Individual Reasons For Cheating

More than 57% of our respondents believed that cheating was unacceptable and yet all of them admitted to indulging in it at some point or the other. Why? Cheating is often associated with outcomes such as peer pressure, depression, guilt and even compulsion for cheating. Considering these negative effects, why do people cheat? And is the phrase “once a cheater, always a cheater” true?
Our group work basically sought to answer three primary types of reasons for cheating:
Individual reasons: The phrase “once a cheater, always a cheater” refers to individual reasons for cheating—qualities about the person that make him or her more prone to commit such an act. Some individual factors which are likely to influence individual behavior are:
Personality:

These are compulsive people who can’t help but cheat. Some situations are more tempting than others. The nature of a person’s employment is also related to cheating—there are certain professions where it is considered perfectly acceptable to be involved in bribing, inflating financial statements, etc. Finally, people who live in urban areas, as opposed to rural, less populated regions, are at greater risk—people in metropolitan locations generally have more liberal attitudes about cheating, and cities simply have more people, creating an environment of higher anonymity and a larger potential group of people who indulge in similar

CONCLUSION

From our observation and study, we have come to a conclusion, most individuals have cheated at least once in their life. Cheating is all about rationalizing our actions. After cheating if a person can rationalize his actions, the guilt disappears. If one can rationalize things to high degree, one can cheat more and think of themselves as good people. However if one can rationalize less, even a small act of dishonesty make them feel very guilty about themselves. This is the main reason, we believe, that people also tend to help out their friends in cheating because it lends more social acceptance to the act.

Moreover, if we observe our friends cheating too, it helps with the rationalization process. People tend to be apprehensive about cheating if they know the implications of getting caught. Most of the people we interviewed that agreed that even when there was another way out, they cheated because, cheating seemed to be the easier way out, when they cheated. Eventually cheating is becomes a tussle between the Id and the Superego, the Id being the driver of the self will push for cheating as a viable means to an end and the Superego, being the moral guardian, will always condemn cheating. It’s comes down to the Ego to decide the future course of