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Framing plagiarism as a disease heightens students' valuation of academic integrity
Author(s) -
Keefer Lucas A.,
Brown Mitch,
Rothschild Zachary K.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
international journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.75
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1464-066X
pISSN - 0020-7594
DOI - 10.1002/ijop.12581
Subject(s) - metaphor , framing (construction) , psychology , rhetoric , perception , valuation (finance) , disease , social psychology , epistemology , linguistics , medicine , philosophy , structural engineering , finance , pathology , neuroscience , engineering , economics
Prior research based on conceptual metaphor theory has explored how metaphorical language subtly influences how people perceive social issues. For instance, rhetoric comparing a perceived problem to a disease has been used historically to generate support for a wide array of measures proposed to “treat” the problem, and recent experimental work demonstrates the efficacy of this approach. The current paper extends this literature by looking at the use of disease metaphor in a novel domain: student perceptions of plagiarism on campus. We found that participants ( N = 365) exposed to a disease‐metaphoric description of plagiarism on campus perceived it to be a more severe problem and, as a result, were more supportive of a variety of anti‐plagiarism policies. This mediational analysis further demonstrates the far‐reaching practical significance of metaphor.