Cheating behavior has been found to relate to emotion-attribution explanations. Prior research with second-grade children has indicated that increased self-control occurs in a watching task when the child's emotional response is attributed to internal rather than external actions. In the present study, freshman women (N=221) took a reading comprehension test about conscience development which was either similar to the children's internal or external orientation; control subjects read about memory. Results indicate that the predicted low cheating rate (15%) on a vocabulary test by the internal-condition subjects was significantly different from the external (30%) or the control (31%) subjects. (Author)