The Corrupt Person Just Like You and Me?

| Staffan's Personality Blog

http://staffanspersonalityblog.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/the-corrupt-p...

Staffan's Personality Blog

The Corrupt Person Just Like You and Me?

About these ads (hp://en.wordpress.com/about-these-ads/)

Its well-known that crime is related to personality. The so-called Dark Triad (hp://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Dark_triad) traits of Psychopathy, Machiavellianism and Narcissism are more common in criminals than in the rest of the population. Basically, these individuals are impulsive, manipulative, self-centered and callous. Now, corruption is a form of crime so it would make sense that it too related to personality, especially to those traits mentioned above. Unfortunately, there are no individual measures of corruption. Most of this activity is hard to detect directly so its measured indirectly by asking people how corrupt they perceive their environment, like their nation for instance. And such a measure, like the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI ), can then be compared to national averages of personality traits. That should give at least a hint of if and the two are related. The Data I havent found any international studies on the Dark Triad, so I compared international personality data compiled by psychologist Richard Lynn (1995) (hp://geography.martinsewell.com /LynnMartin1995.pdf) using the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (hp://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Eysenck_Personality_Questionnaire) (EPQ). This measure has at least one scale, Psychoticism, that has been clearly related to crime. In spite of its name it is a trait very similar to Psychopathy which is common in the prison population. I compared the EPQ data with the global anti-corruption organization Transparency Internationals CPI (2012) (hp://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2012/results/). There are some aws in that the comparison refers to dierent years, but things dont seem to change that much in either personality or corruption so I dont think its a big deal. And as you can see

1 of 7

7/6/2013 8:12 PM

The Corrupt Person Just Like You and Me? | Staffan's Personality Blog

http://staffanspersonalityblog.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/the-corrupt-p...

CPI on the y-axis and Psychoticism on the x-axis. Remember that CPI measures lack of corruption

its a miss! The CPI measures lack of corruption so the -0.13 means that the correlation is not contradicting the hypothesis but its way too low to make a case of. This only suggests that the corrupt person has a normal or slightly elevated level of Psychoticism. Lets look at the two other traits of the EPQ, Extraversion and Neuroticism. Here are the scaer plots,

CPI on the y-axis and Extraversion on the x-axis.

2 of 7

7/6/2013 8:12 PM

The Corrupt Person Just Like You and Me? | Staffan's Personality Blog

http://staffanspersonalityblog.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/the-corrupt-p...

CPI on the y-axis and Neuroticism on the y-axis.

Both correlate stronger with corruption than Psychoticism does, although still not very impressive: -0.19 for Extraversion and -0.18 for Neuroticism. This indicates that the corrupt person is fairly normal. This makes sense from a statistical perspective. Few people would consider stealing a car or breaking into someones house. But lots of people will take and receive gifts to grease the wheels a lile. If the corrupt person would be the same as the criminal then Psychopathy and other extreme personalities you see inside the prisons would be much more common in the general population. So its got to be a fairly common personality. Intelligence Then there is the maer of intelligence. There is hardly anyone who would contest that corruption and national averages of intelligence are inversely related. Looking at Lynns data this is very clear,

3 of 7

7/6/2013 8:12 PM

The Corrupt Person Just Like You and Me? | Staffan's Personality Blog

http://staffanspersonalityblog.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/the-corrupt-p...

CPI on the y-axis and IQ on the x-axis.

The correlation is -0.69 which is very respectable. A study from 2011 by economist Niklas Potrae (hp://www.uni-konstanz.de/FuF/wiwi/workingpaperseries/WP_36-Potrae-11.pdf), also using data from Lynn and the CPI, found a 0.63 (using the inverse CPI). Clearly, intelligence is a much stronger factor, but a factor which is related to personality. In my data I found a -0.54 correlation between Extraversion and IQ. Although there is no consensus on this, it seems like more studies today do nd a negative correlation between Extraversion and intelligence on the individual level, although not by far as big as I found here using national averages. For instance, a recent study (hp://scobarrykaufman.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Buckingham-et-al.-2012.pdf) found a -0.2 correlation between Extraversion and vocabulary. Extraversion may be linked to corruption merely due to its link to low intelligence, but I suspect it is a contributing factor in its own right, more on that later. So, based on these gures, who is he, the corrupt person? An Average Joe? The data from Lynn suggests that it might be a completely average person, or maybe someone who is a lile more extraverted, emotionally unstable andwell psychopathic (it may not sound like it but it is a dimensional trait like the others). But hardly anything that would strike anyone as out of the ordinary. His most conspicuous trait would be his low intelligence, and living in a country with a low average IQ even that would not be conspicuous to his fellow countrymen. The Extraversion Hypothesis That said, the EPQ is just one measure among many and the quality of data is no doubt increasing over time, so the picture will eventually grow clearer. The correlation with Extraversion remains intriguing and this traits relation to intelligence is still not clear. Corruption is most likely also situational which may account for some of the high corruption in Eastern Europe, which is still recovering from the collapse of communism. For Western Europe the Extraversion/corruption correlation is -0.31. So while, its clear that IQ is the major factor aecting corruption levels, it seems like Extraversion can have something to do with it as well. The link to intelligence is of course interesting itself, since it is by no means evident why a country with
4 of 7

7/6/2013 8:12 PM

The Corrupt Person Just Like You and Me? | Staffan's Personality Blog

http://staffanspersonalityblog.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/the-corrupt-p...

a low IQ would be more corrupt. Its easy to imagine a dishonest but intelligent person trying to beat the system with corruption, for instance. Potrae suggests that intelligent people have longer time perspectives so they realize that they win in the long run by not resorting to corruption. Personally, I dont buy that explanation. Do people abstain from corruption because theyve made some pragmatic calculation? No, I think its more visceral. Taking a bribe just doesnt feel good. Its a maer of shame. And those taking the bribes just dont feel ashamed. Why not? The Link to Tribalism I would say they lack shame because of their tribalism. And Im not just saying that because my previous post was about tribalism and its lingering in my head : ) It is a fact that the most tribal societies in the world can be found mainly in Africa and the Middle East. And this is where the IQ levels are the lowest and corruption the most spread. Now, the highly tribal person will not look at the public good, he will look after the interests of his tribe. And if his society is made up by several such tribes and they all are then he will ignore the public good and side with his own. So he will have no qualms engaging in accts of corruption as long as it benets his group. There is no shame in it because his real society is the tribe. Sure, he could help his tribe even more in the long run by co-operating, but tribalism dates back to a time when there was no such co-operation. So tribalism can explain corruption, but it can also explain low intelligence. Tribalism means conforming to the group and not thinking for yourself. That alone should put a limit to the intellectual growth. Tribal societies also show clear signs of inbreeding . Since they cant trust foreigners, they marry their relatives, and that is a great way to decrease your IQ. So instead of assuming that low intelligence causes corruption, which intuitively makes lile sense to me, tribalism can be the cause of both these factors.

And what does this have to do with Extraversion? As I mentioned in my previous post, tribalism should be viewed as a personality trait in its own right. But traits are rarely completely distinct from each other. My suspicion is that the tribal person is more extraverted than the average. If your life is all about the group then youre probably interacting with other group members a lot. This didnt show up in the study I mentioned in the previous post, as some of you might remember. But that was just one study and the participants were all from America, a country with a fairly low level of corruption. It can be harder to detect there than in the more to the clan-based societies that actually show clear signs of inbreeding (hps://encrypted.google.com/search?q=map+of+inbreeding&hl=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u& source=univ&sa=X&ei=_71PUbPGA8jn4QTCkIBo&ved=0CDEQsAQ&biw=1182& bih=632#imgrc=wGAY7ZbhLTpiVM %3A%3BUHlwjn0i_HagoM%3Bhp%253A%252F%252Fwww.consang.net%252Fimages%252Fc%252Fc4%25 new-years-wish-for-peace-stop-patril). (For more on inbreeding and its eect on society, check out hbd* chick (hp://hbdchick.wordpress.com/).) Ill get back to this if I can nd more data on inbreeding and extraversion. Lynns data do support this idea but there are just too few tribal countries in his sample. Who knows, this theory may even hold for some Western groups, like Christian conservatives. I wouldnt rule it out.

5 of 7

7/6/2013 8:12 PM

The Corrupt Person Just Like You and Me? | Staffan's Personality Blog

http://staffanspersonalityblog.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/the-corrupt-p...

This entry was posted on Monday, March 25th, 2013 at 12:42 and is led under Crime, Demography, Personality, Psychology, Race and Ethnicity, Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

9 Responses to The Corrupt Person Just Like You and Me?

Luke Lea says: March 27, 2013 at 03:00 So he will have no qualms engaging in accts of corruption as long as it benets his group. There is no shame in it because his real society is the tribe. Actually the shame runs the other way: he will be shamed by his relatives if he does not favor them. Ive read accounts of this. Reply Staan says: March 27, 2013 at 13:11 Thats most likely true. I saw a documentary on BBC about gypsies. They lmed a gypsy woman with a lile girl who was stealing for the woman. Then the girl went in to a church nearby and helped out with something. When she returned the woman beat her with a cane in broad daylight in front of lots of people (who did nothing to stop her). Reply personality goes a long way. | hbd* chick says: April 3, 2013 at 12:27 [...] The Corrupt Person Just Like You and Me? [...] Reply Assistant Village Idiot says: April 5, 2013 at 03:51 If one characterises lack of intelligence as strongly related to a lack of ability to cope with obstacles and get good things in the world, the corruption, both on an individual and a group level, can be seen as cheating because other, more dicult strategies are not accessible. hbd*chick has an interesting theory relating it all to the commonness of cousin marriage over time. Marrying rst cousins both reduces intelligence and increases clan solidarity. Bake for ve centuries or even twenty-ve, and the resulting bread has an impenetrable crust.
6 of 7

7/6/2013 8:12 PM

The Corrupt Person Just Like You and Me? | Staffan's Personality Blog

http://staffanspersonalityblog.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/the-corrupt-p...

Reply Staan says: April 5, 2013 at 17:07 Thats probably true, inclusive tness increases. But even people who arent inbred show these tendencies so I suspect there is another factor involved as well: the simple fact that we have been living in small groups. We are selected for that kind of life. Reply Luke Lea says: April 5, 2013 at 05:42 China is an example of an extraordinarily corrupt society with high general intelligence. A good place to start if you want to learn about China is here: hp://factsanddetails.com/china.php Reply Staan says: April 5, 2013 at 17:00 True, it probably related to things like the size of the country and how totalitarian the regime is as well. Chinese states with democracy Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore have much less corruption. Reply The Connection Between Tipping and Corruption (and Tribalism) | Staans Personality Blog says: May 17, 2013 at 19:02 [] certainly adds a piece to the puzzle of personality and corruption that Ive been discussing in a previous post. In that post I found modest correlations between nation-level corruption and Extraversion, [] Reply intelligence and corruption | hbd* chick says: July 3, 2013 at 05:56 [] already posted about this in his terric post on corruption a couple of months ago, but i thought id just reproduce niklas potraes chart of the [] Reply

The Contempt Theme. Blog at WordPress.com.

7 of 7

7/6/2013 8:12 PM