Psychfest: The Study Struggle Paradox - Why Knowing Better Doesn’t Mean Doing Better
By Gillian Fogarty, Psychology Student, MIC.
Supervisor: Finn Lannon
If you ask most university students how they should study, the answers are often impressively accurate. Strategies such as spaced repetition (Yuan, 2022), active recall (Dunlosky et al., 2013) and the Pomodoro method (Cirillo, 1980) are widely recognised as effective, yet when exams loom, many students fall back on cramming, procrastination, and last-minute panic.
This contradiction lies at the heart of what I explored in my undergraduate dissertation: The Study Struggle Paradox - the gap between what students know works and what they actually do.
A Psychological Puzzle
At first glance, this behaviour seems irrational. Why would students knowingly sabotage their own learning? Psychology offers a compelling explanation through Cognitive Dissonance Theory, introduced by Leon Festinger (1957). This theory suggests that when our behaviours conflict with our beliefs, we experience psychological discomfort.
For students, this conflict may arise when they believe they should be using effective study strategies but instead find themselves cramming the night before an exam. This mismatch can create feelings of guilt, frustration, and anxiety.
But Here’s the Twist...
You might expect students to resolve this discomfort by changing their behaviour, but, surprisingly, that’s not always what happens. Rather than adopting more effective learning strategies, students often reduce the discomfort by justifying their habits. Some convince themselves that they work better under pressure, while others minimise the importance of evidence-based study techniques. Although some students do alter their behaviour, many find alternative ways to reconcile the conflict between what they know and what they do.
To deepen this understanding, my study also drew on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (Azjen, 1991). According to this theory, behaviour is influenced by attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control. In other words, students may value effective studying, but their actions are also shaped by the behaviours of those around them and by whether they feel capable of consistently applying effective strategies.
As a result, study behaviours are often influenced by peer norms that normalise cramming, time pressures created by heavy workloads, and a lack of confidence in implementing unfamiliar study techniques. The issue is therefore not simply a lack of knowledge. Instead, it reflects the extent to which students feel supported, motivated, and capable of acting on what they already know.
So the issue is not just about knowledge - it’s about whether students feel able, supported, and motivated to act on that knowledge.
Why Study B Ed Psychology Students?
My research focused on final-year B.Ed Psychology students - future educators who are used to studying and expected to model effective learning strategies.
This introduced an additional layer of complexity. Participants were not only managing a gap between knowledge and behaviour; they were also experiencing tension between the type of educators they aspired to become and the study habits they currently employed. This tension can be understood as a form of professional identity dissonance, where students aspire to be effective and knowledgeable teachers while simultaneously engaging in study behaviours they would be unlikely to recommend to future pupils.
The Findings
Through qualitative interviews, several important themes emerged. Students demonstrated high levels of awareness regarding effective study strategies, yet many continued to rely on less effective methods. Feelings of guilt and frustration were commonly reported, while social and structural pressures strongly influenced behaviour. Many participants prioritised immediate performance outcomes, such as passing examinations, over deeper learning and long-term retention. Furthermore, professional identity conflict emerged when students acknowledged that they would not encourage their future pupils to study in the same ways they currently did themselves.
Crucially, the findings suggested that knowledge alone is not sufficient to produce behaviour change. The Study Struggle Paradox reveals that the challenge is not that students do not know how to study effectively; rather, they struggle to translate that knowledge into consistent action.
This challenges a common assumption within education that simply teaching students better study strategies will solve the problem.
The Study Struggle Paradox reveals something important - the issue isn’t that students don’t know how to study, it’s that they struggle to translate knowledge into action. This challenges a common assumption in education that simply teaching students better strategies will solve the problem.
Implications: Rethinking Study Support
If universities want students to change their study behaviours, they may need to move beyond raising awareness alone. My findings suggest that institutions should focus on scaffolding effective study behaviours rather than simply teaching them. Consideration should also be given to spacing assessment deadlines in ways that reduce the need for last-minute cramming, addressing emotional responses to studying such as anxiety and guilt, and creating learning environments that actively support effective habits.
We need to target not just cognition, but behaviour, identity, and context.
Future Research
Future research could explore whether interventions can reduce dissonance and change behaviour, how study habits develop over time (longitudinal research), whether these patterns exist across different student populations, or take a quantitative approach.
Final Message
The Study Struggle Paradox highlights a deeply human truth that is possibly relevant across multiple domains and aspects of life - knowing the right thing to do doesn’t always mean we’ll do it. And perhaps, instead of asking “Why don’t students study properly?”, we should be asking “What makes it so hard for them to act on what they already know?”.
References
Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behaviour. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 179–211.
Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford University Press.
Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students’ learning with effective learning techniques. Gothic.net, 14(1), 4– 58.
Ogut, E. (2025). Assessing the efficacy of the Pomodoro technique in enhancing anatomy lesson retention during study sessions: a scoping review. BMC Medical Education, 25(1), 1440.
Yuan, X. (2022). Evidence of the Spacing Effect and Influences on Perceptions of Learning and Science Curricula. Cureus, 14(1).
