Understanding Corruption Tolerance: Does Personality Matter?

Abstract

Attitudes towards corruption have been attributed to a broad range of macro-level and, to a limited extent, micro-level antecedents. Neglected is academic research on the effect of individual-level psychological factors on the attitudes toward corruption. To fill this gap, this article aims to explore the impact of individuals' personality traits on their willingness to justify corrupt acts, drawing on data from World Values Survey Wave 6. By applying fixed effects models, the study finds that two of five personality traits - consciousness and agreeableness are significantly and negatively associated with individuals' willingness to justify corrupt exchanges. Additionally, the study results show that the association between the personality traits and corruption tolerance varies from country to country: openness to experience, for instance, was significantly and negatively associated with corruption tolerance in Germany, whereas this trend was not observed in the Dutch sample. Among the control variables, age and sex were significant predictors of corruption tolerance as well as the Dutch were less willing to justify corrupt acts than Germans. The study provides empirical and practical implications as well as suggestion for future research.