Dr. Laura Hoenig

Corruption undermines institutional integrity, erodes trust, and threatens cooperation—yet most evidence on its social consequences stems from correlational studies in WEIRD populations. This project introduces a global experimental framework to examine how institutional corruption shapes trust and cooperation across cultures. We used the  adapted Prisoner’s Dilemma paradigm introduced by Spadaro and colleagues (2023) that operationalizes institutional representatives as third-party punishers (TPPs). Corruption was manipulated by varying (dis-)honesty levels of TPPs which were previously obtained in a Die Roll task that rewarded self-serving behavior at the expense of a charity donation. In the Prisoner’s Dilemma, participants were exposed to four experimental conditions: In the absence of a TPP regulating the exchange, or in the presence of an anonymous TPP, honest TPP, or corrupt TPP. This study is pre-registered, incentivized, and free from deception. Data was collected from 13,600 participants across 34 societies selected to maximize their variation in institutional corruption levels, rule of law, and other relevant cultural dimensions. The study integrates behavioral measures of cooperation, trust, and expectations toward both partners and institutions with relevant country-level indicators, such as government effectiveness and collectivism.  This project augments our understanding of how(corrupt) institutions globally affect cooperation and, as a further contribution, investigates the role of psychological mechanisms to better understand the relationship between institutional quality and social behavior across cultures. It highlights the value of large-scale controlled experimental approaches in cross-cultural social psychology, and offers practical insights into the conditions under which institutions may or may not undermine cooperation globally.