The Integrity Mindset: An Obligation to Ourselves and Others

Abstract

Scientists and scholars should cultivate and maintain an integrity mindset. This involves the ability to build habits consciously to counteract systematic cognitive errors that undermine effective decision making. Both individuals and institutions need these habits to support ethical well-being of teaching and research in a system that has some dysfunctional elements that can be seen to reward questionable or selfish conduct that undercuts achieving the highest standards of integrity. Key junctures at which to develop an integrity mindset include: framing questions in designing experiments; critiquing students; sharing results with collaborators; writing up work for publication; pursuing disagreements with others; and assessing allegations of improper practice or misconduct. When we teach and talk about the responsible conduct of research, including discussing straightforwardly the places the formal and hidden curricula deviate from each other, we must do so in the integrity mindset.