Cognitive Dissonance Essay

Grades tend to be more hurtful than anything. They have negative effects on students and how they learn. Cheating can become a series problem even with students who normally wouldn’t cheat. “Researchers have found that the more students are

Over the years, cheating does not carry the same stigma it used to represent. Because of competition and expectations, students are doing whatever it takes to achieve an A average. There are students who are fighting for scholarships or for the position to be on the top. Also, parents and teachers are the root cause of this matter because they have advocated the idea that high GPAs will lead to more successful futures. As a result, grades have become the main focus for most students,

For many students, failure is not an option. Their need to succeed outweighs the risk of getting caught while cheating. In her article, “College Cheating: Success Above Honor”, Carla Rivera writes, “Studies find that students feel under more pressure than ever to succeed and increasingly see cutting corners

75% of college students cheat at one time or another in their college careers due to laziness, competitive pressures, or simply fear. In “Cheating Lessons: Part 3”, by James M. Lang, he explains that certain learning environments unknowingly give students opportunities to cheat. Lang also provides tactics to help classrooms reduce the numbers of cheating, while aiding students to achieve their academic goals with the right “tools.”

Leon Festinger shared his brilliance with the world when he, opposing all previous psychological behaviorist work, created the Cognitive Dissonance Theory. In his own words, he quickly sums up this quite complex theory: "If you change a person’s behavior, his thoughts and feelings will change to minimize the dissonance" (Groenveld, 1999, p.1). In order to decode this dense statement, we must first be aware that Festinger held to be true that humans have a deep abiding need in their psyche to be consistent in our attitudes and behaviors; we want to feel in agreement and unified in thought and action. Inner harmony sounds good to everyone, and so it was Festinger’s view that when we feel a disharmony, or

Topic Background/Introduction: To get a positive response from an individual, one must offer a reward. To stop a particular response from an individual, one must present a punishment. The greater the reward and more severe the punishment, the more likely the individual is to respond to or stop the behavior. To achieve continued compliance, one has to continue to give a reward or punishment. Cognitive dissonance occurs when someone has two or more contradicting attitudes and behaviors. The only way to fix this is to change an attitude to match the behavior or change the behavior

Many students today feel the pressure of needing to succeed in the classroom. Because of this, many have forced themselves to cheat. This affects students towards the lower end of grades, and at the highest levels. This is especially prominent in upper classmen. In the article,”Moving From Cheating to Academic Honesty”, The author Eugene Bratek, finds examples, and solutions to academic dishonesty.

Cheating is defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “to break a rule or law usually to gain an advantage at something.” In this situation, the advantages that students strive for are “...dream colleges and dream jobs” (Yee 10). As students enter high schools (and especially prestigious schools such as the Stuyvesant High School and Bergen County Academies), the prospect of applying to colleges can be an extremely pressuring topic. Students may wonder how they “stack up” against other applicants, especially their own school. I can personally relate to this, as many of my peers were asking and comparing their grade point averages for the first trimester. The desire for a higher grade point average could ultimately lead to actions such as cheating and plagiarism. The article describes the morals many students have: “...many have

Schools today have a very large problem with academic dishonesty. Not only high schools, but also colleges as well have and abundance of students who cheat regularly. Although cheating is addressed in many school policies, a shocking number of students get away with it, and teachers do nothing about it. Whether its copying someone’s assignment to get theirs done, or plagiarizing an entire paper, students cheat.

We as students often use the misconception of cheating to take us into a higher level of authority, to succeed in school, or to get into a good college. Fairly enough we know that cheating can be beneficial to us, but there are consequences that come with this unjustifiable process. Is it used for survival for your own good? Cheating has come a long way, and it is been a long way into becoming a habit formed by society. It can be stopped, but it is our decision to make that choice. A recent study shows that more students are cheating- and they are cheating not just to survive, but also to thrive. Another study was shown that technology could be a major contribute in the rising amount of cheating. Using the Internet or cell phone is an advantage

Cognitive dissonance impacts attitudes and behavior negatively in the workplace in a variety of ways depending on the position you are employed. Being in management as an administrator you are faced with many challenges and situations that cause cognitive dissonance. For example, if my director asks me to perform a task and the way in which he wants me to perform the task, goes against my beliefs, I am forced to decide whether to follow his directives or risk termination for insubordination. The stress factor is making the correct decision. I can remember an instructor sending a student to me for conduct issues and wanted the student terminated from her program. The documentation that she provided to me was not sufficient to suspend the student,

In a practical sense, cognitive dissonance reactions generally originate from the peoples' perspective of themselves, especially as intelligent and nice people. Generally, the concept or theory of cognitive dissonance helps to understand how people attempt to make sense of the world they live in. However, the theory does not precisely forecast what a person will do minimize or get rid of disagreement. This theory mainly states that a person will be stimulated to do something in order to bring attitudes and behaviors into balance. As a result of its basic focus, cognitive dissonance has significant effects on various fields, especially in risk taking at a place of employment or specific industry.

While the problem of cheating has persisted in higher education, the perceived seriousness of cheating continues to change (McCabe & Trevino, 1996; Stephens, Young, & Calabrese, 2007). Notably, students with higher moral development levels view cheating more seriously than those with lower moral development levels (Leming, 1978; Semerci, 2006). While the process of going to college promotes students' moral development (King & Mayhew, 2002) and higher moral development levels correlate to lower incidences of cheating (Leming, 1978), determining the relationship between the two is necessary. Prior research has demonstrated a positive relationship between higher moral development levels and lower cheating incidences; however, most data is more than 30 years old (Leming, 1978).

Leon Festinger created the cognitive dissonance theory as an attempt to explain why people desire to have consistency between their behaviors and actions. Cognitive dissonance is the distressing mental state people feel when they find themselves doing things that don’t fit with what they know, or having opinions that do not fit with other opinions they hold (Festinger, 1957; as cited in Griffin, 2009). Thus, people are motivated to change either their behavior or their belief when feelings of dissonance arise.

Second, people cheat on tests in school. They may not realize at the time that by doing this, they are cheating themselves out of their own education. Is the passing grade what is really important, or is it the knowledge they have deprived themselves of? Cheating does not increase their knowledge or make them a better person. What they don't realize is that once they enter their career they won't have the knowledge they need to do their work successfully.