Adolescents’ cheating and delinquent behaviorfrom a justice-psychological perspective: the role of teacherjustice

Matthias Donat & Claudia Dalbert &Shanmukh Vasant Kamble

Received: 11 December 2013 /Revised: 3 March 2014 /Accepted: 11 April 2014 /Published online: 26 April 2014# Instituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada, Lisboa, Portugal and Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht2014

Abstract The more people believe in a just world (BJW) in which they get what theydeserve, the more they are motivated to preserve a just world by ones’ just behavior.Consequently, we expected school students with a strong BJW to show less deviantbehavior as cheating or delinquency. The mediating role of teacher justice was alsoexamined. Questionnaire data were obtained from a total of N=382 German and Indianhigh school students. Regression analyses revealed that the stronger students’ BJWwas, the less cheating and delinquent behavior they reported. Moreover, the more thestudents believed in a just world, the more they evaluated their teachers’ behaviortoward them personally to be just, and the experience of teacher justice fully mediatedthe relation between BJW and cheating and delinquency, respectively. This pattern ofresults was in line with our hypotheses and consistent across different cultural contexts.It persisted when neuroticism and sex were controlled. The adaptive functions of BJWand implications for future school research are discussed.

Keywords Belief in a justworld .Youthdelinquency. School cheating . Justicemotive .Teacherjustice

Eur J Psychol Educ (2014) 29:635–651DOI 10.1007/s10212-014-0218-5

M. Donat (*) : C. DalbertInstitute of Education, Department of Educational Psychology, Martin Luther University ofHalle-Wittenberg, Franckeplatz 1, Haus 6, D-06110 Halle (Saale), Germanye-mail: matthias.donat@paedagogik.uni-halle.deURL: http://www.philfak3.uni-halle.de/paedagogik/psycho-erz/

C. Dalberte-mail: claudia.dalbert@paedagogik.uni-halle.deURL: http://www.philfak3.uni-halle.de/paedagogik/psycho-erz/

S. V. KambleDepartment of Psychology, Karnatak University, Dharwad-03, Karnataka State, Indiae-mail: anilhubs@gmail.com

Introduction

A major gap in the empirical literature on adolescent deviant behavior is the relative lackof attention to justice perspectives. School cheating and delinquency can be interpretedas special forms of adolescents’ deviant behavior. Such behavior is a break of schoolrules or societal norms and thus can be interpreted as unjust. As a consequence, deviantbehavior should clearly be explainable by individual differences in the need to behavejustly, i.e., the belief in a just world (BJW; Lerner 1980). In this vein, our study aims toexplain school cheating and youth delinquency from a justice motive perspective. Inaddition, we consider justice experiences in school, namely the justice of the teachers’behavior toward the students personally, as an additional explanation for the avoidanceof unjust behavior.

Deviant behavior in adolescence

Following Morton (2010), “…behaviour is perceived as (most) ‘deviant’, and thus evaluatedas (most) negatively, when it involves an ingroup member transgressing the core norms ofone’s group” (p. 97). In general, deviant behavior is therefore characterized by deviation froma societal norm, by insensitivity toward the interests of other persons, and “…is anti-social inthe way it undermines community cohesion, fragments shared values and erodes socialcapital” (Squires and Stephen 2005, p. 3). This definition can easily be transferred to school,and adolescence, respectively, where several forms of deviant behavior can be found. In ourstudy, we focus on school cheating and delinquency.

School cheating One form of deviant behavior in school is cheating, sometimes calledacademic dishonesty (e.g., Arnett Jensen et al. 2002). It can be defined as deceiving,defrauding, fooling or misleading another person and is characterized by a lack oftransparency (Davis et al. 2009). In a broader sense, school cheating “…defrauds thepublic who believe that academic diplomas or degrees signify a certain level of accom-plishment by the students who possesses them” (Davis et al. 2009, p. 3) and that thoseachievements are honestly deserved. In this vein, cheating breaks rules and norms of theschool community and the society in all. Teachers should usually think “…that theacademic work submitted by a student was a student’s own work” (Davis et al. 2009,p. 2). The typical goal of school cheating is to produce a better outcome—a bettergrade—than what students might have been capable of achieving on their own. Concernsabout and pressure to get (good) grades seem to be frequently mentioned reasons forcheating (Bushway and Nash 1977). Interestingly, the moral climate of the school(Bushway and Nash 1977) and moral self-concept of students (Williams et al. 2010)also seem to influence the incidence of cheating. As a result of cheating, the teachers’evaluations of the students’ knowledge and abilities become invalid.

According to Davis et al. (2009), school cheating contains a widespread repertoire of acts ascopying answers from another student’s paper, using crib sheets on an exam, plagiarizing,letting others copy a homework paper, writing answers on a desk or body parts, obtainingcopies of the test before the exam, and ghostwriting. During the last decades, the forms ofcheating in school have barely changed (cf. Bushway and Nash 1977). Davis et al. (2009)point out that these techniques are still very popular but are also supplemented with a growingnumber of strategies being enabled with the aid of modern media, e.g., mobile phones and theWorld Wide Web.

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Youth delinquency Delinquency or delinquent behavior can be interpreted as the most extremeform of deviant behavior as it additionally includes the breach of the law of the respectivesociety and, in consequence, is a criminal act. Of course, the definition of a statutory offensecan vary according to the societal norms and historical period (Baier 2008). In most criminalcodes, criminal acts are classified into eight major categories: crimes against persons (e.g.,homicide), crimes against property (e.g., burglary), crimes involving fraud (e.g., forgery),crimes involving health and safety (e.g., driving while intoxicated), crimes involving moralsand decency (e.g., gambling), crimes against peace and order (e.g., riot), crimes againstadministration of justice (e.g., perjury), and offenses against the sovereign in terms of treason(Cassel and Bernstein 2007).

Youth delinquency is of special interest because the prevalence of criminal acts is highestamong adolescents between about 14 and 21 years (Baier 2008; Bundesministerium desInneren 2011; Lösel and Bliesener 2003; Moffitt 1993). According Moffitt (1993), there is amultitude of risk factors that may cause adolescents’ delinquency, e.g., maternal drug use, poorparenting, a difficult temperament, and learning difficulties, and that the progressive exposureto those factors can have a cumulative effect on youngsters’ development. This may result in aweak ability to react in a socially acceptable manner. Subsequently, the adolescents’ cognitiveand social development as well as schooling and social interactions are impaired. However, themajority of adolescents at least occasionally participate in criminal acts. As Elliott and Ageton(1980) stated: “Virtually all youth report some delinquent activity […], but for the vastmajority the offences are neither very frequent nor very serious” (p. 107).

Deviant behavior like cheating and delinquency can be interpreted as unjust. In cheatingbehavior, unwitting teachers are betrayed, and the cheating pupil undeservingly gets anadvantage over other pupils. Delinquent behavior damages, e.g., the property of anotherperson or the person her-/himself, and consequently breaches the norms, rules, and laws ofthe society. Those forms of deviant behavior aim to achieve goals by unjust means and canthus be investigated from the perspective of justice research. In our study, we focus on justworld research.

Belief in a just world

According to the just world hypothesis, “People want to and have to believe they live in a justworld so that they can go about their daily lives with a sense of trust, hope, and confidence intheir future” (Lerner 1980, p. 14). After more than 40 years of just world research, threefunctions of the belief in a just world can be identified (Dalbert 2001). First, the trust functionenables people to trust in others and in the justice of their fate. This trust has adaptiveconsequences: it gives individuals the confidence to invest in long-term goals (e.g., Detteet al. 2004; Otto and Dalbert 2005), to trust others to treat them justly, and to be rewardedjustly. For example, Tomaka and Blascovich (1994) showed that strong compared to weak justworld believers felt less threatened and less distressed when confronted with achievement tasksin the laboratory and that they showed better performance. Second, the assimilation functionhelps individuals confronted with injustice to preserve the BJW by restoring justice eitherpsychologically (e.g., minimizing the injustice) or behaviorally (e.g., compensating the injus-tice). As a consequence, school students with a strong BJW have been found to evaluate theirteachers’ behavior as more just than students with a weak BJW (e.g., Correia and Dalbert2007; Dalbert and Stoeber 2005; Donat et al. 2012).

Third, the motive function compels individuals to behave justly in order to maintain a justworld. Thus, the BJW is indicative of a personal contract (Lerner 1980), the terms of which

Adolescents’ cheating and delinquent behavior from a justice-psychological perspective 637

oblige the individual to behave justly, and can be seen as an indicator of an implicit justicemotive (Dalbert 2001; Dalbert and Umlauft 2009; Donat 2010). For example, strong just worldbelievers strive for justice as an aim in itself and are motivated to achieve personal goals byjust means (e.g., Hafer 2000; Hafer and Bègue 2005). By acting justly, they respect the termsof their personal contract (Lerner 1977), which gives them the prospect of being justlyrewarded. Furthermore, BJW has been shown to be an important correlate of social respon-sibility as a trait (Bierhoff 1994). Dalbert and Umlauft (2009) showed that the BJW intuitivelymotivated individuals to choose equal allocations in an experimental “dictator” game in whicha windfall of money was to be shared between the participant and an unknown other.Moreover, BJW has been found to be associated with less rule-breaking behavior (Otto andDalbert 2005), and fewer delinquent intentions (Sutton and Winnard 2007) among youngadults. Motive-incongruent behavior has been shown to be censured, for example, by adecrease in self-esteem (Dalbert 1999).

Deviant behavior as school cheating or delinquency represents a threat to the BJW andthe personal contract. Consequently, we expected students with a strong compared to aweak BJW to be more likely to intuitively avoid deviant behavior. This relation wasalready observed for another form of deviant behavior at school, namely bulling behavior(Correia and Dalbert 2008; Donat et al. 2012), and for delinquency among femaleadolescents (Cohn and Modecki 2007), and undergraduate university students (Hafer2000). Therefore, we hypothesized that students’ BJW and their cheating and delinquentbehavior would be negatively associated.

Teacher justice

Justice can be seen as a key issue in schools. Students want to be treated justly by their teachersand consider justice to be one of the most important attributes of a good teacher (Hofer et al.1986). Teachers describe themselves as justice-oriented persons who care about the justice ofimportant decisions, such as the grades awarded (Kanders 2000). According to Dalbert andStoeber (2006), teacher justice is defined as the students’ individually and subjectivelyexperienced justice of the teachers’ behavior toward them personally (“they-to-me approach”;Peter and Dalbert 2010). Following the Group-Value-Theory (Lind and Tyler 1988), teacherjustice signals students to be an esteemed member of the class and the school community andto be socially included. In line with this reasoning, it has been shown that teacher justice ispositively associated with students’ feeling of belonging to the school (Umlauft et al. 2013).Students who feel justly treated by their teachers are more likely to accept and adhere to schoolrules and norms, and even generalize this acceptance and adherence to institutions outsideschool as the law, the police, and the judiciary (Gouveia-Pereira et al. 2003; Sanches et al.2012). Adolescents who do not accept those rules and norms typically show deviant behaviorat school (Emler and Reicher 1987). In sum, teacher justice should strengthen the feeling ofbelonging to the school and the acceptance of rules and norms at school and even outside.Thus, we hypothesize teacher justice would be negatively associated with cheating anddelinquent behavior.

The assimilation function of the BJW allows strong just world believers to assimilateexperiences of injustice and therefore to feel more justly treated by others. In the schoolcontext, students with a stronger compared to a weaker BJW can thus be expected to feel morejustly treated by their teachers (e.g., Correia and Dalbert 2007; Dalbert and Stoeber 2005;Donat et al. 2012). For justice judgments regarding teachers’ behavior, one study indicated anegative relation with adolescents’ deviant behavior (Sanches et al. 2012). Consequently, we

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hypothesized that teacher justice would mediate the association between students’ BJW andtheir deviant behavior.

Our study

Just world research has shown that it is necessary to distinguish the belief in a personal justworld, in which one is usually treated justly, from the belief in a general just world, in whichpeople in general get what they deserve (Dalbert 1999; Lipkus et al. 1996). Consistent with theself-serving bias in fairness reasoning (Messick et al. 1985) people tend to endorse the personalBJW more strongly than the general BJW. Moreover, the two dimensions have been shown tohave different correlates, e.g.: the general BJW is a better predictor of harsh social attitudes(e.g., Bègue and Muller 2006), whereas the personal BJW is a better indicator of the justicemotive, and a better predictor of people’s reaction on their own injustice (e.g., Strelan 2007)and of delinquent intentions (Sutton and Winnard 2007). Thus, we focus on the personal BJWin our study.

Furthermore, just world research shows that BJW is associated with some other personalityfactors being independent of justice issues. For example, there is empirical evidence that BJWis negatively associated with neuroticism (e.g., Dalbert 2001; Dzuka and Dalbert 2002;Wolfradt and Dalbert 2003). Neuroticism is one of the ‘big five’ personality factors; followingCosta and McCrae (1989) it is associated with anxiety, angry hostility, depression, self-consciousness, impulsiveness, and vulnerability. People strong in neuroticism usually worryabout a lot of things. Moreover, neuroticism also seems to be important in explainingdelinquency and cheating. Some authors have argued that neuroticism is stronger in delinquentthan in non-delinquent persons (e.g., Burfeind and Bartusch 2011; Hindelang 1971), and thatcheaters are more neurotic than non-cheaters (Bushway and Nash 1977; Williams et al. 2010).Because students’ neuroticism might function as a potential confounding factor we controlledfor neuroticism when testing the association between BJW, teacher justice, and deviantbehavior.

Another confounding factor in the explanation of deviant behavior seems to be thegender of students. Studies on delinquency repeatedly show that males are more likelyto be involved in delinquent acts than females (e.g., Burfeind and Bartusch 2011;Moffitt et al. 2001). To our knowledge, gender differences in cheating behavior haveshown to be mixed (e.g., Bushway and Nash 1977). We controlled gender differencesin our study.

Finally, Donat et al. (2012) were the first to investigate the mediating role of teacher justicein the association between personal BJW and bullying—another form of adolescents’ deviantbehavior. In their study, they showed that the results were consistent across two differentcultural context, namely Germany and India. Other studies on the relation of BJW withbullying and violence have shown similar findings in further countries, e.g., Portugal(Correia and Dalbert 2008), and Slovakia (Dzuka and Dalbert 2007). We build on the studyof Donat et al. (2012) but with investigating cheating and delinquency instead of bullying. AsDonat et al. (2012) we also focus on the generalizability of the hypothesized relations acrossdifferent cultural contexts, namely Germany and India.

We tested the following hypotheses: The stronger students’ personal BJW, (1) the morelikely they are to evaluate their teachers’ behavior toward them personally as just and (2) theless likely they are to show cheating and delinquent behavior. (3) The relation between thepersonal BJW and cheating and delinquent behavior is at least partly mediated by teacherjustice. (4) These relations persist when controlled for neuroticism, sex, and country.

Adolescents’ cheating and delinquent behavior from a justice-psychological perspective 639

Method

Procedure and sample

The participants in this study were N=382 school students. The German sample consisted ofn=179 school students aged between 14 and 18 years (M=15.3; SD=0.7); 94 (52.5 %) werefemale and 85 (47.5 %) were male. The students were enrolled in three public schools; allstudents were in grade 9. Two of the schools were intermediate track (German:“Sekundarschule”; n=134; female=70); most such students go on to work in white-collarjobs. One was academic track (German: “Gymnasium”; n=45; female=24); students gradu-ating from these schools with an “Abitur” qualification are eligible to attend university. In sum,10 classes participated. The Indian sample consisted of n=203 Indian school students agedbetween 13 and 17 years (M=15.2; SD=0.8); 98 (48.3 %) were female and 105 (51.7 %) weremale. Students attended grade 9 (n=51) or 10 (n=152) of 12 private English-medium schools.

In both samples, participants were invited to complete a questionnaire assessing justice andsocial behavior. It was stressed that participation was anonymous and voluntary. The assess-ment was conducted in the classroom during lesson time. The study was approved by theresponsible authority and the school management, and written consent was obtained from theparticipants and their parents.

Measures

Personal BJW was measured using the Personal Belief in a Just World Scale (Dalbert 1999),which comprises seven items designed to capture the belief that, overall, events in one’s life arejust (Germany: α=0.83; rij est=.41

1; India: α=0.77; rij est=0.32; α ranged in other studiesbetween α=0.68 and α=0.88, Correia et al. 2009; Dalbert and Stoeber 2006; e.g., “I amusually treated justly”; “Overall, events in my life are just”). Several studies have demonstratedthe factorial validity of the scale (e.g., Dalbert 1999). Neuroticism was measured using thefour-item neuroticism subscale of the Big Five Inventory—Short Version (Rammstedt et al.2004; Germany: α=0.64; rij est=0.31; India: α=0.64; rij est=0.31; α ranged in other studiesbetween α=0.74 and α=0.77, Rammstedt and John 2005, 2007; e.g., “I am depressed, blue”).The factorial and convergent validity of the scale has been demonstrated by Rammstedt andJohn (2005, 2007). Teacher justice was measured using the 10-item Teacher Justice Scalewhich was designed to capture students’ experience of the justice of teachers’ behavior towardthem personally (Dalbert and Stoeber 2002). Thus, the items directly ask for the subjectivejustice evaluation of the teachers’ behavior toward the particular student personally (Germany:α=0.87; rij est=0.40; India: α=0.81; rij est=0.30; α ranged in other studies between α=0.87and α=0.88, Dalbert and Stoeber 2006; Peter and Dalbert 2010; e.g., “My teachers generallytreat me justly”). Responses on these scales were given on a six-point scale ranging from 1(“totally disagree”) to 6 (“totally agree”).

Self-reported cheating behavior was assessed using the four-item subscale SituationalControl through Avoiding and Cheating that is part of the Rost and Schermer (1997)Differential Test Anxiety Inventory (DAI; Germany: α=0.75; rij est=0.43; India: α=0.77; rijest=0.46; α ranged in other studies between α=0.68 and α=0.84, Rost and Schermer 1997;Rost and Sparfeldt 2003). Rost and Schermer (1997), and Rost and Sparfeldt (2003)

1 Cronbach (1951) showed that alpha is dependent on the numbers of items, and introduced rij est as an index ofhomogeneity which is independent of test length, e.g., as a “rule of thumb”, a test with 16 items with α=0.80 hasa rij est=0.20.

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successfully showed the factorial validity of the scale. The scale includes an instruction asfollows: “Sometimes everyone fears in achievement situations. Below you will be asked howoften you use several strategies when you are frightened.” Every item starts with “To cope withmy fear…”, and the single wordings are: (1) “…I organize unfair means for me”; (2) “…I sitdown right beside a good neighbor”; (3) “…I make a crib sheet”; (4) “…I will use disturbancein the classroom/exam room to get some test answers.” Responses were given on a six-pointscale ranging from 1 (“never”) to 6 (“always”).

Self-reported delinquency was measured using 13 items from the Rushton and Chrisjohn(1981) 20-item Self-Report Delinquency Scale which formed one-dimensional scales in bothcultures (Germany: α=0.87; rij est=0.34; India: α=0.84 rij est=0.29; α for the original 20-itemscale ranged in other studies between α=0.75 and α=0.81, Rushton and Chrisjohn 1981;Hafer 2000; e.g., “In the last four weeks, I have broken or smashed things in public places likeon the street, at the cinema, at dance clubs, on trains or buses.”). The discriminant (Hafer 2000)and factorial (Rushton and Chrisjohn 1981) validity of the scale has successfully been shown(see also Hindelang et al. 1979). In order to increase validity, we added the timeframe “in thelast four weeks” to the original instrument. Responses were given on a five-point scale rangingfrom 1 (“never”) to 5 (“very often”).

Scale scores were formed by averaging the responses across items, reverse coding negativeitems as necessary. High scale scores consistently indicate a strong extend of the particularconstruct.

Results

First, zero-order correlations between all variables were inspected (see Table 1). We analyzedthe correlation patterns regarding differences between the Indian and German sample by usingBox’s M test to assess the homogeneity of the covariance matrices. The test indicatedsignificantly different covariance matrices (F=4.18; p<0.001). Thus, Table 1 shows correla-tions for both countries separately.

Personal BJW correlated positively with teacher justice in both samples. The more stronglythe students endorsed the personal BJW, the more justly they felt treated by their teachers.Furthermore, personal BJW was negatively correlated with delinquency in both samples: The

Table 1 Means, standard deviations, and correlations between study variables

Sex Neuroticism PersonalBJW

Teacherjustice

Cheating Delinquency M SD

Sex 0.24*** 0.12 0.15* −0.50*** −0.46*** 0.48

Neuroticism 0.32*** −0.22** −0.25*** 0.03 −0.08 3.54 1.16

Personal BJW −0.02 −0.23** 0.44*** −0.24*** −0.27*** 4.46 0.72

Teacher justice 0.15* −0.06 0.49*** −0.36*** −0.29*** 4.13 1.02

Cheating −0.08 −0.04 −0.06 −0.26*** 0.68*** 1.89 0.92

Delinquency −0.25*** 0.02 −0.18* −0.28*** 0.45*** 1.51 0.53

M 0.53 3.51 4.07 4.21 2.38 1.17

SD 1.00 0.89 0.95 1.07 0.36

For sex, 0=male and 1=female. Correlations above the diagonal refer to the Indian sample. Correlations belowthe diagonal refer to the German sample

*p<0.05; **p<0.01; ***p<0.001

Adolescents’ cheating and delinquent behavior from a justice-psychological perspective 641

stronger the students’ personal BJW, the less delinquency they reported. Personal BJW alsocorrelated negatively with cheating in the Indian sample, only. Teacher justice was negativelycorrelated with delinquency and cheating in both samples: The more justly students felt treatedjustly by their teachers, the less delinquency and cheating behavior they reported. In the Indiansample, boys were more likely to engage in delinquency and cheating, and in the Germansample, boys were more likely to engage in delinquency, only. Moreover, in both samples,boys felt less justly treated by their teachers. Neuroticism was negatively associated withpersonal BJW in both countries, but was negatively related to teacher justice in the Indiansample, only.

To test the mediation effect of teacher justice on the relation between personal BJW andcheating and delinquent behavior, bootstrap analyses were conducted. Therefore, we usedmethods described by Preacher and Hayes (2008) and the SPSS macro developed by thoseauthors. This method has several advantages over other methods (Baron and Kenny 1986;Sobel 1986) as it is independent of normal sampling distribution, and allows the inclusion ofmultiple covariates. “Bootstrapping is a non-parametric resampling technique that empiricallygenerates an approximation of the sampling distribution” (Sanches et al. 2012, p. 613). Themethod offers point estimates and percentile bootstrap confidence intervals (CI) for total andindirect effects. As Preacher and Hayes (2008) suggest, we based CI on 5,000 bootstrapsamples and—to improve CI—used bias correction and acceleration (BCa). CI are interpretedas being insignificant if they contain zero. The first of our two models tested the mediationeffect of teacher justice on the relation between personal BJW and cheating behavior; thesecond model tested the mediation effect of teacher justice on the relation between personalBJW and delinquent behavior.

First, the bootstrap results showed that the total effect of personal BJW on cheatingbehavior (total effect of personal BJW=−0.23, p<0.001) decreased when teacher justice wasincluded in the model (direct effect of personal BJW=−0.09, p=0.16), with the direct effect ofteacher justice=−0.27 (p<0.001) on cheating (see Fig. 1). Additionally, the total indirect effectof personal BJW on cheating behavior through the mediator was significant, with a pointestimate of −0.1378 and 95 % BCa CI of −0.2106, −0.0778. The results indicate that the

Teacher

Justice

Delinquency

0.52***Personal

BJW

Cheating

Fig. 1 Mediation analyses of the relation between personal BJW and deviant behavior. Unstandardizedregression coefficients from bootstrapping analyses are presented by path values. Direct effects of the personalBJW on deviant behavior after including teacher justice as mediator are in parentheses. *p<0.05, ***p<0.001

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relation between personal BJW and cheating behavior was fully mediated by teacher justice.The model explained about 9 % of the variance in cheating behavior. Furthermore, wehypothesized that this relation would persist when controlling for neuroticism, sex, andcountry. As the Box’s M test indicated significantly different covariance matrices for bothcountries, the interaction effects personal BJW by country and teacher justice by country werealso considered. Therefore, the bootstrap analyses were repeated while adding these variablesas covariates in the model.

Adding neuroticism, sex, country (dummy-coded with 0=Germany and 1=India), and theinteractions (the continuous variables were centered before entering them into the models;Aiken andWest 1991) showed an increased amount of explained variance (current model: R2=21 %). The bootstrap results indicated that the total effect of personal BJW on cheatingbehavior was not significant in the first place (total effect of personal BJW=−0.07, p=0.38),with the direct effect of teacher justice=−0.28 (p<0.001) on cheating. Thus, there was nopossible mediation effect. When including teacher justice in the model, the direct effect ofpersonal BJWon cheating behavior was 0.08 (p=0.39). The total indirect of personal BJW oncheating behavior through the mediator was, however, significant, with a point estimate of−0.1485 and 95 % BCa CI of −0.2704, −0.0552. For the control variables, the bootstrapanalyses showed significant partial effects of sex −0.48 (p<0.001), and country=−0.53(p<0.001), with partial effects of neuroticism and the interactions personal BJW by countryand teacher justice by country being insignificant (see Fig. 2).

Second, a slightly different pattern of results revealed for delinquent behavior. The boot-strap results showed that the total effect of personal BJWon delinquent behavior (total effect ofpersonal BJW=−0.07, p<0.05) decreased when teacher justice was included in the model(direct effect of personal BJW=0.003, p=0.93), with the direct effect of teacher justice= −0.14(p<0.001) on delinquent behavior (see Fig. 1). Additionally, the total indirect effect of personalBJW on delinquent behavior through the mediator was significant, with a point estimate of−0.0733 and 95 % BCa CI of −0.1091, −0.0461. The results indicate that the relation between

Teacher

Justice

Delinquency

Personal

BJW

Cheating

0.52***

Fig. 2 Mediation analyses of the relation between personal BJW and deviant behavior, when controlling sex,country, neuroticism, and interactions. Unstandardized regression coefficients from bootstrapping analyses arepresented by path values, with sex (***), country (***), neuroticism, and interactions as covariates. Direct effectsof the personal BJWon deviant behavior after including teacher justice as mediator are in parentheses. *p<0.05,***p<0.001

Adolescents’ cheating and delinquent behavior from a justice-psychological perspective 643

personal BJW delinquent behavior was fully mediated by teacher justice. The model explainedabout 8 % of the variance in delinquent behavior. Furthermore, we hypothesized that thisrelation would persist when controlling for neuroticism, sex, and country. As the Box’s M testindicated significantly different covariance matrices for both countries, the interaction effectspersonal BJW by country and teacher justice by country were also considered. Therefore, thebootstrap analyses were repeated while adding these variables as covariates in the model.

Adding neuroticism, sex, country, and the interactions showed an increased amount ofexplained variance (current model: R2=31 %). The bootstrap results indicated that the totaleffect of personal BJW on delinquent behavior (total effect of personal BJW=−0.08, p<0.05)decreased when teacher justice was included in the model (direct effect of personal BJW=−0.04, p=0.28), with the direct effect of teacher justice=−0.06 (p=0.08) on delinquentbehavior (see Fig. 2). The total indirect of personal BJW on delinquent behavior through themediator was significant, with a point estimate of −0.0340 and 95 % BCa CI of −0.0737,−0.0075. For the control variables, the bootstrap analyses showed significant partial effects ofsex=−0.30 (p<0.001), and country=0.35 (p<0.001), with partial effects of neuroticism andthe interactions personal BJW by country and teacher justice by country being insignificant.

Discussion

Research on the motive function of BJW (Dalbert 2001; Lerner 1980) provides a key tounderstanding why people avoid deviant behavior, in general, and cheating and delinquentbehavior, in particular. We hypothesized that the BJW is an indicator of an implicit justicemotive that can help to explain deviant behavior. Our results were in line with this reasoning.We observed that the more students endorsed the personal BJW, the less likely they were toself-report cheating and delinquent acts. These findings generalize observations of previousstudies on bullying (Correia and Dalbert 2008; Donat et al. 2012) and support our assumptionthat the personal BJW, as an implicit justice motive, is negatively associated with students’self-reported unjust behavior that breaches the terms of the personal contract (Lerner 1980).Cheating and delinquency clearly violate the personal contract to observe the rules of justice,and students with a strong BJW therefore seem to avoid these kinds of behavior. Likewise,other studies have shown BJW to be associated with less rule-breaking behavior (Otto andDalbert 2005) and fewer delinquent intentions (Sutton and Winnard 2007). Taken collectively,we interpret these results as evidence for an intuitive process explaining deviant behavior. Theneed to believe in a just world (the justice motive) is associated on an intuitive level with theobligation to maintain a just world—for example, by behaving justly and avoiding deviantbehavior.

We argued that students’ experience of teacher justice is particularly important as itenhances their feeling of social inclusion (Umlauft et al. 2013) and can thus be expected tostrengthen the motive to behave justly in school. We therefore included teacher justice as apossible mediator of the BJW’s effect on deviant behavior. In line with the assimilationfunction of the BJW, we showed that the stronger the students’ BJW, the more justly theyfelt treated by their teachers. Furthermore, teacher justice fully mediated the associationbetween BJW and cheating and delinquent behavior. This mediating effect predominantlypersisted when controlled for sex, country, neuroticism, and interactions regarding country.

Our results clearly indicate that future research examining the role of justice in explainingvarious forms of deviant behavior should consider school-specific justice experiences—andexperiences of teacher justice, in particular—in addition to the justice motive itself. Theexperience of being treated in a just and respectful manner by one’s teachers contributes to

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the sense of being a valued member of the class and thus promotes the feeling of socialinclusion (Bude and Lantermann 2006; Lind and Tyler 1988; Umlauft et al. 2013). The senseof belonging to a group reinforces the personal obligation to behave in accordance with thegroup’s rules and is thus an important condition for rule-abiding behavior (Emler and Reicher2005). Thus, students’ experience of teacher justice plays a central role in explaining their rule-abiding or rule-breaking behavior. School is the first societal institution to which children areexposed. It is here that they learn about the legitimacy of authority. The more justly they feeltreated at school, the more legitimate they will see the school authorities to be. It seems likelythat they also generalize these experiences to other societal domains (Gouveia-Pereira et al.2003). In consequence, students’ experience of teacher justice seems to be important inexplaining not only school-specific forms of the students’ deviant behavior (e.g., cheatingand bullying behavior) but also deviant behavior outside school as delinquent behavior.

Overall, students’ experience of teacher justice plays a key role in explaining deviantbehavior and this can be of great practical relevance. That can be due to two processes. First,the more the teachers’ behavior is seen as just the more the school rules should be seen aslegitimate and fair. Second, the more the teachers’ behavior is seen as just the more thestudents’ feelings of social inclusion should be strengthened. Both consequences of justiceexperiences, rules acceptance and feelings of belonging to the school in particular and thesociety in general, can be fostered by teachers which are seen as behaving justly.

To improve justice experiences at school, teachers should therefore try to behave justlytoward their students and, in the course of this, should take into account their students’interpretations of justice (e.g., Dalbert et al. 2007; Thorkildsen et al. 1994). Thus, they shouldcommunicate with their students about justice issues. The experience of teacher justice itselfcan be seen as shaped by two different processes. The association between teacher justice andpersonal BJW highlights the subjective meaning of this evaluation process. Thus, schoolshould provide a just environment where students could develop a strong BJW. Researchhas shown, that just teacher behavior could constitute such a beneficial developmentalenvironment (Dalbert and Stoeber 2006). In addition, experiences of teacher justice are likelyto be also affected by more objective characteristics of the teachers’ behavior. Therefore, it iscrucial to understand which teacher behaviors students see to be more or less just. Forexample, it has been shown that students evaluate different motivation strategies (e.g.,Thorkildsen et al. 1994), grading methods (e.g., Dalbert et al. 2007), and disciplining methods(Fan and Chan 1999; Israelashvili 1997) to be more or less just. These evaluations might atleast partially be influenced by the teachers’ striving for distributive and procedural justice.Furthermore, justice of the teachers’ behavior depends on aspects of interactional justiceencompassing interpersonal and informational justice. In terms of interpersonal justice,teachers should treat their students with dignity, civility, and respect. Informational justicemeans that teachers inform their students about school relevant decisions and important events.The consideration of such behavior should increase the probability that students evaluate theirteachers’ behavior toward them to be more just. Moreover, closer investigation of the specificcharacteristics of the teachers’ behavior which is evaluated as more or less just by theirstudents is clearly warranted.

Justice criteria should also be part of prevention or intervention methods regarding deviantbehavior, e.g., in the establishment of common behavioral codes for the class or the school, asalready included in some anti-aggression- (Petermann and Petermann 2012), anti-crime-(Cassel and Bernstein 2007), and anti-bullying-programs (e.g., Olweus 2006; Schubarth2010). In our perspective, the consideration of justice criteria could improve the effectivenessof such programs specifically and the acceptance of teachers’ legitimacy in general. Our studyclearly supports the notion that teachers’ just behavior is preventive of deviant behavior.

Adolescents’ cheating and delinquent behavior from a justice-psychological perspective 645

Educational practice and also research should not only focus on principles and criteria of justbehavior per se but also on the subjective meaning of these principles and criteria for theindividual student as justice evaluations are subjectively colored. Otherwise it may be difficultto figure out if particular behavioral strategies recommended by educational sciences areindeed seen as just and thus have beneficial consequences for the students.

We tested our hypotheses in two cultural contexts, namely Germany and India. Because ofthe novelty of our research we predominantly focused on the generalizability of our findings.There are many cultural differences between India and Germany regarding distribution ofwealth, religion, politics, cultural rules of cohabitation, or schooling. Despite this wealth ofcultural differences, the main results were the same for both countries. This speaks well thatjustice motivated processes are very basic processes. Nevertheless, we found that Indianstudents were more likely to engage in delinquent acts and conversely less likely to engagein cheating behavior than were German students; they also evaluated their teachers’ behaviortoward them to be less just. But none of the interaction effects regarding country weresignificant. Systematic differences in the explanation of cheating and delinquent behaviorbetween India and Germany are therefore unlikely. Our findings indicate that the meaning ofBJW for such deviant behavior can be generalized at least across two different culturalcontexts. Further research should nevertheless focus on replicating and substantiating theeffects of BJW and teacher justice in further countries.

We understand teacher justice as the students’ individually and subjectively experiencedjustice of the teachers’ behavior toward them personally (“they-to-me approach”; Peter andDalbert 2010; see also, Dalbert and Stoeber 2006). There might be other dimensions of theteachers’ behavior that qualify for potential predictors of deviant behavior. Caring, teaching,monitoring, or intervening as subsumed to the teachers’ classroom management was shown tobe related to another form of students’ deviant behavior, namely bullying behavior (Rolandand Galloway 2002). Furthermore, the students’ attitude toward the criminal legal systemmight be another potential factor. As Cohn and Modecki (2007) showed, a trustful attitudetoward the legal system can mediate the relation between adolescents’ BJW and their delin-quent behavior. For future studies, it would be worthwhile to investigate these factors alltogether with teacher justice in order to learn more about their relative importance inexplaining deviant behavior in adolescence.

Some important limitations to our research should be noted. Our data are cross-sectional,meaning that no causal conclusions can be drawn. Longitudinal studies would allow the causaldirection of the effects to be established. Furthermore, our variables were assessed by self-report measures, possibly leading to an overestimation of common variance and potentially tomeasurement error due to social desirability bias.

Regarding delinquent behavior, our data do not contain official records of the frequency ofcriminal acts. Delinquent behavior as investigated in our study is typically undetected by thepolice or the criminal justice system. Many authors in delinquency research discuss weak-nesses and strengths of self-report data (e.g., Baier 2008; Burfeind and Bartusch 2011;Hindelang et al. 1979) and raise some concerns about self-report data, e.g., the persons’over- or underreporting of their involvement in criminal acts or forgetting, potential populationor sampling effects, or the failure to measure the full range of delinquent acts. Despite all theseweaknesses, “The primary strength of self-report data is that they offer information about thedelinquent acts of those who have not been arrested or officially processed” and they “…alsoprovide researchers with opportunities to consider questions they would be unable to addresswith […] official […] data” (Burfeind and Bartusch, p. 48).

Regarding the measurement of cheating there might be several concerns which should beconsidered in future studies. The apparently most obvious concern could be that we measured

646 M. Donat et al.

cheating by using just four items. Research on cheating has identified a widespread repertoireof strategies commonly used by students (e.g., Davis et al. 2009). Therefore, our cheating scalewas not sufficient to measure the full range of these strategies. Nevertheless, the cheating scalewe used contains some of the most popular strategies of cheating described by Davis et al.(2009), e.g., making crib sheets or obtaining test answers from other students.

Our questionnaire generally consisted of scales that are either originally developed inGerman or in English language. For example, we used a German survey to measure cheatingwhich was translated into English to use it in the Indian sample whereas the survey ofdelinquency was in English and translated into German to use it in the German sample.Despite all accuracy in the translation process there might have occurred different meaning andvalidity in the two samples, namely for the delinquency and the cheating measurement. Thesepotential problems might have impacted our findings. However, no statistically significantdifferences in the correlation patterns between both samples revealed in our study.

Finally, we controlled for only a few confounding factors. In addition to neuroticism, futurestudies should control for additional characteristics that may also be related to delinquent orcheating behavior, respectively, namely agreeableness and conscientiousness (e.g., Miller et al.2003), extraversion and psychoticism (e.g., Eysenck and Gudjonsson 1989; Pulkkinen et al.2009), and psychopathy (Williams et al. 2010).

Conclusion

Along with the study of Donat et al. (2012) on bullying, our pattern of results indicates thatintuitive justice-driven processes can help to explain deviant behavior in and outside school,and that personal BJW can be interpreted as a resource for school students. The confidence thatmost things in their life tend to be just seems to strengthen adolescents’ motivation to avoidunjust and problematic social behavior. The more strongly students believe in a personal justworld in which they are treated justly, the less likely they are to engage in cheating anddelinquent behavior. Our data further showed that teacher justice mediates the adaptive relationbetween the personal BJW and those forms of deviant behavior in different cultural contexts.These findings highlight the key role of teacher justice in explaining deviant behavior. Takencollectively, future studies on deviant behavior at school and during adolescence shouldtherefore place a greater focus on the teachers’ role as well as on the function of intuitivejustice-driven processes in explaining such behavior.

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Matthias Donat. Institute of Education, Department of Educational Psychology, Martin Luther Univer-sity of Halle-Wittenberg, Franckeplatz 1, Haus 6, D-06110 Halle (Saale), Germany. E-mail:matthias.donat@paedagogik.uni-halle.de; Web site: http://www.philfak3.uni-halle.de/paedagogik/psycho-erz/

Current Themes of Research:

Meaning of justice cognitions for adolescents’ social behavior, their school refusal behavior, and well-being;justice judgments regarding grading at school

650 M. Donat et al.

Most relevant publications in the field of Psychology of Education:

Donat, M., Herrmann, M. & Umlauft, S. (2013). Gerechtigkeitserleben und Sozialverhalten von SchülerInnen[Justice experience and social behavior of pupils]. In C. Dalbert (Ed.), Gerechtigkeit in der Schule (pp. 73-92). Wiesbaden, Germany: Springer VS.

Donat, M., Umlauft, S., Dalbert, C. & Kamble, S. V. (2012). Belief in a just world, teacher justice, and bullyingbehavior. Aggressive Behavior, 38, 185–193.

Peter, F., Donat, M., Umlauft, S. & Dalbert, C. (2013). Einführung in die Gerechtigkeitspsychologie [Introduc-tion to justice psychology]. In C. Dalbert (Ed.), Gerechtigkeit in der Schule (pp. 11–32). Wiesbaden,Germany: Springer VS.

Claudia Dalbert. Institute of Education, Department of Educational Psychology, Martin Luther Uni-versity of Halle-Wittenberg, Franckeplatz 1, Haus 5, D-06110 Halle (Saale), Germany. E-mail:claudia.dalbert@paedagogik.uni-halle.de; Web site: http://www.philfak3.uni-halle.de/paedagogik/psycho-erz/

Current Themes of Research:

Justice concerns; school psychology; health and well-being; dealing with uncertainty

Most relevant publications in the field of Psychology of Education:

Dalbert, C. (2011). Warum die durch die Schüler und Schülerinnen individuell und subjektiv erlebteGerechtigkeit des Lehrerhandelns wichtig ist [Why the justice of the teachers’ behavior experienced bystudents individually and subjectively is important]. Zeitschrift für Pädagogische Psychologie, 25, 5–18.

Dalbert, C. (Ed.) (2013). Gerechtigkeit in der Schule [Justice in School]. Wiesbaden, Germany: Springer VS.Dalbert, C., Schneidewind, U. & Saalbach, A. (2007). Justice judgments concerning grading in school.

Contemporary Educational Psychology, 32, 420–433.Peter, F. & Dalbert, C. (2010). Do my teachers treat me justly? Implications of students’ justice experience for

class climate experience. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 35, 297–305.Peter, F., Kloeckner, N., Dalbert, C. & Radant, M. (2012). Belief in a just world, teacher justice, and student

achievement: A multilevel study. Learning and Individual Differences, 22, 55–63.

Shanmukh Vasant Kamble. Department of Psychology, Karnatak University, Dharwad-03, Karnataka State,India. E-mail: anilhubs@gmail.com

Current Themes of Research:

Belief in a just world; well-being; coping

Most relevant publications in the field of Psychology of Education:

Correia, I., Kamble, S. V., & Dalbert, C. (2009). Belief in a just world and well-being of bullies, victims anddefenders: A study with Portuguese and Indian students. Anxiety, Stress & Coping, 22, 497–508.

Donat, M., Umlauft, S., Dalbert, C., & Kamble, S. V. (2012). Belief in a just world, teacher justice, and bullyingbehavior. Aggressive Behavior, 38, 185–193.

Kamble, S. V. & Dalbert, C. (2012). Belief in a just world and wellbeing in Indian schools. International Journalof Psychology, 47(4), 269–278.

Adolescents’ cheating and delinquent behavior from a justice-psychological perspective 651