The influence of bribery: how can leaders avoid taking bribes?

People in power around the world are too-often tempted to take bribes, and unfortunately, this is ubiquitous in human society.  But for those who tend to feel guilt – which can cause us to question our worth as human beings and induces sleepless nights and nights and stress-related physical symptoms in individuals – this tendency among leaders might have some benefits.

“People who are prone to feeling guilt in their everyday lives are less likely to take bribes,” said University of California at Santa Barbara psychology and brain sciences Prof. Hongbo Zhou who specializes in studying how social emotions give rise to behaviors. He led a team that collaborated with colleagues at East China Normal University and Zhejiang Normal University in China. They published their study in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science under the title “Are Guilt-Prone Power-Holders Less Corrupt? Evidence From Two Online Experiments.” 

Anticipatory guilt might make us think twice before undertaking an action with potentially bad consequences for others. But what has been less clear is how this crucial morality-related personality trait affects decisionmakers in situations involving temptation and incentives when balanced against potential harm to others. “The question was whether the trait of guilt is associated with a lower probability of engaging in corrupt behavior,” Yu said.

What does bribery entail?

The researchers concentrated on bribery, an act in which a person that typically has some level of power and influence is tempted to act illegally or unethically in exchange for favors or gifts from someone who wishes to use that influence unfairly for their gain.

In one of the researchers’ online experiments, participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire to record both demographic and personality information and their fairness concerns. They also participated in one of two scenarios. The first one put them into the role of an arbitrator with the power to assign students grades. They were each paired with a “co-player,” who, unbeknown to them, was fictitious. The co-players (in this case the fictitious students who had been graded) would try to bribe the participants to change their grades in exchange for a portion of the reward the co-players would receive for passing the test above a certain threshold.

The second scenario gave each participant 100 tokens, ostensibly to donate to a children’s charity such as UNICEF. Then co-players attempted to bribe the participants to give them the money in exchange for keeping a certain portion for themselves.

“The structure of the two scenarios is similar, but the critical difference is that in the charitable donation scenario, the victim is obvious,” Yu said. “The first scenario is more of just a violation of moral principle.”

As would be expected, participants who scored high in guilt-proneness from the questionnaire were less likely to accept a bribe in either of the two scenarios; the effect was more pronounced in the charitable donation scenario.

“You know someone’s going to get hurt,” Yu said. “In the paper we argue that when the victim is more salient, the association between the guilt trait and corrupt behavior becomes stronger.” Concern for others’ suffering, they said, might play a significant role in how guilt-proneness influences bribe-taking behaviors.

This study joins a growing body of work that associates guilt-proneness with fewer unethical decisions such as cheating for personal gain and counterproductive work behaviors. But it’s important to note that this study is correlational, Yu said. “We can’t make a causal claim that if we make people more guilt-prone, we will necessarily see less corruption. That needs more research.”

Indeed, the researchers found that guilt proneness is not the only trait that might predict corrupt behaviors or the lack of them, and it’s worth studying how this trait, along with other personality traits, might “serve as a reliable anti-corruption predictor in personnel selection,” such as when choosing people for leadership positions or for high-stakes jobs.

“We can’t claim causality, but we can leverage the association between the guilt trait and the lower likelihood of corruption to make us more confident about their integrity,” Yu said. “Maybe that’s something we can apply to the real world.”