The Role of Children’s Theory of Mind Understanding in Academic Cheating Behavior

• In Event: Development of Academic Cheating from Kindergarten to High School

Abstract

Recent evidence suggests that children begin to cheat academically as early as kindergarten from which cheating becomes a common occurrence throughout the childhood and beyond (Zhao et al., 2021). However, the roles that social-cognitive factors play in the development of academic cheating in childhood are unclear. In the present study, we specifically examined the associations between the development of theory of mind (ToM) understanding and academic cheating in children.

ToM refers the ability to reason about others’ mental states with two important and distinct levels of processes. First-order ToM is the ability to understand the mental states of others as being different from one’s own, whereas second-order ToM refers to the ability to reason about a person’s mental states based on an existing mental state. Although it is well established that first- and second-order ToM are significantly related to lying, it is unclear whether they are also related to academic cheating, a distinctly different form of dishonesty.

A total of 520 children between the ages of 4-12 years-old (M= 7.16, 51.3% female) were recruited from North America to participate in an online research project via Zoom. Children completed seven short stories to assess ToM: five assessed their first-order ToM understanding and two assessed their second-order ToM understanding. To measure cheating behaviors, we asked children to perform highly challenging tasks that mimicked school academic tests (e.g., a math test). The experimenter left the room when children performed the tests and told them not to cheat (e.g., not to peek at the answers to the tests that were shown at the bottom of the screen but blocked by a common household object). During these tests, the researcher secretly video-recorded children’s behavior to document instances of cheating.

We conducted a hierarchical multiple linear regression with the number cheating acts as the predicted variable. Children’s age was entered to the model as the first predictor variable, which was significant with a medium-large effect size (R =.41, F(1, 510) = 104.62, p <.001). With increased age, children became significantly less likely to cheat. Second, both first- and second-order ToM scores were entered into the model, which was also significant with a medium-large effect size (R =.15, F(2, 508) = 6.63 , p= .001). Inspection of the model revealed that the first-order ToM scores were not significant (b = .01, t(1)= .07, p =.947; Figure 1). However, second-order ToM scores were significantly related a decrease in cheating scores (b = -.31, t(1)= -3.54, p <.001; Figure 2).

These findings suggest that theory of mind understanding indeed plays an important role in children’s decision to cheat academically. Moreover, the higher level of ToM understanding, but not the lower level one, plays a unique role in children’s decision to cheat above and beyond the common contributions of both ToM scores. Perhaps the second-order theory of mind understanding allowed children to be able to reason about what others would think, should the experimenter find out that they had cheated; consequently, some of them refrained from cheating. Theoretical and practical implications will be discussed.

Authors

• Elizabeth Lynn Gerhardt, Saint Mary’s University
  Presenting Author

• Tz-yu Duan, University of British Columbia (UBC)

• Kanza Batool, University of Toronto

• Kaitlyn Monica Wilson, University of New Brunswick

• Catherine Ann Cameron, University of British Columbia (UBC)

• Kang Lee, University of Toronto