Raine, 2010). These individuals can engage in more premeditated strategies by taking advantage of some adaptive traits of their personality structure (e.g., low anxiety and social dominance), thus becoming more capable of masking their antisocial behavior (Gao & Raine, 2010). Considering the link between psychopathy and corruption, it is important to explore how academic fraud is an early precursor of this relationship. Nathanson and colleagues (2006) indeed observed a general positive association between psychopathy and academic cheating.

More recent perspectives assert, however, that psychopathy does not represent a unitary construct, but rather a confluence of multiple trait dispositions (Cooke & Michie, 2001; Patrick et al., 2009; Skeem et al., 2011). In other words, we should not rely on a unitary conceptualization by means of defining a homogeneous psychopathic group, but in turn, decompose the different dimensions that constitute this heterogeneous personality structure.

The dimensional approach conveyed by the Triarchic Model (Patrick et al., 2009) proposes that psychopathy can be decomposed into three different trait-related manifestations: positive adjustment (boldness), behavioral deviance (disinhibition), and lack of empathic resonance (meanness). Disinhibition is associated with the lack of inhibitory control, poor regulation of negative affect, impatient urgency, and limitations in delaying gratification; meanness refers to a lack of empathy, emotional detachment, callousness, premeditated aggression, and moral transgressions.

Boldness is a specific referent of positive adjustment in psychopathy and maps low anxiety, tolerance for unfamiliarity, social dominance, emotional resiliency, self-assurance, and the ability to remain calm in stressful situations. Empirical findings support the nomological network of the Triarchic Model (Almeida et al., 2014; Paiva et al., 2020; Skeem et al., 2011).

Although these traits can co-occur they should be examined independently because they share distinct etiological pathways (Cooke & Michie, 2001; Patrick & Bernat, 2009; Patrick et al., 2009; Skeem et al., 2011). Externalizing vulnerability is the etiological path of meanness and disinhibition, while low fear is the etiological path of boldness and meanness. Thus, disinhibition is relatively independent of boldness, although meanness moderately correlates with both boldness and disinhibition. The probabilistic combination of these traits will define distinct psychopathic profiles: high levels of disinhibition and meanness will likely characterize into a greater extent those individuals with an explosive/impulsive character, interpersonal relationships ruled by stronger levels of anger and violent-callous forms of antisocial behavior (e.g., relational aggression and theft). Boldness, per se, may be considered an adaptive manifestation of psychopathy, but when combined with meanness, it is likely to characterize those cold-blood individuals that engage in more premeditated, sophisticated forms of antisocial behavior that are also expected to occur in a context of emotional indifference and lack of remorse, guilt or shame (e.g., corruption). Considering the link of psychopathy with social deviance, it is important to assess the contribution of the different psychopathic traits to academic fraud and diamond elements (see next sections).

Disinhibition

Psychopathic traits, specifically disinhibition, are proposed to account for the prevalence of academic fraud, given the close link with antisocial behavior (Patrick et al., 2009). Previous studies report that academic cheaters score higher in impulsivity, compared to non-cheaters (Anderman et al., 2009), and that psychopathic impulsive traits are associated with academic dishonesty (Marcus et al., 2018). As a result,

Hypothesis 1 (H1):

We expect disinhibition to predict directly and via perceived capability, opportunity, motivation, and rationalization of the prevalence of academic fraud.

Disinhibited individuals may: (1) perceive themselves as more capable of cheating, considering their continuous exposure to risk-seeking experiences and the mismatch between perceived self-efficacy and the disruptive outcomes of the actual behavior (Blatny et al., 2007; Patrick et al. 2009), (2) perceive more opportunities to cheat due to poor risk assessment and fallible analyses of the vigilance and control systems, (3) rationalize their non-moral conducts by externalizing their responsibility, and (4) be particularly motivated to cheat since boredom susceptibility, reduced control over urges and difficulties in delaying gratification are all features that may compromise goal-directed behavior and meaningful learning (Anderman et al., 2009; Patrick et al., 2009).

Meanness

Cold-heartedness- and fearlessness-related traits of psychopathy (Coyne & Thomas, 2008; Marcus et al., 2018) are found to be associated with academic dishonesty. However, given the distinctive features of these psychopathic traits, more specific aspects may contribute to academic dishonesty in both meanness and boldness.

The moral aspects of behavior are particularly irrelevant to callous and less empathic individuals (Almeida et al., 2014; Patrick et al., 2009). Individuals high in meanness may be more prone to rationalize and generate self-justifications by means of reducing the moral value of dishonest conduct. For example, the premeditated and cold-blood patterns of aggression in meanness are proposed to be rooted in moral disengagement (Patrick et al., 2009). Therefore, the neutralization of the moral aspects of the behavior through rationalization (Sykes & Matza, 1957) may substantially reduce the perceived severity of academic fraud. Moreover, premeditation may shape the perceived capability to cheat, considering that all the contingencies and circumstances of the conduct are properly anticipated. As a result,

Hypothesis 2 (H2):

We expect meanness may predict the perceived severity via rationalization and perceived capability.

Boldness

Finally, boldness traits may be adaptive in situations where individuals will be evaluated by their academic performance. The high tolerance to new events and the ability to remain calm in stressful situations (Patrick et al., 2009) may potentiate the performance in evaluation contexts due to the low emotional arousal. In turn, these low-fear features may also influence the perceived capability to cheat. Academic dishonesty in boldness-related traits seems to be partially explained by a low resting heart rate (Portnoy et al., 2018), indicating that reduced autonomic responses and arousal in boldness ease academic cheating. Thus,

Hypothesis 3 (H3):

We expect boldness to predict academic fraud prevalence via perceived capability.

Figure 1 shows all the hypothesized paths.

Figure 1 Proposed mediation model and hypothesized paths.

Method

Participants

Nine hundred sixty-seven university students (42% males, Mage = 20.31, SD = 2.38) were included in the sample of which 89% of participants were undergraduate students (1st- to 3rd-year students) and 10% postgraduate students (1% did not report the year of study) from a range of courses. The participants perceived their socioeconomic status as an upper-middle class (46%), middle class (35%), upper class (8%), lower-middle-class (6%), and lower class (1%). Fifty-seven percent of participants studied at a public high school, and 60% currently study at a public university. The self-reported Grade Point Average (grading system: 0–20) at the end of high school was 15.98 (SD = 8.09), and at university-level, it was 14.37 (SD = 7.77).

Procedure

This study is part of a larger project and had an approximate duration of 35 min. The study was approved by the Local Ethics Committee. All participants received and signed an informed consent form and were aware that the data was anonymized and would be used for research purposes only. Participants completed the protocol on an online questionnaire (Qualtrics) and were recruited from two university campuses located in the north region of the country via webmail and advertisements. The order of all scales and items was randomized.

Measures

Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM)

The TriPM (Patrick, 2010) operationalizes the core psychopathic traits of the Triarchic Model: (1) Boldness (e.g., “I am well-equipped to deal with stress”; 19 items, α = .76), (2) Meanness (e.g., “How other people feel is important to me” – reversed, 19 items, α = .89), and (3) Disinhibition (e.g., “I jump into things without thinking”, 20 items, α = .83), which are scored from a Likert scale (0 = false; 1= somewhat false; 2 = somewhat true; 3 = true). Recently, this measure was validated for a Portuguese sample and showed higher internal consistency, a good fit for the three-dimensional structure, convergent and test-retest validity (Paiva et al., 2020). Boldness shows convergent validity with the Interpersonal facet of the most commonly used measure of psychopathy assessment – the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) – and the Fearless Dominance scale of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI) (for a review see Paiva et al., 2020; Patrick, 2010). Meanness is associated with the PCL-R Affective facet and PPI Cold-heartedness, while disinhibition has positive associations with the PCL-R Lifestyle facet and the PPI Self-Centered Impulsivity factor. All the three TriPM scales contribute uniquely to the prediction of PCL-R total scores, even when accounting for the shared variance between the dimensions.

Fraud Diamond Scale

This self-report (Dias-Oliveira et al., 2020) measures the four dimensions of Fraud Diamond Theory: (1) Motivation (e.g., “Cheating can significantly increase grades”; 2 items, α = .75), (2) Opportunity (e.g., “In general, a student can easily cheat at my faculty”; 3 items, α = .82), (3) Rationalization (e.g., “Cheating is acceptable because teachers do not always explain the materials very well”; 8 items, α = .93), and (4) Perceived Capability (e.g., “If I want to, I have the necessary confidence to cheat without being caught”, 3 items, α = .82), using a Likert Scale ranging from 1 = completely disagree to 7 = completely agree. This instrument was previously validated for a Portuguese sample (Dias-Oliveira et al., 2020) and showed adequate psychometric properties.

Prevalence and Severity of Academic Fraud

The prevalence score (adapted from McCabe, 2003; Teixeira, 2011) consisted of 17 different statements measuring how frequently participants have engaged in each academic fraudulent behavior (e.g., “Copying material, almost word for word, from any written source and turning it in as your own work” with 0 = never, 1 = once, 2 = more than once). For each statement, participants also rated how severe they thought each fraudulent behavior was (0 = not fraud, 1 = trivial fraud, 2 = moderate fraud, 3 = serious fraud) (McCabe, 2003). The prevalence of academic fraud shows predictive power to explain corruption indexes in 21 countries, including Portugal (Teixeira, 2013). Moreover, both prevalence and severity subscales were previously validated for Portuguese population and exhibited good psychometric properties for a two-factorial solution (Dias-Oliveira et al., 2020). In the current study, prevalence and severity yielded an internal consistency of .85 and .91, respectively.

Data Analysis Approach

Consistently with the Triarchic Model of Psychopathy, the shared variance between meanness-disinhibition (i.e., externalizing vulnerability) and meanness-boldness (i.e., low-fear) was modeled in our statistical model. Accordingly, the correlation values evidenced the expected nonsignificant link between boldness and disinhibition, as these traits share distinct etiological roots (cf. Table E1, Electronic Supplementary Material, ESM 1). Meanness showed the expected positive correlations with both boldness and meanness.

Boldness, meanness, and disinhibition were entered in the path analysis model to predict the prevalence and severity of academic fraud, via the mediators (cf. Figure 1). The set of causality effects that was defined in this mediation model is based on the assumption that behavioral outcomes are a secondary manifestation of personality and, therefore, should be placed in distinct hierarchical levels of analysis (e.g., Cooke & Michie, 2001; Patrick et al., 2009; Skeem et al., 2011). Moreover, the links between personality and behavior are presumed to be mediated by opportunity, motivation, rationalization, and perceived capability (Brown et al., 2016; Clinard & Cressey, 1954; Wolfe & Hermanson, 2004). In this sense, we included these mediators into the path analysis and we have specified correlations among these different dimensions of the diamond of fraud.

Importantly, under aegis of replication crisis on psychological science (Pashler & Wagenmakers, 2012), Pohlmann (2004) suggested that researchers could randomly split the data to test the robustness of factor analysis. Since path analyses on structural equation models can be described as a combination of exploratory factor analysis and multiple regression (Schreiber et al., 2006), this recommendation can be extended to these analyses. Replication with multiple samples has the potential to demonstrate the stability of the results (Schreiber et al., 2006). That is, in studies with larger sample sizes, it is useful to randomly split the data in half, estimate the model twice and compare the robustness of findings. As a result, the sample of the current study was randomly divided into (1) the test sample (n = 484; 50%), and (2) the replication sample (n = 483; 50%). The samples were comparable in gender, socioeconomic status, high school, and Grade Point Averages (GPA). Eleven participants were removed from the test sample (final n = 473) and 33 from the replication sample (final n = 448) due to missing values. The values of skewness and kurtosis indicated no severe violations of normality. No outliers were found and there is no evidence for multicollinearity (All variance Inflation Factors < 1.65). ESM 1 provides a detailed picture of preliminary analysis. Only effects that are statistically significant in both samples will be interpreted.

To assess the validity of the proposed mediation model (Figure 1), we estimated a second model including not only the mediation paths but all the direct paths from psychopathic traits to academic fraud outcomes. We estimated and compared χ2 difference tests between both models to evaluate which one fitted the data best.

All the analyses were conducted using AMOS 26 (IBM Statistics, NY, USA). The models were evaluated by the fit indices of standardized Bentler’s Comparative Fit Index (CFI) and Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA). Models are considered acceptable when CFI exceeds .95, and the RMSEA is below .05 (Schreiber et al., 2006). Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) and Browne-Cudeck Criterion (BCC) were also provided to compare the models. Indirect effects were estimated using bootstrap (resample of 200).

Results

Fit Indices

In the mediation model, a good fit was found for both tests, χ2(13, N = 473) = 7.32, p = .885; CFI = .999; RMSEA < .001, p = .999; AIC = 89.3; BCC = 91.1, and replication samples: χ2(13, N = 448) = 29.2, p = .006; CFI = .983, RMSEA = .053, p = .389; AIC = 108.0, BCC = 110.5.

We compared the mediation model with other model which included not only the mediation paths but also direct paths from psychopathy to academic fraud outcomes. The latter model with direct paths had the following adjustment indexes, test sample: χ2(8, N = 473) = 6.10, p = .636; CFI = .999; RMSEA < .001, p = .971; AIC = 98.10; BCC = 100.10; replication sample: χ2(8, N = 448) = 25.98, p = .001; CFI = .981; RMSEA = .071, p = .112; AIC = 117.98, BCC = 120.08. The only significant direct effect occurred from disinhibition to prevalence of fraud (βtest sample = .203, p < .001; βreplication sample = .194, p < .001) (Table E2, ESM 1), which is also represented in the proposed mediation model (Table E3, ESM 1). Moreover, a χ2-test comparing the model with direct paths against the proposed mediation model revealed that there are no significant differences among the models in the test sample, χ2(5) = 1.22, p =.943. However, the proposed mediation model proved to be more parsimonious and showed lower AIC and BCC. For the validation sample, the proposed model fits the data best than the model with direct paths, χ2(5) = 18.66, p = .002. From these analyses, it can be concluded that the mediation model was more informative and a best fit for the data. For this reason, it was the selected model and it will be thoroughly presented below.

Mediation Model: Direct and Indirect Effects

Table E3 in ESM 1 presents all the estimates for the direct and indirect effects of the proposed mediation model.

Disinhibition (H1)

Disinhibition directly predicted academic fraud prevalence as postulated by the first hypothesis (H1; β = .154/.214, both p < .001 – Figure 2). These traits further predicted opportunity (β = .152/.296, both p ≤ .001), rationalization (β = .219 to .277, both p < .001), and motivation (β = .125/.249, both p ≤ .008), but not perceived capability (β = .030/.230, p = .603/.001).

Figure 2 Results for the test (and replication) samples on the direct paths from psychopathy to mediators and indirect paths from psychopathy to academic fraud outcomes.

However, the higher prevalence of academic fraud in disinhibition was uniquely mediated by motivation (H1; β = .021/.032, both p ≤ .017 – Figure 2). The indirect path in disinhibition from opportunity (H1; β = −.010/.003, both p ≥ .139), rationalization (H1; β = .023/.048, p = .001/.121) and perceived capability to prevalence (H1; β = .006/.068, p = .001/.494) did not yield consistent significant findings. As a result, only partial support was found for H1: disinhibition traits increased the motivation to engage in academic fraudulent behavior, which explained uniquely the higher prevalence of such behaviors.

Additionally, exploratory post hoc analysis on disinhibition showed that individuals high in disinhibition display less perceived severity in academic fraud via rationalization (β = −.106/−.067, both p ≤ .010), prevalence (β = −.045/−.044, both p = .001), and motivation and prevalence (β = −.032/−.021, both p ≤ .013).

Meanness (H2)

Meanness directly predicted rationalization (β = .183/.213, both p < .001), but not perceived capability (β = .101/.247, p = .001/.079).

For H2, the results showed that the higher the score on meanness, the higher the tendency to rationalize and then to perceive less severity (H2; β = −.068/−.056, both p ≤ .003 – Figure 2). Mediation effects on severity via perceived capability were non-significant (H2; β = .004/.008, both p ≥ .278).

Furthermore, these variables did not consistently mediate prevalence across test and validation samples (p-values from .001 to .101), but the severity was mediated from the indirect path accounting for both perceived capability and prevalence effects (β = −.051/−.030, both p ≤ .041)

Boldness (H3)

Boldness was a significant direct predictor of perceived capability (β = .152./.256, both p ≤ .001). Supporting H3, boldness was associated with the prevalence of academic fraud via perceived capability (H3; β = .076/.031, both p ≤ .001 – Figure 2).

Besides that, an exploratory analysis showed that boldness led to less perceived severity via the indirect path, including both perceived capability and prevalence (β = −.076/−.031, both p ≤ .001).

Total Effects

Meanness and disinhibition explained both prevalence (respectively, β = .048./.091, both p ≤ .020; β = .220/.341, both p ≤ .010) and perceived severity of academic fraud (respectively, β = −.088/−.075, both p ≤ .010; β = −.168/−.130, both p ≤ .010). Boldness accounted uniquely for prevalence rates (β = .031/.076, both p ≤ .010).

Explained Variance

On the test sample (and replication sample, respectively), the mediation model explains 6% (2%) of motivation’s variance, 9% (2%) of opportunity’s variance, 19% (12%) of rationalization’s variance, 16% (10%) of perceived capability’s variance, 27% (24%) of prevalence’s variance, and 23% (24%) of perceived severity’s variance. The explained variance of each indirect effect can also be found in Table E4, ESM 1.

Discussion

The current study adds new insights into the relationship between psychopathic traits (meanness, boldness, and disinhibition) and academic fraud (prevalence and severity) when taking into account key psychological processes involved in academic fraud (perceived capability, opportunity, motivation, and rationalization). Overall, the model including direct paths had little explanatory power to explain the relationship between psychopathy and fraudulent behavior, while the proposed mediation model was more informative. In short, the results show that among a large sample of college students: (1) disinhibition predicts the prevalence of academic fraud both directly and via motivation; (2) meanness explains less perceived severity of academic fraud through rationalization processes, and (3) boldness relates to the prevalence of academic fraud via the higher perceived capability to cheat (Figure 2). These results will be discussed below and the contribution of each predictor in explaining academic fraud outcomes will be detailed. Only the results that were replicated across the test and replication models will be used to draw conclusions.

Disinhibition

Hypothesis 1 stated that disinhibition would directly, and via perceived capability, opportunity, motivation, and rationalization, predict the high prevalence of academic fraud. Some support was found for this assumption since we observed a direct and indirect link via motivation between disinhibition and the prevalence of academic fraud. These results are aligned with previous findings describing impulsivity as a significant predictor of academic fraud (Anderman et al., 2009; Marcus et al., 2018); these results further show that disinhibition is a close correlate of social deviance (Patrick et al., 2009).

More specifically, motivation emerged as the unique significant mediator explaining academic fraud in disinhibition. Following Patrick et al. (2009), disinhibited individuals show high boredom susceptibility, reduced control over urges, and difficulties in delaying gratification. These aspects may compromise goal-oriented behavior and meaningful learning within the class context, as well as disrupt study schedules. This is because distractors may be more tempting and gratifying in the short-term than planning learning strategies to achieve long-term goals related to academic success.

Furthermore, disinhibition predicted perceived opportunity and rationalization. Disinhibited individuals may perceive a high opportunity to cheat, due to a poor risk assessment (Patrick et al., 2009) of the actual control mechanisms. Risk-seeking features in disinhibition may also compromise the analysis of the risk/benefit ratio and trigger dishonest behavior by reducing the analysis of negative logical consequences of the conduct (Anderman et al., 2009) and by increasing the rationalization of the non-moral aspects of the conduct. Nevertheless, these variables did not mediate the relationship between psychopathy and the prevalence of academic fraud.

Of note, exploratory results further revealed that individuals high in disinhibition perceived less severity in academic cheating, probably due to repetitive engagement in dishonest behavior, a higher motivation to cheat, and a higher generation of self-justifications.

Meanness

Hypothesis 2 (H2) indicated that meanness would negatively predict perceived fraud severity via rationalization and perceived capability. Results partially supported H2 since no mediation effects were found for perceived capability, but rationalization emerged as the critical psychological process explaining academic fraud in meanness. That is, individuals with high levels of meanness seem to be more prone to justify their actions by discounting the severity of academic fraud to achieve an end, which in turn, reduces the perceived severity of such conduct.

Previous studies reported that psychopathic cold-heartedness traits were associated with academic dishonesty (Marcus et al., 2018). Our work adds to the literature by acknowledging that prevalence may be less relevant when entering severity into the equation. As such, the blunted emotional resonance and lack of empathy in callous individuals seem to facilitate the formulation of cognitive self-justifications to disengage from the moral aspects of behavior and commit deviant acts. From a classical perspective (Sykes & Matza, 1957), rationalization precedes and proceeds deviant behavior, acting as a mechanism that neutralizes and legitimizes social deviance, while protecting the individual from feeling responsibility, blame, or shame. Therefore, rationalization might trigger the act and neutralizes its consequences in a recursive process. Ultimately, it is conceivable that deviant behavior does not imply an active opposition to social norms, but rather their neutralization. Importantly, the association between rationalization and severity was also observed in disinhibition, unveiling shared etiological mechanisms pertaining to externalizing vulnerability (Patrick et al., 2009).

Boldness

Hypothesis 3 (H3) stated that boldness would explain the higher prevalence of academic fraud via perceived capability. This link was fully observed in our study and is in line with previous research (Coyne & Thomas, 2008; Marcus et al., 2018; Portnoy et al., 2018).

According to Patrick and collaborators (2009), boldness reflects a confluence of traits etiologically connected with a low-fear disposition (e.g., low anxiety and emotional resilience to stressful and unfamiliar situations). These features may be either adaptive to situations where individuals are evaluated by their academic performance or to successfully undergo risky cheating behaviors. Our results are congruent with the former explanation: individuals’ high boldness appears to perceive more ability to cheat without being caught, which leads to a higher prevalence of academic fraud in these individuals. Portnoy et al. (2018) previously documented that low resting heart rate underlies low-fear dispositions and partially explains academic cheating in psychopathy. Together with our findings, individuals high in boldness may mask dishonest behavior by taking benefit of their low-fear features (e.g., Gao & Raine, 2010), since the reduced autonomic reactions to stressful situations (e.g., cheating) may give them an advantage to accomplish dishonest behaviors.

Limitations

The main limitations of this study are threefold. First, self-report measures may be easier to manipulate, but it is difficult to implement alternative methodologies to measure the objective cheating rates. Second, the sample included only university students; although it was not intended in the current work, it would be interesting to collect evidence from other educational contexts to increase generalization. Third, the sample size did not allow us to test alternative mediation models, as we chose a replication approach that unveiled good fit indexes and allowed reporting of the most consistent results. Future research should extend these findings and address the main limitations.

Closing Remarks

Despite these limitations, the current study provides a novel contribution to the research field. To our best knowledge, this is the first work assessing the influence of psychopathic traits on academic fraud, while considering the fraud diamond elements and the dimension of perceived severity. The significant associations not only support the idea that academic fraud is part of the nomological network of psychopathy but also unveil the complexity of the phenomenon, which may relate to later outcomes of antisocial behavior and corruption in this personality disorder. Overall, when psychopathic profiles combine meanness and disinhibition, one might expect a higher prevalence and severity of academic fraud due to these individuals being more motivated to cheat and generate more cognitive self-justifications to neutralize dishonest behaviors. In turn, when the psychopathic manifestation encompasses meanness and boldness traits to a higher extent, one can anticipate a higher prevalence of academic fraud, because these individuals perceive themselves as more capable of cheating without being caught. Knowing that interventions targeting personality might be difficult to conduct in educational settings, motivation and rationalization seem to be the mediators one can account for in the relationship between psychopathy and fraudulent behavior. As such, future action research can develop and test intervention strategies to reduce the extent to which motivations and rationalizations are used to legitimate academic cheating.

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