TORONTO (CUP) — Chad* said he started cheating on tests because he was too lazy to put in the hours studying and wasn't interested in the course material.

"I didn't feel guilty because I felt that they were testing me on my memory, not on my understanding," said Chad, a third-year student at George Brown College in Toronto. "I don't have a really good memory. So I decided I was going to get back at them by cheating."

Chad confessed to helping other people cheat as well, by photographing exams and sending them out to friends.

"It's pretty widespread in college," said Chad. "I'm still currently cheating."

A September 7 study, conducted by the American Psychological Association, examined students like Chad and found that lack of remorse, a trait often associated with psychopathy, is common amongst scholastic cheaters.

High school and university students who admitted to cheating on tests or plagiarizing papers scored higher on personality tests of the "Dark Triad:" psychopathy, machiavellianism and narcissism.

Machiavellianism includes such qualities as manipulativeness, cynicism and amorality, while narcissism encompasses traits like self-centredness and a sense of entitlement.

Psychopathy, a personality disorder associated with the inability to feel guilt or empathy, was most strongly linked to cheating.

"We're talking about mild-level psychopaths here. They're not the same ones who have spent their whole lives in prison, maiming and killing people," said Delroy Paulhus, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia and one of the study's authors.

"But nonetheless, they show the same personality pattern."

Traditionally, it was believed that students who were unprepared were most likely to cheat. While the study found this to be true to some extent, personality profiling proved to be a much stronger predictor.

The research found two major motivators to cheat: Cheating students felt that they were entitled to good grades and they also didn't think that cheating was morally wrong.

Many students who cheated had very ambitious grade goals and felt that cheating was an appropriate means of attaining them.

"If you put people in very competitive, challenging situations, then the psychopaths in that group will resort to under-handed methods. So it's partly the context and partly the personality," said Paulhus.

Students are also more likely to cheat if they don't think that they will get caught or if they are simply not afraid of punishment.

Sarah*, a first-year student at the University of Toronto, echoed this sentiment. In Grade 12, Sarah and several of her classmates text messaged answers to each other on biology exams because they felt that the teacher wasn't paying close enough attention.

"First of all, it was so easy. Second of all, I didn't think she would do anything if I got caught. Third, she was a really boring teacher, so I never really paid attention in class and then I wasn't motivated to study. So I just never really knew the material very well," said Sarah.

Although Sarah regrets that she didn't learn anything in the course, she doesn't feel guilty for having cheated.

"I used to cheat on boyfriends all the time, and I never cared," said Sarah. "Now I do, but back then I didn't. When you don't get caught for something it's like it never happened."

She did feel guilty, however, for handing in somebody else's sonnet once, and receiving a high grade.

"I feel morally guilty for that one, because it was someone's actual work that I handed in, and they didn't know that I handed it in," said Sarah.

Advancements in technology have made it easier for students to cheat, according to Paulhus. With a quick text message or a Google search, students can obtain answers to an exam question or even entire essays.

But technological advancements can be used to detect cheating as well. A database such as Turnitin.com can help a professor identify whether parts of a paper were plagiarized from books, online sources or past essays.

Paulhus also referred to a program that allows professors to compare students' exams in order to gauge whether two students' answers are just a little too similar.

There are preventative measures that professors can take against cheating, as well. Paulhus recommends using different forms of the same test, banning cellphones and electronics, assigning seats and assigning essays about personal experiences that make it difficult for plagiarism to occur.

Taking such measures is the only way to limit cheating, said Paulhus, because it's difficult to intervene with people who display psychopathic traits.

"You can't really change them. There's no point to trying to talk them out of it. So you're going to have to change the context to avoid the fact that you're going to have such people in your classes," he said.

"Some students cheat out of desperation, because they don't have the ability or they're not prepared ... reducing the competitiveness of the academic atmosphere would help a little bit to remove the desperation of those students."

*Note: Names have been changed to protect privacy