New Scientist, November 5, 2011, presents an article that suggests anyone can become corrupt. “If we are mostly honest, most of the time, that may just be down to a lack of opportunity,” says Samuel Bendahan at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. In Lausanne studies of participants playing a specifically devised game showed that, after the first five rounds, 20% had resorted to theft, and if people were offered more ways to profit during the game by round ten the figure increased to 45%.
In another study by Joris Lammers at Tilburg University in The Netherlands and Adam Galinsky at Northwestern University in Chicago, the researchers suggest that “empowered individuals were prone to cheating, yet they were harsher in their condemnation of immoral acts than were people primed to feel powerless – and they were hypocritical, judging such acts to be less blameworthy if carried out by themselves than by others.” Therefore it appears that the more power a person has, the more likely they are to be susceptible to corruption and hypocrisy.
Studies appear to suggest that where there is a culture of corruption, it seems to be almost contagious. Danila Serra of Florida State University and Abigail Barr at the University of Oxford conducted a series of experiments with Oxford undergraduates from 34 countries. Each person had to decide whether or not to bribe an official for service. Barr and Serra found that participants in the experiment from countries with the worst Corruption Perception Index (CPI) scores, a list published annually by Transparency International, were more likely to engage in bribery. Hence, they deduced that our propensity to engage in corruption is strongly cultural, reflecting the social norms of the country in which we live. Dan Ariely at MIT found that the more creative a person, the more likely they are to cheat. He says creative people are more able to tell a story to cover their cheating tendencies.
However, studies also show that individuals can become less corrupt. Barr and Serra, in further studies, found that a person’s tendency to bribe declined the longer the person spent in the United Kingdom (a country with a ‘very clean’ Corruption Perception Index – i.e. a country deemed to have a low rate of corruption).
Interestingly, Barr and Serra found that graduates from countries on the CPI list that were deemed to be ‘very corrupt’ tended to be more honest than their undergraduate compatriots who had spent equal amounts of time in the United Kingdom. The researchers, therefore, see these graduates (i.e. those who studied abroad) as non-conformers who could fight corruption if they return to their country. In other words, they could be agents of change. However, Bendahan did not find the same result with 300 students and determined that an initially honest person is not immune from corruption.
The studies show that reducing corruption in countries is not easy. They advocate deterrents and punishment, because punishment works in laboratory experiments. There is evidence that social disapproval can reduce corruption. However, the most effective method of reducing corruption was to increase the number of audits or assessments of a project or government agency, or NGO (non-government organization) for accountability. Serra also revealed that anonymous complaints can also reduce corruption provided that they are logged centrally and trigger an official investigation if a threshold number of complaints have been received. In addition, the studies recommend that there should be more checks and balances at the top/executive level of a government or organization to avoid corruption by individual people in power.
In addition to reducing opportunities for individuals to take corrupt actions, countries must be accountable in the form of government transparency.
The 2010 least corrupt countries on the annual Transparency International CPI list included Denmark, New Zealand, Singapore, Finland, Sweden, Australia, United Kingdom, and the United States. The most corrupt countries on the 2010 list were Somalia, Burma, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
Studies by Peter Turchin, a population biologist at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, maintains that the form of corruption that is most difficult to eradicate is that perpetrated by elite groups against their fellow citizens. He states that countries that are ‘mature’ and less corrupt are those where: (1) resources are shared more or less equitably; (2) there is almost full employment; and (3) the population is in a growth phase.
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