What does a young cheater look like? An innovative approach

Many studies have investigated the individual determinants of cheating behavior in laboratory experiments. In this chapter, we focus on the propensity to cheat of adolescents. By employing the results of a lab-in-the-field experiment and combining them with the results of a detailed questionnaire including questions on personality traits and demographic characteristics, we study the determinants of cheating in a population of Italian boy and girl scouts aged 12-16. A principal component analysis clearly identifies the important role of self-confidence-while the role of risk propensity is at most marginal. A study of interaction between traits, implemented through decision tree classifiers, confirms this main result and the validity of the PCA approach; moreover, it provides suggestive evidence of the importance of gender and risk propensity in specific subsamples of the population.