Date of Award

8-2025

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

School

Psychology

Committee Chair

Eric Dahlen

Committee Member 2

Melanie Leuty

Committee Member 3

Emily Yowell

Committee Member 4

Kevin Wells

Abstract

Concerns about academic misconduct are receiving increased attention within academia due to a proliferation of advanced technologies and reports of the high prevalence with which students engage in misconduct. Contextual factors (e.g., peer acceptance, opportunity) appear to be stronger predictors of students’ propensity for academic misconduct than individual factors (McCabe & Trevino, 1997). The Fraud Triangle Theory (i.e., pressure, opportunity, rationalization) has been adapted to this context and provides a useful theoretical model for considering contextual factors (Cressey, 1973; Wolfe & Hermanson, 2004). Research integrating this theory with the Dark Triad (i.e., Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy) suggests that these traits may amplify the impact of contextual factors on academic misconduct (Harrison et al., 2018; Smith et al., 2021). To date, this research is limited in scope, and only a handful of studies have investigated this phenomenon in U.S. samples. The current study explored the relationships of the Dark Triad traits, neutralization, the Fraud Triangle Theory, and peer acceptance to academic misconduct via two partial mediation models, alternating the order of the predictors and mediators. The model with the Dark Triad traits as mediators, which had the best fit, showed that narcissism partially mediated the relationship between neutralization and academic misconduct. Although the model with the Dark Triad as predictors had poor fit, it supported a direct path from narcissism to academic misconduct. In both models, narcissism emerged as having a unique influence beyond Machiavellianism and psychopathy, while neutralization and the Fraud Triangle Theory had direct effects on academic misconduct.

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