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Behavioural economics

Corruption corrupts

Nature volume 531, pages 456–457 (2016)Cite this article

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A cross-cultural experiment involving thousands of people worldwide shows that the prevalence of rule violations in a society, such as tax evasion and fraudulent politics, is detrimental to individuals' intrinsic honesty. See Letter p.496

Does society affect intrinsic moral values? In this issue, Gächter and Schulz1 (page 496) address this question with an experiment involving 2,568 participants in 23 countries. The authors show that a country's prevalence of rule violations, which for this study included tax evasion, corruption and political fraud, is positively associated with the tendency for residents of that country to lie for a small amount of extra cash. The finding rejects the idea that intrinsic honesty levels are similar in countries around the globe, and suggests that corruption corrupts.

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Figure 1: Rule violations across the globe.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Shaul Shalvi is in the Center for Research in Experimental Economics and Political Decision Making (CREED) and the Psychology Department, University of Amsterdam, 1018WB Amsterdam, the Netherlands.,

    Shaul Shalvi

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  1. Shaul Shalvi
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Correspondence to Shaul Shalvi.

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Shalvi, S. Corruption corrupts. Nature 531, 456–457 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature17307

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