Silva, Luis Manuel
(2016)
Developing the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) as a Measure of
Cheating Behaviour.
PhD thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth.
Abstract
The current thesis set out to investigate the suitability of the IRAP to assess attitudes in the
moral domain and to predict cheating behaviour in a controlled context. Across six studies in
two countries, we developed three IRAPs that targeted relations between actions and
concepts of morality, reports of frequency of moral and immoral behaviour, and personal
feelings towards engaging in moral or immoral actions, and interpreted our findings through
the Relational Elaboration and Coherence (REC) Model. In the first part of the current
research programme, correlations between the IRAPs and a cheating task suggested that
individuals who are highly practised at immoral behaviour such as cheating, deceiving and
lying are more likely to confirm that they do not engage in such behaviours, in itself an
instance of that behavioural class. Further studies revealed that a history of bad feelings
associated with engagement in immoral behaviour correlated with lower cheating, and that
higher pro-moral biases in the IRAP correlated with lower reported psychopathic traits. In
the latter part of the research programme described in the current thesis, a values-oriented
intervention was shown to have an effect on IRAP performance and to produce a nonsignificant
trend toward decreasing cheating levels. To conclude, strengths, limitations and
opportunities for further research are discussed.
| Item Type: |
Thesis
(PhD)
|
| Keywords: |
Behavious analysis; implicit attitudes; morality; cheating; implicit relational assessment procedure; relational frame theory; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Science and Engineering > Psychology |
| Item ID: |
7126 |
| Depositing User: |
IR eTheses
|
| Date Deposited: |
08 Jun 2016 13:14 |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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