The World Bank has long defined corruption as the abuse of public office for private gain. Transparency International defines it as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain. Many commentators and politicians are shying away from referring to the current scandal engulfing our police as corruption. Regardless of what label we apply to this behaviour, dishonest conduct by powerful people carries broader societal implications.
A number of studies explore dishonesty at different levels of society and government. One study by two researchers at the University of Nottingham investigated how individual honesty and the propensity to break rules correlate.
First, they developed a way to measure rule violations for a set of countries by looking at the size of a country’s shadow economy as a proxy for tax evasion, along with other measures of corruption.
Then they recruited university students in those countries to play a game. Each participant was asked to toss a six-sided die in private and report the outcome. Participants received one dollar for rolling a one, two dollars for rolling a two, and so on, except for a six, which paid nothing.
The experiments examined how players’ average choices varied across countries and whether their reported outcomes correlated with corruption levels in their home country.
If someone is completely dishonest, they would always report a five to get the maximum payout of five dollars. But because everyone has a one in six chance of rolling a five, reporting too many fives signals lying.
The researchers found that in countries with minimal rule-breaking, lying about rolling high numbers was low. This contrasted sharply with countries where rule violations were more common. Their results suggest that institutions and cultural values shape people’s likelihood of bending or breaking rules. Many individuals remain honest or limit their dishonesty in ways that mirror the overall integrity of their environment.
A further study by US researchers examined whether cultural norms influence corrupt behaviour. They investigated whether parking violations by diplomats in New York City reflected corruption levels in their home countries.
Until late 2002, members of diplomatic missions to the United Nations had immunity from parking violations. Illegally parked cars were ticketed, but there was no obligation to pay.
Researchers collected data on unpaid parking violations by diplomats from 149 countries. They also measured corruption levels using a method similar to the Corruption Perceptions Index.
They found a strong positive correlation between unpaid parking violations and home country corruption. More concerningly, the frequency of unpaid tickets increased the longer diplomats lived in New York. Diplomats from low-corruption countries showed the fastest proportional increases in violations over time.
Punishing corruption matters. In a bribery game run with co-authors in Australia, university students acted as businesses, public officials and citizens. A business and an official could collude in bribery to enrich themselves, but a citizen would bear significant monetary harm. The citizen could punish the bribery with heavy fines, but doing so required sacrificing their own money.
We recruited about 600 students in Australia and 300 in India to compare behaviour. There were major differences, particularly in willingness to punish corruption. In India, only 28 percent of citizens chose to punish bribe takers. In Australia, the figure was 53 percent.
The problem with dishonesty is that it thrives when people either engage in it or ignore it. Tolerance for rule-breaking makes corruption endemic, hard to uproot and corrosive to our shared norms of honesty.
Ananish Chaudhuri is Professor of Experimental Economics at the University of Auckland. Besides Auckland, he has taught at Harvard Kennedy School, Rutgers University, Washington State University and Wellesley College. This article was sourced HERE
First, they developed a way to measure rule violations for a set of countries by looking at the size of a country’s shadow economy as a proxy for tax evasion, along with other measures of corruption.
Then they recruited university students in those countries to play a game. Each participant was asked to toss a six-sided die in private and report the outcome. Participants received one dollar for rolling a one, two dollars for rolling a two, and so on, except for a six, which paid nothing.
The experiments examined how players’ average choices varied across countries and whether their reported outcomes correlated with corruption levels in their home country.
If someone is completely dishonest, they would always report a five to get the maximum payout of five dollars. But because everyone has a one in six chance of rolling a five, reporting too many fives signals lying.
The researchers found that in countries with minimal rule-breaking, lying about rolling high numbers was low. This contrasted sharply with countries where rule violations were more common. Their results suggest that institutions and cultural values shape people’s likelihood of bending or breaking rules. Many individuals remain honest or limit their dishonesty in ways that mirror the overall integrity of their environment.
A further study by US researchers examined whether cultural norms influence corrupt behaviour. They investigated whether parking violations by diplomats in New York City reflected corruption levels in their home countries.
Until late 2002, members of diplomatic missions to the United Nations had immunity from parking violations. Illegally parked cars were ticketed, but there was no obligation to pay.
Researchers collected data on unpaid parking violations by diplomats from 149 countries. They also measured corruption levels using a method similar to the Corruption Perceptions Index.
They found a strong positive correlation between unpaid parking violations and home country corruption. More concerningly, the frequency of unpaid tickets increased the longer diplomats lived in New York. Diplomats from low-corruption countries showed the fastest proportional increases in violations over time.
Punishing corruption matters. In a bribery game run with co-authors in Australia, university students acted as businesses, public officials and citizens. A business and an official could collude in bribery to enrich themselves, but a citizen would bear significant monetary harm. The citizen could punish the bribery with heavy fines, but doing so required sacrificing their own money.
We recruited about 600 students in Australia and 300 in India to compare behaviour. There were major differences, particularly in willingness to punish corruption. In India, only 28 percent of citizens chose to punish bribe takers. In Australia, the figure was 53 percent.
The problem with dishonesty is that it thrives when people either engage in it or ignore it. Tolerance for rule-breaking makes corruption endemic, hard to uproot and corrosive to our shared norms of honesty.
Ananish Chaudhuri is Professor of Experimental Economics at the University of Auckland. Besides Auckland, he has taught at Harvard Kennedy School, Rutgers University, Washington State University and Wellesley College. This article was sourced HERE
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