Do exhausted primary school students cheat more? A randomized field experiment
Open Access
- 1 December 2021
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Public Library of Science (PLoS) in PLOS ONE
- Vol. 16 (12), e0260141
- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260141
Abstract
Motivated by the two-decade-long scientific debate over the existence of the ego-depletion effect, our paper contributes to exploring the scope conditions of ego-depletion theory. Specifically, in a randomized experiment, we depleted students’ self-control with a cognitively demanding task that required students’ effort. We measured the effect of depleted self-control on a subsequent task that required self-control to not engage in fraudulent cheating behavior—measured with an incentivized dice-roll task—and tested ego-depletion in a large-scale preregistered field experiment that was similar to real-life situations. We hypothesized that treated students would cheat more. The data confirms the hypothesis and provides causal evidence of the ego-depletion effect. Our results provide new insights into the scope conditions of ego-depletion theory, contribute methodological information for future research, and offer practical guidance for educational policy.Funding Information
- Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office (K 135766)
- Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office (K 119683)
- János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (BO/00569/21/9)
- New National Excellence Program of the Ministry for Innovation and Technology (ÚNKP-21-5-CORVINUS-132)
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