Under Pressure to Achieve? The Impact of Type and Style of Task Instructions on Student Cheating.

Combining principles of Achievement Goal Theory, which maintains that performance goals play a key role in individuals' likelihood of cheating, and Self-Determination Theory, which highlights the importance of autonomy support and autonomous motivation underlying achievement goals, we examined whether the combination of experimentally inducing a mastery-approach (relative to performance-approach) goal with an autonomy-supportive manner (instead of controlling) may attenuate cheating. In two experiments carried out with university students, one classroom based ( = 164) and one laboratory ( = 160), we manipulated the type of induced goal (performance- vs. mastery-approach) and style of introducing the goal (i.