Corrupt third parties undermine trust and prosocial behaviour between people

Area of Science:

• Social Psychology
• Behavioral Economics
• Political Science

Background:

• Corruption is a global issue impacting institutions, economic growth, and societal inequality.
• Trust and prosocial behavior are crucial for cooperative relationships in modern societies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether the perception of institutional representatives as corrupt undermines interpersonal trust.
• To examine the subsequent impact of perceived corruption on prosocial behaviors among strangers.

Main Methods:

• Development of an experimental game paradigm involving third-party punishers to model and assess corruption.
• Utilized sequential dyadic tasks, including trust games, prisoner's dilemmas, and dictator games, across five studies with a total of 1818 participants.
• Manipulated or assessed perceived corruption of a third party who acted as a punisher.

Main Results:

• Consistently found that perceiving a third party as corrupt significantly undermined interpersonal trust.
• Demonstrated that this decrease in trust led to a subsequent reduction in prosocial behavior.
• Observed effects across various experimental games modeling different aspects of prosociality (trust, cooperation, generosity).

Conclusions:

• Perceptions of corruption among institutional representatives have a detrimental effect on interpersonal trust.
• Undermined trust due to perceived corruption negatively impacts prosocial behaviors, essential for societal cooperation.
• Findings underscore the vital role of institutional representatives in fostering or hindering cooperative relationships.