From expert to lay theories about corruption

Gabrielle Poeschl (), Raquel Esteves and Marta Ferreira
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Gabrielle Poeschl: Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação, Universidade do Porto
Raquel Esteves: Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação, Universidade do Porto
Marta Ferreira: Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação, Universidade do Porto

OBEGEF Working Papers from OBEGEF - Observatório de Economia e Gestão de Fraude, OBEGEF Working Papers on Fraud and Corruption

Abstract: In order to compare expert with lay theories about corruption we asked 388 Portuguese adults, 204 men and 184 women, to fill out one of three questionnaires, which had a common part and were made up of one task of word association and several opinion scales. The main results show that lay people (a) strongly associate politics to corruption; (b) view some behaviors as more condemnable than others and as deserving of different types of punishment; (c) are aware of the different consequences of corruption; however, only the negative effect of corruption on social organization predicts the degree to which corrupt practices are considered as condemnable; (d) view Angola as presenting higher levels of corruption, namely of petty corruption, than Portugal, and as suffering more from its consequences; however, contrary to what was expected, the experience of living in a country with higher levels of corruption leads to the formation of less negative, rather than more negative, opinions about the consequences of corruption. These different aspects of lay people’s theories about corruption are discussed and synthesized.

Keywords: corruption; lay theories; condemnability; punishment; consequences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Z19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2015-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hpe and nep-pol
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