You guys did a great job with your research presentation! Doing a study on honor codes at a college that has a firm honor code policy has to be very hard. I feel like a reason you all didn’t get a significant difference between groups might be because many of the participants in the sample have been primed with their own honor code policy that completely denounces cheating. I think something that could eliminate this problem in future research is asking participants if they go to a college with an honor code, if they believe their honor is strictly followed, and then ask about their own cheating behaviors. This looks like is an extremely hard study to do, but you all did a wonderful job with it!

This had to be a difficult study to conduct especially on a campus with an honor code already in place. You all did an outstanding job! Congratulations!

The discussion on Mary Washington’s existing honor code as a potential limitation was insightful. I’d be interested to see what additional effect familiarity has; that is, whether students respond more (or less) strongly to an honor code that they’re already familiar with as opposed to one that expresses a similar sentiment in a way that they aren’t familiar with.

This is such a cool study design! Conducting “real experiments” online is tough, and I really enjoyed hearing how your team navigated that.

I’m wondering about the amount of exposure to something (like a tolerance clause) that is necessary to produce changes in attitudes vs. behaviors. For example, is it possible that it would take more than one exposure to a statement about reporting others’ cheating to influence personal, morality-based attitudes toward cheating? And might those attitudes be tougher to change than, for example, a student’s willingness to report peer cheating, as measured behaviorally, after they have signed a pledge to do so? In other words, if you replicated this study in a lab setting and gave students the opportunity to report a “cheating peer” during the experiment, I wonder if you’d see a change in behavior but not attitudes. Similarly, if you extended this study by exposing students to a tolerance clause multiple times throughout a semester, I wonder if you’d see a change in attitudes.

I think it is great that you attempted an experimental study and I do think the idea that a tolerance clause might shift people’s perceptions was well conceptualized. I have two questions. First, what did students think when they saw the honor pledges in the beginning of the study? Were they told to read the pledge and think about the meaning? Second, what happened with your manipulation check? Did people feel influenced by the pledge they read? Did that differ between groups?

This is a really cool study!! I think conducting a study at a school that takes a lot of pride in the honor code is difficult. By presenting the honor pledge at the start of the study may have impacted how participants thought throughout the study, which could influence their results. I am curious whether you would get the same results if the participants came from many different universities. Also, I wonder if you looked at first year college students and seniors to see if there was a difference in how they value the honor code and view cheating. This was a really interesting study and you all did a great job!

This study was very interesting! You all had a great design for it is an online study! Like the other comments have stated, UMW upholds strong pride in the honor pledge which probably affected the results of your study! The addition of a tolerance clause is very interesting and I wonder if UMW has ever considered including it in its honor code. I was a little confused about your independent variables, what made the control group different from the existing honor pledge?

I thought this research was very well presented! I like the different pledges that were assigned as variables as well. How do you think the results would change (if at all) if an option was to not have a pledge, or to make it optional?

This was a very interesting study! There were also many good suggestions in the comments for areas of future studies. I think it is a very good idea to compare schools that may have different atmospheres surrounding honor codes and academic importance. If you compared a school like UMW, and a school that had less emphasis on academia, a difference may have been found.