Providing a Model for Explaining the Impact of Achievement Goals, Social Comparison, Cognitive-Emotional Trust, and mismatch between effort and reward on student cheating behavior

Background cheating is one of the forms of abuse that has become one of the biggest concerns of educational institutions. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to Provide a model for explaining the impact of achievement goals, social comparison, cognitive-emotional trust, and imbalance between effort -reward on student cheating behavior. Methods: Structural equation modeling was the method used in this research. The statistical population of this study consisted of 384 students selected from male second- high schools in 4 districts of Tehran in the academic year 2017-2018. According to Morgan table, the sample size was specified; and cluster random sampling method was used for sample selection. Achievement Goals Questionnaire, developed by Migli et al., 2000; Social Comparison Scale by Chan and Parandrgst, 2007; Cognitive -Emotional Trust Scale by Yang and Mohsedler, 2010; Effort-Reward Imbalance Questionnaire by Sigrist, 2010; and cheating Behavior Questionnaire by Newstead et al., 1996 were applied for collecting data. For data analysis, Pearson’s correlation with SPSS 20 and Amos 24 (α = 0.05) were used. Results: A significant positive correlation was found between avoidance (r=.560, P <0.01), performance (r = .329, P <0.01) and cheating behavior.Whearas, there was a significant negative correlation between avoidance subscale and cheating behavior (r =-429, p <0.01). Mreover, there was no significant relationship between imbalance effort-reward and cheating behavior. However, emotional trust (r=.391, P <0.01) and cognitive trust (r=.145, P <0.01) were positively correlated with cheating behavior. Conclusion: The results obtained in this study indicated that social comparison and cognitive-emotional trust variables have the power to explain the scores of cheating behavior. However, the other two variables of this study and model did not show a significant relationship with it..