Individualistic powerfulness and collectivistic powerlessness corrupts: how power and cultural orientation influence corruption

ABSTRACT

Evidence from individualistic cultures suggests that power corrupts. Using a goals-based perspective, here we argue that power and culture jointly predict corrupt attitudes and behavior. Four studies (N = 447) and one meta-analysis were conducted to test these hypotheses. Study 1 investigated the joint effects of power and individuals’ cultural orientations on corruption proclivity. Studies 2 and 3 assessed if power and cultural orientations affect actual corrupt behaviors (i.e. abuse of discretion in Study 2 and bribe-taking in Study 3). Study 4 tested the hypothesis at a national level, using monocultural samples both in the UK and China. The results consistently showed that the effects of power on corruption depend on culture: for collectivistic individual orientations and cultures, holding power predicts less corruption than lacking power; in contrast, holding power predicts more corruption for individualist orientations and cultures. Our findings represent the first direct experimental and correlational evidence regarding the links between power, culture, and corruption.

KEYWORDS:

• Collectivist
• corruption
• culture
• individualist
• power

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

All the data are available on the Mendeley data (https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/3tdp9h8hds/2)

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/3tdp9h8hds/2

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2023.2279536

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation [2019A1515110193]; Humanity and Social Science Foundation of Ministry of Education of China [20YJC190001]; Guangdong Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project [GD23XSH10]; China Scholarship Council [201406040098]; the National Natural Science Foundation of China [31971011]; Daedalus Trust grant [520180F67].

Notes on contributors

Wei Cai

Wei Cai is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Guangdong Medical University in China. Her main interests include social hierarchies, morality, meaning in life, and mortality awareness.

Ana Guinote

Ana Guinote is a Professor of Social Cognition at the University College London. Her research focuses on social hierarchies, in particular how asymmetries in social power and status affect social cognition and self-regulation.

Yu Kou

Yu Kou is a Professor of Psychology at Beijing Normal University, China. Her main research interests include adolescents’ prosocial behavior and moral values, the psychological mechanism of intergroup conflict, and the social cognition about corruption in China.