Rates of unconscious plagiarism were investigated using Brown and Murphy's 3-stage
paradigm. Initially, participants completed the creative Alternate Uses Test (generation
phase) and then at test, recalled their original ideas (recall-own phase) and generated
new ideas (generate-new phase). In both of the testing phases, participants plagiarised
by reporting someone else's ideas as either their own idea or a new idea. Plagiarism rates
increased over a one week retention interval (Experiment 2) and both active and passive
participants were equally likely to plagiarise someone else's idea as a new idea
(Experiment 1). When an elaboration phase was incorporated into the paradigm,
following idea generation, different types of elaboration had clear and consistent effects
on participant performance. Elaboration by rating ideas positively and negatively
improved correct recall (Experiment 3) and rating the imaginability of ideas (Imagery-elaboration
IE) and improving the ideas in three ways (generative-elaboration GE) also
increased correct recall to a comparable degree (Experiment 4). In the generate-new
phase, these different types of elaboration either reduced plagiarism (Experiment 4) or did
not affect the level of plagiarism relative to control (Experiment 3, 5, 6, 7 & 8). However,
in the recall-own phase, the GE alone consistently led to the highest levels of unconscious
plagiarism (relative to IE or control, Experiment 4, 5, 6, 8). This pattern prevailed when
participants were encouraged not to plagiarise by means of a financial incentive
(Experiment 5) or when their memory was assessed more stringently by a source
monitoring task (Experiment 9). IE did not result in such recalled intrusions, even when it
was matched in terms of content to the GE (Experiment 6) or when IE was repeated (3
days after generation) and thus strengthened (Experiment 7). Also, strengthening IE did
not affect plagiarism levels in a source monitoring task (Experiment 11). Strengthening
GE, on the other hand served to dramatically inflate the observable intrusions in both a
recall-own task (Experiment 8) and in a source monitoring task (Experiment 10).
Therefore, contrary to a strength account, the probability of plagiarising another's ideas as
one's own is linked to the generative nature of the elaboration performed on that idea,
rather than its familiarity. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings will
be discussed.
Date of Award | 2005 |
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Original language | English |
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Awarding Institution | |
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THE EFFECTS OF IDEA ELABORATION ON UNCONSCIOUS PLAGIARISM
STARK, L. (Author). 2005
Student thesis: PhD