The Influence Of Guilt Trait On Corruption

Corrupt behavior usually refers to the illegal(immoral)behavior of "power holder abusing power for personal gain".When the abuse of power to obtain self-interest,it will inevitably damage the interests of others,resulting in negative results.Previous studies focused on situational factors(such as supervision and punishment)and individual characteristics of power holders(such as gender and cultural background),and investigated the causes and prevention mechanisms of corrupt behaviors from the perspective of behavioral phenomena,while ignoring the potential role of moral sense and moral emotion in influencing corrupt behaviors.As a typical moral emotion,guilt emotion is considered as a potential psychological mechanism to restrain corrupt behavior.Guilty trait is a long-formed and stable personality trait,and it is also an important measure of moral sense.In this study,two large-scale online experiments were conducted to investigate the influence of guilt traits of power holders on corrupt behavior and the moderating effect of negative outcomes.Study 1 examined whether individuals,as power holders,were willing to accept bribes in order to help the bribe-giver pass an exam(test situation)or receive donations(donation situation).Compared with the test situation,the donation situation had an additional negative outcome(even if the third party’s benefit was damaged).In this study,a single-factor interparticipant design was used,with negative outcomes as the independent variable(type of situation)and corrupt behavior as the dependent variable(that is,whether an individual accepts a bribe or not).Guilt trait was measured by the scores of the Guilt-Shame Tendency Questionnaire(GASP)on the Guilt-Negative Tendency(NBE).The results showed that: 1)guilt trait can negatively predict individuals’ corrupt behavior,that is,the bribery rate of individuals decreases with the increase of guilt trait score;2)The bribery rate of individuals in the negative outcome situation(donation situation)compared with the examination situation;3)The negative results moderated the effect of guilt propensity on corrupt behavior,that is,in the donation condition,individuals with high guilt trait were less likely to accept bribes,while in the examination condition,guilt trait had no significant effect on bribery behavior.In the second study,an experimental task based on behavioral economics paradigm(corrupt game)was used to further investigate how guilt traits influence corrupt behavior by influencing the cognitive components of corrupt decisions.Specifically,as the power holder,the subject needs to decide whether he is willing to accept bribes to help the briber meet the test scores.At the same time,there will be a negative result,that is,different number of third parties will lose profits as a result.In this study,a univariate in-subject design was used and the independent variable was negative outcome(number of victims).In order to enrich the trial and conduct the analysis based on the computational model,the study also manipulated the self-benefit and bribe-giver-self-benefit unfairness,and the dependent variable was corrupt behavior(i.e.,whether an individual accepted a bribe or not).Using generalized linear mixed effect regression,the effect in study 1 remained stable,namely,the negative outcome moderated the effect of guilt propensity on corrupt behavior: high guilt(vs.Individuals with low guilt traits are less likely to accept bribes as the number of victims increases.Based on the results of the computational model,we found that guilt traits specifically modulated individuals’ sensitivity to negative outcomes: high guilt(vs.Individuals with low guilt traits are more sensitive to hurting others;Exploratory mediating analysis further showed that guilt traits influenced corrupt behavior by moderating sensitivity to negative outcomes.In conclusion,this study reveals the important role of guilt traits of power holders in corrupt behavior and the moderating factors of negative outcomes(such as harm to others).This study deepens the understanding of the influence of moral emotion and moral sense on corrupt behavior,expands the understanding of the social function of guilt,and provides a new perspective for in-depth understanding of the changing rules of corrupt behavior.In practice,the results of this study can provide valuable scientific basis for relevant departments to establish more effective and feasible corruption prevention system to a certain extent.