The Relationship Between Academic Achievement And Lying Behavior Of High School Students:the Moderating Effect Of Achievement Motivation

Lying,as one type of immoral behavior,often occurs in daily life.High school students often lie in such a way: cheating in order to get better grades,lying in order to get the appreciation or material rewards of parents and teachers,and so on.Students with high academic achievement are often regarded as "good students".In the public opinion,they may have less lying behavior than students with low academic achievement.Therefore,this study will explore whether students with high academic achievement can still abide by the moral norms of "good students" in the face of material and social rewards,and whether there are differences in lying behavior between students with high academic achievement and students with low academic achievement.Achievement motivation is considered to be one of the external factors that affect the behavior of lying.This study introduces the variable of achievement motivation to explore the motivation of lying behavior of high school students with high academic achievement.In the first study,1075 senior high school students in Mingguang middle school were measured by using the academic achievement scale and the lying scale,and the relationship between academic achievement and lying behavior of senior high school students was preliminarily explored.The results of correlation analysis showed that there was a significant weak positive correlation between mathematics academic achievement and lying behavior.In the second study,104 senior high school students were selected as subjects,and the matrix task paradigm was used to measure the lying behavior.The single factor inter subject experiment was conducted to further explore the relationship between the lying behavior and academic achievement of senior high school students in the situation of rewards.The results of correlation analysis showed that there was a significant negative correlation between the academic achievement and lying behavior of senior high school students.In Study 3,91 senior high school students’ academic achievement was manipulated.The paradigm of psychological knowledge test and achievement motivation scale were used to explore the influence of academic achievement on lying behavior of senior high school students under the situation of reward,and the effect of achievement motivation on this influence.The results of ANOVA showed that the main effect of academic achievement was significant,and the interaction between academic achievement and achievement motivation was significant.In high school students with high academic achievement,the lying behavior of high achievement motivation group is significantly higher than that of low achievement motivation group;in high school students with low academic achievement,there is no significant difference in lying behavior between high achievement motivation group and low achievement motivation group.Based on the above research,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)Academic achievement can significantly affect lying behavior of high school students.In the face of situational reward,students with high academic achievement make less lying than students with low academic achievement.(2)Achievement motivation significantly moderates the relationship between academic achievement and lying behavior.Among the students with high academic achievement,the students with higher achievement motivation are more likely to lie,while achievement motivation has no significant effect on the lying behavior of high school students with low academic achievement.This conclusion reminds mental health educators that high school students with high academic achievement need to cultivate their moderate achievement motivation to reduce the occurrence of lying behavior.