Inadvertent plagiarism in everyday life

Inadvertent plagiarism is a source monitoring error described in laboratory studies. In the present study, the existence of this phenomenon in everyday life and the impact of a variable considered in laboratory (i.e. source similarity) were investigated. Two hundred and two participants were asked to remember an episode involving inadvertent plagiarism in the past, and to describe it. Results showed that inadvertent plagiarism occurs in real life conditions with respect to various types of activities. Moreover, source similarity had an impact on inadvertent plagiarism. In particular, same‐sex plagiarism occurred more often than opposite‐sex plagiarism. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.