Are Guilt-Prone Power-Holders Less Corrupt? Evidence From Two Online Experiments

Abstract

Bribery is ubiquitous in human society. Yet it remains unknown how bribe-taking behaviors of power-holders and underlying psychological processes are affected by guilt-proneness, a crucial moral-related personality trait, and how this trait–behavior association depends on harm salience brought by bribery. To address these questions, we conducted two online experiments ( Ntotal = 2, 082) combining economic games with personality measures. Experiment 1 showed that highly guilt-prone individuals were less willing to take bribes, especially when higher harm salience was involved. Leveraging a parametric design with computational modeling, Experiment 2 confirmed the moderation effect of harm salience, and revealed a mediation role of the concern for others’ suffering, a key psychological construct in the trait–behavior association. Together, these findings demonstrate a critical function of guilt-proneness in curbing bribe-taking behaviors and suggest the concern for others’ suffering as an underlying psychological mechanism.