The Dispositional Nature of Academic Dishonesty: Personality Types, Ethical Orientation and Cheating Our research examined the relationship between academic dishonesty, personality types, situational factors and ethical orientation. The purpose of our study was to explore what factors contribute to student cheating; prior research has shown that there is data to back up both individual and situational factors. We had 224 students participate in our study, our survey was made available to students online. We found that there was a weak correlation between Extraversion and net cheating, the amount a person cheated overall, r (222)= .186, p< .006. Cheating was also weakly negatively correlated with scores on the Ethical Positions Questionnaire, r (222) = -.277, p< .001. Cheating behavior increased as individuals scored higher on the Relativism scale; indicating that students who view morals as being relative are more likely to cheat. Our strongest correlation with academic dishonesty was the situational score, r (222)= .363, p< .001, which measured whether or not students perceived cheating as occurring frequently on their campus. Our research indicates that academic dishonesty may be more based on situational factors, with individual factors playing a smaller secondary role. Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Meredith Minear