Predictors of Bribe-Taking: The Role of Bribe Size and Personality.

Marek A Vranka,Štěpán Bahník

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01511

Marek A Vranka, Štěpán Bahník

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01511

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Abstract

Laboratory studies allow studying the predictors of bribe-taking in a controlled setting. However, presently used laboratory tasks often lack any connection to norm violation or invite participants to role-play. A new experimental task for studying the decision to take a bribe was designed in this study to overcome these problems by embedding the opportunity for bribe-taking in an unrelated task that participants perform. Using this new experimental task, we found that refraining from harming a third party by taking a bribe was associated with lower offered bribes and higher scores of the participants on the honesty-humility scale from the HEXACO personality inventory. A trial-level analysis showed that response times were longer for trials with bribes and even longer for trials in which bribes were accepted. These results suggest that taking a bribe may require overcoming automatic honest response and support the validity of the honesty-humility scale in predicting moral behavior.

Highlights

Corruption has a considerable negative impact on economic and social development (Jain, 2001)
In accordance with the results of previous studies showing the association between the honesty-humility trait and fair behavior in economic games (Hilbig and Zettler, 2009, 2015; Hilbig et al, 2015), we show that the honesty-humility scale is negatively associated with corrupt behavior, and this further supports the validity of the task
Our new task overcomes the abovementioned problem; the main feature of the experimental task is that the decision to accept or reject bribes is embedded in a setting in which participants are asked to perform an action according to given rules and corrupt behavior is associated with breaking these rules

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Corruption has a considerable negative impact on economic and social development (Jain, 2001). We introduce a new experimental task that overcomes this problem, because in the task, taking a bribe is always clearly associated with a norm violation, even when neutral language is employed. No participant is assigned the role of a briber, and there is no possibility to study the decision to offer a bribe or the development of a relationship between briber and bribee These aspects can be added to the game relatively in future implementations. While previous studies usually employed one-shot interactions, our new task allows us to explore possible interactions of reaction times with the number of trials, size of a bribe, and cumulative harm caused to a third party

MATERIALS AND METHODS

DISCUSSION

Limitations and Future

Findings

CONCLUSION

ETHICS STATEMENT