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Corrupt third parties undermine trust and prosocial behaviour between people

Abstract

Corruption is a pervasive phenomenon that affects the quality of institutions, undermines economic growth and exacerbates inequalities around the globe. Here we tested whether perceiving representatives of institutions as corrupt undermines trust and subsequent prosocial behaviour among strangers. We developed an experimental game paradigm modelling representatives as third-party punishers to manipulate or assess corruption and examine its relationship with trust and prosociality (trust behaviour, cooperation and generosity). In a sequential dyadic die-rolling task, the participants observed the dishonest behaviour of a target who would subsequently serve as a third-party punisher in a trust game (Study 1a, N = 540), in a prisoner’s dilemma (Study 1b, N = 503) and in dictator games (Studies 2–4, N = 765, pre-registered). Across these five studies, perceiving a third party as corrupt undermined interpersonal trust and, in turn, prosocial behaviour. These findings contribute to our understanding of the critical role that representatives of institutions play in shaping cooperative relationships in modern societies.

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Fig. 1: The two phases of the experimental procedure of Studies 1a through 4.
Fig. 2: Relationship between the perceived dishonesty of the TPP and interpersonal trust across Studies 2 through 4.

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Data availability

The datasets generated and analysed during the current studies are publicly available at https://osf.io/fm9b3. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The code used to analyse the data is publicly available at https://osf.io/p986h.

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Acknowledgements

We thank D. Balliet, L. Hoeft and the members of the Amsterdam Cooperation Lab for helpful comments on the manuscript. G.S. acknowledges funding from the ERC Starting Grant (no. 635356) awarded to D. Balliet. C.M. acknowledges IAST funding from the French National Research Agency under grant no. ANR-17-EURE-0010 (Investissements d’Avenir programme). A.R. acknowledges funding from the ERC Advanced Grant (no. 785635) awarded to C. K. W. De Dreu. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

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G.S., C.M., J.-W.V.P., A.R., C.O.M. and P.A.M.V.L. conceived the project. G.S. collected the data for Studies 1a through 2. C.M. collected the data for Studies 3 and 4. G.S. analysed the data and wrote the initial draft of the manuscript with input and revisions from C.M., J.-W.V.P., A.R., C.O.M. and P.A.M.V.L.

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Correspondence to Giuliana Spadaro.

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Nature Human Behaviour thanks Valerio Capraro and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.

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Source Data Fig. 2

Source data (Studies 2 through 4).

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Spadaro, G., Molho, C., Van Prooijen, JW. et al. Corrupt third parties undermine trust and prosocial behaviour between people. Nat Hum Behav 7, 46–54 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01457-w

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