Estimating Corruption: Reality Checks and Factual Beliefs
What explains perceptions of corruption? Corruption and how it is perceived represent a challenge for democratic values and institutional stability, which calls for a better understanding of factual beliefs about this phenomenon. The quantitative analysis presented in this paper suggests that contextual cues of corruption are not always interpreted with accuracy-motivated rationality. There are cognitive mechanisms at work related to expertise, ideology, and sex that frame the capacity and willingness of updating factual beliefs about corruption according to contextual information. As internal sources of (mis)perception increase biased rationality through cognitive shortcuts, direct experiences with corruption and its contextual cues (such as inequality, low productivity, and lack of accountability) are not the only determinants of perceptions of corruption. Analyzing data from the Latin America Public Opinion Project, the World Bank, and the Comparative National Elections Project, this paper identifies the contextual elements that increase the percentages of victims of corruption and the profiles of the Latin American citizens who have a greater probability of being victims of this phenomenon. The paper also explores the microfoundations of perceptions of different types of corruption and identifies the individuals who are the most likely to overestimate corruption. Furthermore, the analysis points at how non-democratic attitudes are related to perceptions of corruption and suggests a research agenda to encourage further theoretical development and empirical inquiry on the topic.