Lan Tian, Hong Ying-Yi
School of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
Department of Marketing, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
PLoS One. 2017 Dec 22;12(12):e0189995. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0189995. eCollection 2017.
Previous research has suggested that bribery is more normative in some countries than in others. To understand the underlying process, this paper examines the effects of social norm and gender on bribe-giving behavior. We argue that social norms provide information for strategic planning and impression management, and thus would impact participants' bribe amount. Besides, males are more agentic and focus more on impression management than females. We predicted that males would defy the norm in order to win when the amount of their bribe was kept private, but would conform to the norm when it was made public. To test this hypothesis, we conducted two studies using a competitive game. In each game, we asked three participants to compete in five rounds of creative tasks, and the winner was determined by a referee's subjective judgment of the participants' performance on the tasks. Participants were allowed to give bribes to the referee. Bribe-giving norms were manipulated in two domains: norm level (high vs. low) and norm context (private vs. public), in order to investigate the influence of informational and affiliational needs. Studies 1 and 2 consistently showed that individuals conformed to the norm level of bribe-giving while maintaining a relative advantage for economic benefit. Study 2 found that males gave larger bribes in the private context than in the public, whereas females gave smaller bribes in both contexts. We used a latent growth curve model (LGCM) to depict the development of bribe-giving behaviors during five rounds of competition. The results showed that gender, creative performance, and norm level all influence the trajectory of bribe-giving behavior.
先前的研究表明，贿赂在一些国家比在其他国家更为常见。为了理解其背后的过程，本文考察了社会规范和性别对行贿行为的影响。我们认为，社会规范为战略规划和印象管理提供信息，因此会影响参与者行贿的金额。此外，男性比女性更具能动性，更注重印象管理。我们预测，当男性行贿金额保密时，他们会为了获胜而无视规范，但当金额公开时，他们会遵守规范。为了验证这一假设，我们使用一个竞争游戏进行了两项研究。在每个游戏中，我们让三名参与者参加五轮创造性任务的竞争，获胜者由裁判对参与者任务表现的主观判断决定。参与者可以向裁判行贿。行贿规范在两个维度上进行了操纵：规范水平（高与低）和规范情境（私人与公开），以研究信息需求和归属需求的影响。研究1和研究2一致表明，个体在遵守行贿规范水平的同时，保持了经济利益的相对优势。研究2发现，男性在私人情境中行贿的金额比在公开情境中更大，而女性在两种情境中行贿的金额都较小。我们使用潜在增长曲线模型（LGCM）来描述五轮竞争中行贿行为的发展情况。结果表明，性别、创造性表现和规范水平都会影响行贿行为的轨迹。
