Students cheat more: Comparing dishonesty of a student and a representative sample in the laboratory

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In numerous experiments unethical behavior has been found, yet mainly among university students. Using student participants is potentially problematic for generalizability and resulting policy recommendations. In this paper, I report on an experiment with potential dishonesty. The experiment was completed by a representative non‐student sample and a student sample. The results show that cheating does exist, but also that students cheat systematically more, suggesting that focusing on students as participants tends to overestimate the magnitude of cheating. I further find that age is an important explanation for this difference in dishonesty. The older the participants are, the less they cheat.
Original languageEnglish
JournalScandinavian Journal of Economics
Volume122
Issue number1
Pages (from-to)257-279
Number of pages23
ISSN0347-0520
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020

ID: 201565368