A corrupt personality? A study of the association between the Big Five personality traits and corruption tolerance
Previous research has shown a link between certain basic personality traits belonging to the well-established Big Five model and corruption tolerance, operationalized with relatively simple measures that mainly include bribe-taking. This study takes a closer look at these relationships using a more sophisticated measure of corruption tolerance that encompasses a much broader spectrum of more or less corrupt acts. The results from the empirical analyses, which include over 2,000 Swedish-speaking Finns, support the conclusions from previous studies that it is mainly Conscientiousness and Agreeableness that have significant negative associations with corruption tolerance. Of these two characteristics, it is mainly Conscientiousness that has a negative association with almost all individual corruption scenarios, while Agreeableness is mainly associated with those scenarios where the ethical guidelines are less clear.