Personality Traits and Plagiarism: an Empirical Study with Portuguese Undergraduate Students

Relationship Between Cyber Plagiarism and the Big Five Personality Traits: An Empirical Study in a Chilean University

“…First, our results support other studies that indicate that low levels of conscientiousness (Wilks et al, 2016) and high levels of neuroticism (Karim et al, 2009) predict plagiarism. This finding confirms within Latin American context the role of these psychological traits as antecedents of academic plagiarism.…”

“…While agreeableness is not a determining factor in academic performance (O'connor and Paunonen, 2007), this trait is positively related to greater knowledge sharing (Matzler et al, 2008), which could allow for an original work with no plagiarism. In fact, a low score on agreeableness has been reported as a predictor of academic cheating (Williams et al, 2010;Wilks et al, 2016). Given this, we can hypothesize the relationship between agreeableness and cyber plagiarism as follows:…”

“…Wikls and colleagues (Wilks et al, 2016) summarized the central findings of studies on the relationship between the big five and deviant behaviours. According to this review, low levels of agreeableness are related with deviant workplace behaviour, anti--social behaviour, white--collar crime, and academic dishonesty.…”

“…While there are studies that associate personality traits with cheating behaviours in different interpersonal contexts (Orzeck and Lung, 2005;Evans and Revelle, 2008;Wilks et al, 2016), within the numerous studies that have examined personality traits as predictors of overall Internet use (Mark and Ganzach, 2014), there are very few that focus on ethical behaviours in the use (Karim et al, 2009).…”

“…In addition, conscientiousness is positively related both to ethical perceptions in business (Bratton and Strittmatter, 2013) and to learning orientation (Matzler and Mueller, 2011). Indeed, a low score on conscientiousness has been reported as a predictor of academic cheating (Williams et al, 2010;Wilks et al, 2016). In particular, literature indicates that conscientiousness predicts negatively to cyber plagiarism (Karim et al, 2009).…”