Review of 'Intrinsic Honesty and the Prevalence of Rule Violations across Societies'

Indivisible Morality

Gächter and Schulz showed that high levels of societal corruption are associated with low levels of individual honesty. In their paper, societal corruption is limited to intra-country rule violations. In our view, inter-country corruptions also have a demoralizing influence on individual honesty.

Our view draws upon Gandhi's concept of 'indivisible morality': collective immorality poisons individual morality. More explicitly, Gandhi asserted that the corrupt practices of a country in its international dealings will corrupt the intrinsic honesty of its citizens.

By invoking inter-country corruption, we recognize morality at a third level (global) over and above the two levels (individual and national) that Gächter and Schulz analyzed. We suggest including a country's unethical behavior in international transactions among the indicators of rule violations that influence individual honesty. This might answer, for instance, why Italy and Slovakia, with nearly same intra-country corruption, differ significantly in the share of fully honest people (see Fig. 2d in Gächter and Schulz). Is it a reflection of the relative fairness with which Slovakia deals with other countries? In a similar vein, can the moral bankruptcy of American youth, highlighted by David Brooks in The New York Times, be explained by the immoral acts of The United States of America, with its colonial tenet of epistemology: 'Truth is what I can away with', in the international realm? Answering these conclusively would, of course, require developing measures for evaluating countries' propensity for corruptions in international dealings.

Summing up, we identified global level of morality—beyond individual and national—that was overlooked by Gächter and Schulz. We argued that a country's immoral conduct in the international arena has a detrimental effect on its citizens' honesty.

Coauthor: Hippu Salk Kristle Nathan