Committed to the honor code: an investment model analysis of academic integrity

Abstract

Educators worldwide face challenges surrounding academic integrity. The development of honor codes can promote academic integrity, but understanding how and why honor codes affect behavior is critical to their successful implementation. To date, research has not examined how students’ relationship to an honor code predicts academic integrity. The present study examined a range of outcomes related to academic integrity and commitment to an honor code from the perspectives of Rusbult’s (J Exp Soc Psychol 16,172–186, 1980) investment model and social norms. Students at a liberal arts college completed a questionnaire assessing honor code commitment, satisfaction, alternatives, investments, injunctive norms, descriptive norms, and three outcome behaviors: upholding the honor code, willingness to sacrifice for the honor code, and honor code involvement. Investments, satisfaction, and injunctive norms predicted honor code commitment, and both investments and commitment predicted all three self-reported outcomes. Honor code commitment mediated most associations between its predictor variables and the outcomes of interest. This study identifies a theoretical framework for understanding academic integrity through the lens of honor code commitment, and implications of these results for academic settings are discussed. In particular, investments and injunctive norms have broad relevance for creating values-driven school cultures.