Perceived Differences in Parent-child Education Expectations Increase Academic Cheating

Academic cheating can detrimentally impact students’ learning outcomes and increase the likelihood they will later behave unethically. To improve student learning outcomes, it is important to understand why students choose to cheat. Here we develop a model, based on guilt aversion and disappointment aversion, that predicts parent-child differences in educational expectations promote children’s dishonesty. We test this prediction using a nationally representative survey of secondary school students in China (N=6853). Our data reveal that children are substantially more likely to cheat when they perceive their parents as having either higher or lower educational expectations than the children have for themselves.