Economic inequality breeds corrupt behaviour.

Economists and political scientists have long debated the relations between economic inequality and corruption at the societal level. Extending this literature, we proposed and tested that economic inequality breeds the corrupt behaviour of individuals. Analyses of 45-year archival data from the United States found that official corruption crimes were more prevalent in years and states with greater economic inequality. Three subsequent experiments (N = 776) using economic games showed that individuals exposed to greater economic inequality exhibited more corrupt behaviour in both Chinese and American cultures. Furthermore, the increased desire for wealth and the perception of reduced fairness accounted for this effect. These findings highlight that excessive economic inequality creates a competitive environment in which people give priority to themselves over others and suggest a vicious cycle between economic inequality and corruption.

Turning a blind eye: Meritocracy moderates the impacts of social status on corruption perception.

Findings on the effect of social status on corruption perception are mixed. To make sense of the mixed results, three studies were conducted to examine whether meritocracy moderates this effect. In Study 1, we measured all variables using a questionnaire-based correlational design. In the preregistered Study 2, we adopted an experimental design in which we manipulated social status using a false feedback paradigm and measured corruption perception and meritocracy. In Study 3, we manipulated meritocracy using a scrambled sentence task and measured its effect on the relationship between social status and corruption perception. The results consistently demonstrated that meritocracy could moderate the influence of social status on corruption perception. Specifically, social status was negatively associated with corruption perception when meritocracy was weak, whereas the association was not significant when meritocracy was strong. Our results suggest that meritocracy critically affects acknowledgment of the pervasiveness of social injustice and even deters the disadvantaged from fighting against corruption.