Cheating as a prosocial act? Helping others with academic cheating is related to social goals and cooperative norms

Academic dishonesty threatens the integrity of performance assessment, making it crucial to understand the various types and predictors of such behavior. Second-party cheating, which refers to aiding and abetting cheating behaviors, is similarly prevalent as individualistic cheating, yet has received limited research attention. We follow up on this and examine social reasons for such behavior. We consider social goals (focused on interpersonal relationships) and cooperative norms as predictors. We investigated their main effects and interaction in a preregistered, longitudinal, Germany-wide study with 856 students. Three out of four students reported having engaged in at least one form of second-party cheating throughout the semester. Structural equation models confirmed that both social goals and cooperative norms positively predicted second-party cheating, without evidence for an interaction. Second-party cheating was only weakly linked to individualistic cheating behaviors and, in contrast to it, was not significantly predicted by academic mastery and performance goals, speaking to different motivational mechanisms at play. These findings underscore that second-party cheating is distinct from, and rooted in, different causes than individualistic cheating, calling for further research. Addressing this type of academic dishonesty, and social reasons in particular, could enrich interventions to tackle academic dishonesty more effectively.