The study was conducted by multiple authors who represented multiple organizations. Namely, the authors included Li Zhao, who represented both the Department of Psychology, School of Education, Hangzhou Normal University, and the Zhejiang Key Laboratory for Research in Assessment of Cognitive Impairments, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, People’s Republic of China. Jiaxin Zheng, Haiying Mao, Xinyi Yu, Jiacheng, Ye, and Hongyi Chen represented the Department of Psychology, School of Education, Hangzhou Normal University. Brian J. Compton and Gail D. Heyman represented the Department of Psychology, University of California San Diego, and Kang Lee, represented The Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study, University of Toronto. The purpose of the study was to investigate the topic of academic misconduct and the effect of morality-based interventions on the behavior of students.
Authors hypothesized that compared to the conventional test format, cheating would be much lower under the three trust-exam scenarios. Regarding the three trust-exam versions strategy, authors anticipated the two circumstances that a warning about the penalty is less effective at lowering cheating since they would communicate implicitly the idea that pupils should not be believed, which is contradictory to how the trust component is meant to be used. To test the hypothesis, researchers used an experimental design, as the participants of the study took the same exam under four different conditions. The conditions included a traditional exam, collective-punishment trust exam, individual-punishment trust exam, and no-punishment trust exam.
296 first-year undergraduate students (206 women) from a university in eastern China took part in the study. They were enrolled in four separate sessions of the same introductory psychology course, which is a first-year undergraduate general education requirement. Each student was randomly assigned to one of the four conditions, with 71 in the traditional exam condition (37 women), 81 in the collective-punishment trust-exam condition (64 women), 82 in the individual-punishment trust-exam condition (55 women), and 62 in the no-punishment trust-exam condition.
The dependent variable of the study is cheating on the exam. Yet, it was divided into two categories – cheating occurrence and cheating extent. Cheating occurrence refers to whether the student cheated or not, and if he or she did, the extent of it would be measured from 1 to 5 depending on the number of questions cheated on. Each of the four conditions introduced different independent variables. The traditional exam condition implied the presence of a professor in the classroom as an independent variable. Collective-punishment trust exam introduced the independent variable of all classes scoring 0 for the exam if one of the students cheats. Individual punishment meant the introduction of students that cheated, scoring 0 on the exam. Finally, the no punishment condition implies that if somebody is caught cheating, there will be no consequences or punishments.
The second-highest cheating rate was created by the no-punishment trust exam condition. The study found that neither the cheating rate nor the level of cheating differed substantially between the individual-punishment trust exam condition and the no-punishment trust exam condition.
In comparison to the other two trust-exam circumstances, the prospect of collective punishment did appear to have a deterrent impact, resulting in a considerably reduced cheating rate and extent. The usual trust exam strategy nevertheless resulted in a much greater cheating rate than the conventional test approach, hence this conclusion does not justify its ongoing usage.