Abstract:
Academic cheating has become an increasingly pervasive concern in educational institutions, posing critical challenges to academic integrity and its effectiveness. The purpose of this study was to investigate Academic Dishonesty in undergraduate students and its relationship with Dark Triad Traits i.e., Narcissism, Machiavellianism and Psychopathy with the mediating role of Hypercompetitiveness in Academia. There is minimum research on this phenomenon. The study was conducted on 420 Pakistani universities ‘undergraduates, age ranges (18 to 25 years). Results suggest that academic dishonesty was significantly positively related to dark triad traits and hypercompetitiveness was found to have a mediating role in these study variables. Similarly, it was revealed that males have more Machiavelli and psychopath traits than females and females are more likely to engage in outside help, plagiarism, cheating in examination, prior cheating, falsification as well as lying about assignments. Some significant difference in family system were found such as students with nuclear family system have more narcissistic and psychopath traits than a joint family student and lower economic status students have more Machiavelli and psychopath traits than others. This research provides additional information about the impact of dark triad traits on examination cheatings, plagiarism, lying about assignments, prior cheating, outside help in students and has implications for the development of educational policies and interventions regarding academic cheating. It would be beneficial if future research continues exploring the relationship between the study variables, by finding other contributing factors across different cultures
