Accountability Reduces Unconscious Plagiarism

Summary: We investigated how holding participants accountable for their responses affected unconscious plagiarism when solving a Boggle puzzle task (finding words in a 44 letter matrix). Both experimental and control participants (N=60) generated puzzle solutions with a computer partner, recalled their own previously generated solutions, and then produced new solutions to the puzzles. Accountability was manipulated by telling participants in the experimental group before beginning the initial-generation phase that at the end of the session, they would review their generated responses with the researcher (accountable participants). Accountable participants plagiarized less than control participants when generating words with the computer and generating new solutions on their own but not when they were attempting to recall words they initially generated. The data are discussed in terms of the leading theoretical explanation of unconscious plagiarism, the source-monitoring framework. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Cases of plagiarism are of the utmost concern in academic and non-academic contexts alike (e.g. Goodwin withdraws, 2002; Plotz, 2002), but not all plagiarism is intentional. Anecdotal cases of unconscious plagiarism have been recorded in which the perpetrator was truly unaware of his crime (e.g. Freud, 1917). Cryptomnesia, or unconscious plagiarism, occurs when remembered ideas are not recognized as memories (Taylor, 1965). In other words, cryptomnesia occurs when an individual claims an idea to be her own new creation, when in fact, she fails to remember that it was produced by someone else, or even by herself at a prior point in time (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993; Marsh & Bower, 1993; see also Goodwin, 2002). The present study tested the hypothesis that unconscious plagiarism can be reduced by simply highlighting that participants’responses will be reviewed with a knowledgeable other, in this case, with the researcher. To lay the foundation for this research, we introduce how cryptomnesia is investigated in the laboratory and discuss why this memory error arises. Then, we discuss the effect of motivation on unconscious plagiarism. Finally, we summarize the hypothesis in the present study. The first laboratory investigation of cryptomnesia was performed by Brown and Murphy (1989), and their three-stage paradigm has been utilized in many subsequent investigations of the phenomenon. In the first stage, called initial generation, participants took turns within a group of four participants generating a new exemplar from common categories such as sports and clothing. In the second stage, recall own, participants recalled the four exemplars they personally generated for each category. In the third stage, generate new, participants generated four new examples that had not been stated by the group previously. Brown and Murphy defined unconscious plagiarism as when a participant recalled another person’s category exemplar when she was instructed to remember the exemplars she stated or when a participant wrote another person’s exemplar when she was instructed to write an entirely new response. They also noted that a person can plagiarize herself when attempting to generate a new word, yet she repeats one she generated earlier. Brown and Murphy found that participants unconsciously plagiarized at levels significantly greater than chance in all three stages. Marsh and Bower (1993) adapted the Brown and Murphy paradigm, so participants generated word solutions to Boggle puzzles with a computer (located words in a 44 letter matrix). They found that this task elicited unconscious plagiarism of the computer partner and of the participants themselves. Subsequent studies indicate that cryptomnesia also occurs when stimuli to be plagiarized are more complex than single-word responses. Cryptomnesia has been docu