Background: Research on academic cheating has focused on understanding the individual and contextual factors that influence it. This study examined the mediating effect of cognitive appraisals on the relationship between personality traits and academic cheating among graduate university students.
Method: This research is a descriptive- correlation study. Among population of graduate students at Shahid Beheshti University, a sample consisting of 300 students (142 male 158 female) were selected by available sampling method and were response to the Big Five Inventory, the Academic Dishonesty Scale and Stress Appraisal Measure-Revised. Structural equation modeling was used to assess the mediating effects model.
Results: Results showed that there is a positive significant correlation between neurotism with academic cheating and a positive non-significant correlation between openness with academic cheating. Results also indicated that there is a negative significant correlation between agreeableness and conscientiousness  with academic cheating and a negative non-significant correlation between extraversion and academic cheating. Results also showed that there is a positive significant correlation between threat-oriented cognitive appraisal and a negative non-significant correlation between challenge-oriented cognitive appraisals. Results showed that the partially mediated model of threat-oriented cognitive appraisal on the relationship between personality traits and academic cheating  had acceptable fit to data.
Conclusion: In one hand, the results provide further support for prediction of academic cheating by personality traits and on the other hand, these finding show that the part of available variance in academic cheating in the context of prediction these behavior models by personality traits, accounted for persons' preferred cognitive appraisal to stressors.