Do Motives Matter? A Comparison between Positive and Negative Incentives in Students' Willingness to Malinger

Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 530 Walnut Street Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-207-0050; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals

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11

Student Motivation; Student Behavior; Deception; Physical Health; Symptoms (Individual Disorders); Undergraduate Students; Incentives; Punishment; Rewards; Vignettes; Gender Differences; Foreign Countries; Negative Reinforcement; Positive Reinforcement

10.1080/01443410.2019.1704400

0144-3410

The educational system today often relies on incentives in order to motivate students. However, it might also encourage students to engage in deceptive behaviour (e.g. malingering) in order to reach certain benefits. Hereby, we investigated whether students would intentionally fabricate symptoms (i.e. malinger) when confronted with a "positive" academic benefit (gaining recommendation letter, n=88), or when given a "negative" incentive scenario that could be avoided by malingering (n=88). Groups did not differ in: (i) their motivation to malinger; (ii) symptom choice, nor in (iii) the reporting strategy. Overall, 94% of students would, to a varying degree, malinger. Fever, dizziness/nausea, and indigestion/diarrhoea were the most frequently chosen symptoms and providing elaborative symptoms descriptions was students' dominant malingering strategy.

As Provided

2020

EJ1270303