Bribery is considered a morally repugnant business practice with remarkable consensus transcending national boundaries (Hus- ted, Dozier, McMahon, & Kattan, 1996). Yet, over $1 trillion or 3% of the world Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are paid annually in bribes, stymieing economic growth and threatening democratic and moral values (The World Bank, 2004). Furthermore, cross-national data such as Transparency International’s (2010) Bribe Payers Index (BPI), which rates countries on the perceived willingness of their companies to bribe abroad, suggest substantial variability across na- tional cultures in the propensity to initiate bribes (Riaño & Hodess, 2008). What is not sufficiently considered, however, is whether and how national culture might shape individuals’ propensity to initiate bribes.
A decision to offer a bribe typically involves a conflict of inter- est; a dilemma between behaving in accordance with one’s moral standards and benefiting from bribing such as winning a contract. Standard theories of moral agency suggest that individuals can selec- tively disengage internal moral control to permit detrimental conduct without violating their moral standards by, for example, reinterpret- ing one’s actions or the negative consequences of one’s actions, vili- fying the target of one’s actions, and, most strongly, by obscuring personal causal agency through diffusion of responsibility (Bandura, Barbaranelli, Caprara, & Pastorelli, 1996; Mazar, Amir, & Ariely, 2008). The easier it is for individuals to employ any of these mecha- nisms, the more likely they are to engage in immoral behavior, such as initiating a bribe.
One prominent dimension of national culture is the degree of collectivism or the extent to which individuals see themselves as in- terdependent and part of a larger group or society (Hofstede, 1980). According to previous research, individuals in collectivist cultures tend to hold relatively more favorable attitudes toward sharing of responsibilities (Hui, 1988), see others as providing a ‘cushion’ for their risky actions (Hsee & Weber, 1999), make situational rather than dispositional attributions, and have a weaker sense that they themselves determine who they are (Triandis, 2001). Consequently, we hypothesized that individuals in collectivist cultures would find
72 / Individual vs Collective Autonomy: How Culture Shapes Judgments and Behaviors
it easier to disengage regulatory self-sanctions from detrimental con- duct through diffusion or displacement of responsibility, and show a higher propensity to bribe abroad than individuals in individual- ist cultures. Further, we suggest that this effect would be mediated by collectivists’ lower perceived responsibility for their actions. We tested this premise in three studies.
In the first study, we tested the correlation between a country’s degree of collectivism and the propensity of its companies to offer bribes abroad while controlling for national wealth. Regression re- sults show that the degree of collectivism was positively related to the propensity to bribe and that even after controlling for wealth it explained over half of the residual variability in the model.
Going beyond correlational data, Study 2 examined the exis- tence and nature of a causal relationship between collectivism and bribery. In this study, participants were primed with collectivism or individualism in an experimental laboratory set-up. Results con- firmed our hypothesis with participants in the collectivist condition being more willing to offer a bribe than those in the individualist condition. Importantly, participants in the collectivist condition held themselves significantly less accountable for their actions than those in the individualist condition, and this difference in perceived re- sponsibility fully mediated the effect of the prime on participants’ decision to offer a bribe.
The third study tested for the alternative account that partici- pants’ lower perceived responsibility for their actions was due to a post hoc rationalization consequent to the decision to bribe. Our re- sults show that even in the absence of a decision to bribe, participants primed with a collectivist mindset held themselves significantly less accountable for their actions than those primed with an individualist mindset – suggesting that the effect is not due to a post-hoc rational- ization of a decision to bribe.
Our research shows that the degree of collectivism influences people’s willingness to offer a bribe, and that the effect is driven by people’s reduced perceived responsibility for their own actions. By drawing attention to cultural orientation and the relevance of internal control mechanisms, this paper highlights the importance of under- standing the psychological processes underlying cross-national dif- ferences, which would be crucial in designing a richer set of policies to curb the supply-side of corruption and its staggering costs.
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