Morality and Perception of Corruption

Abstract

Abstract Because of its very nature, corruption is hard to be measured, and thus most indices rely on people’s perception of it. However, judgments are known to be biased, and therefore perception of corruption may not reflect actual corruption. Nevertheless, how individuals perceive corruption is important: the perception that corruption is high can cause mistrust among individuals, and it may actually affect corruption. Thus, in this paper, we investigate what affects people’s perception of corruption. We find that individuals with a high moral identity internalization and those endorse the individualizing foundations of morality tend to perceive corruption to be greater.