Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/237537 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
CERS-IE Working Papers No. CERS-IE WP - 2020/48
Publisher: 
Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Budapest
Abstract: 
We contribute to the experimental literature on primary school students' cheating behavior by studying i) how cheating is influenced by ego depletion; ii) how it correlates with different individual factors. We carried out a large-scale, pre-registered experiment in the field of 28 Hungarian primary schools (126 classrooms) on a voluntary subsample of 1,143 students at grade levels 4 to 8. Students' cheating behavior was measured by the incentivized dice-roll experiment. We find suggestive evidence that our light-touch treatment on ego-depletion increased students' deceptive behavior. Cheating behavior correlated weakly with students' individual characteristics. In a multivariate context controlling for between-classroom differences, we document that students' cognitive ability correlated negatively, while their age positively, with their cheating behavior. We found students' social context (their classroom belonging) as a more decisive determinant of students' cheating behavior than individual characteristics.
Subjects: 
honesty
cheating
individual factors
ego depletion
dice-roll exercise
pre-registered experiment
JEL: 
A13
C91
D91
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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