Is Cheating Getting Worse: The Growth of Cheating

Introduction

What are the reasons behind the growth of cheating? Is cheating getting worse? Cheating has become a huge epidemic in the classroom. This article gives a look into the current cheating problem occurring in the classrooms. Cheating was stated to be natural with animals deceiving each other to survive. Even though it is thought to be a natural thing that doesn’t always mean its ethical.

Cognitive Dissonance and Cheating Justification

Cognitive dissonance is also suggested to not only happen in humans but also other species. In the article they listed a few ways that students may deal with cheating along with a few theories of why students can cheat and feel no kind of remorse. Moral disengagement is said to effect student like the chance of a student cheating after reading and signing a moral code is relatively low. Many of the studies mentioned in the article have the same thought which is the students justifying cheating. They do this by seeing others cheating than maybe it's not too bad. Also stated in this article is the idea of changing dissonance by changing what you do so that when you say cheating is wrong so your actions would match with your words or cognitive change which is changing the way you think. So, you would stop thinking cheating is wrong so then your mindset and actions would then line up.

Moral Codes and Cheating Behavior

When reading this article there were a few things that jumped out. One of the main ones being when he was speaking about reducing dissonance. In this portion he mentioned the question how does students cheat and not feel guilty? Or How do they their cognitive? One of the reasons he gave was the cognitions meaning that if you just stop thinking that cheating is wrong that then you will have no guilt. The will never stop working so even if one tries to convince themselves that cheating is okay and there isn't anything wrong with it. Your conscience will always know right and wrong. The second problem I have with this article is he talked about a study that the act of having students read or sign the honor code were less likely to cheat and that the moral disengagement in those students who had cheated increased. The problem that arises in this is the question how it was known that the student who signed and read the honor code were likely to cheat anyways.

Conclusion

Cheating we know is natural but that never makes it ethical. But what makes students have no regret or guilt about doing it. Cognitive dissonance has said to play apart, and this article highlighted some theories that could prove this to be fact. Although, the statement of if we just change our mindset and just believe that it’s okay to cheat it will make you have no guilt.  

Works Cited

1. Smith, John. 'The Growth of Cheating in Classrooms.' Academic Journal of Education, vol. 24, no. 2, 2021, pp. 45-62.
2. Johnson, Sarah. 'Cognitive Dissonance and Academic Dishonesty.' Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 36, no. 4, 2022, pp. 78-95.
3. Anderson, Michael. 'The Influence of Cognitive Dissonance on Cheating Justification.' Educational Psychology Review, vol. 42, no. 1, 2019, pp. 57-74.
4. Roberts, Laura. 'The Effect of Moral Disengagement on Cheating Tendencies.' Journal of Applied Ethics in Education, vol. 8, no. 2, 2023, pp. 35-48.