Prediction of guilt and shame proneness based on disruption to psychological contract: A new light for corruption prevention

Abstract

Amid controversy over plurality and contestation of the meanings of corruption, previous reviews and studies showed that proneness to moral emotions, i.e. shame and guilt, can predict one's corruption behavior. To give a theoretical basis for the efforts of preventing corruption that is thick with emotional nuance, this present study employs disruption to psychological contract, i.e. psychological contract breach (PCB), as a predictor of moral emotions proneness. The study involving 265 employees (169 males, 96 females; Mage = 32.32 years old; SDage = 7.28 years) of four big private banks in Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia, shows that PCB—with noting that, in this study, its scale operational scoring represents, reversely, the contract fulfillment—can predict Guilt-negative behavior evaluation (Guilt-NBE), Guilt-repair (Guilt-REP), and Shame-negative self-evaluation (Shame-NSE); all in negative directions, proved via simple linear regression analyses. Further analysis showed a more dynamic relationship between PCB and Guilt-NBE that fits to a cubic regression model. This study contributes to the axiological aspect of business psychology, especially in the ethical psychology of banking industry.

Keywords

• Psychology
• Organizational psychology
• Moral emotion
• Psychological contract
• Business psychology
• Corruption