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

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.

Punishment and corruption

“…In the real world, higher benefits are associated with higher risks (Pleskac & Hertwig, 2014), which could make the possibility of punishment more salient when a higher bribe is offered. In a previous study using the same paradigm, participants spent more time on trials with higher bribes (Vranka & Bahník, 2018), which suggests that they have more time to consider the negative impact of punishment. Additionally, we cannot rule out the possibility that participants who took even low bribes were those who paid less attention to the instructions and were thus also less affected by the manipulations of punishment.…”

“…People with high emotionality may be more worried by punishment or overestimate its likelihood and they might therefore respond to it more strongly. When there is no punishment, emotionality does not seem to play a role (Vranka & Bahník, 2018) or might be positively associated with dishonest behavior (Conrads et al, 2013).…”

“…However, because these tasks use abstract and neutral language and do not contain violation of any rules or norms, it is unclear whether participants even understand that the transaction in question is supposed to represent corruption. To overcome these issues, we use a task developed by Vranka and Bahník (2018). The task models corruption in a bureaucratic setting, in which a public official can gain a reward for providing a favor for another person (Jain, 2001).…”

“…If the participant presses "2," the object would be matched to a wrong color, and would cause a loss of 200 points for the charity, but it would be sorted according to its shape, allowing the participant to gain the 100 points marked on the object in addition to the 3 points awarded for each sorted object. Adapted from "Bureaucracy game: A new computer task for the experimental study of corruption," by M. A Vranka and Š. Bahník, 2018, . Frontiers in Psychology, 9:1511, p. 3.…”

Experimental test of the effects of punishment probability and size on the decision to take a bribe

“…Because the usually used tasks use abstract and neutral language and do not contain violation of any rules or norms, it is unclear whether participants even understand that the transaction in question represents corruption. To overcome these issues, we use a task developed by Vranka and Bahník (2018). The task models corruption in a bureaucratic setting, in which a public official can gain a reward for providing a favor for another person (Jain, 2001).…”