Date of Award

2015

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

Submission Date

October 2026

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Lanning, Kevin

Abstract

Growing inequality over the past few decades has been a great problem for the majority of Americans. Inequality is in part a reflection of privilege. The objective of this research was to investigate the association between privilege (including socioeconomic status or SES) and honesty (cheating behavior), along with relationships between privilege and personality and finally personality and honesty. This work furthered our knowledge of perceptions of social justice and the mechanisms underlying unethical behavior. Participants completed a questionnaire on Amazon MTurk that measured constructs of privilege (subjective SES, race, education, occupation, gender) and unethical behavior (participants completed three skill and chance-based tasks, each of which afforded the opportunity to report scores honestly or dishonestly). Results did not show strong correlations between privilege and cheating, but there was significant evidence that those high in entitlement were most likely to cheat. Our conclusion provides further evidence of personality’s influence on ethical behavior

Comments

Includes bibliography.

Extent

108 p.

Identifier

FA00003648

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