The research tackles a stubborn puzzle in corruption control. Anti-corruption tools work best when employees report wrongdoing and refuse to condone it, because whistleblowers help uncover fraud, reduce financial losses, and restore organizational integrity. Yet decades of research have focused on individual predictors—personality, moral intelligence, fear of retaliation—while paying far less attention to how group membership quietly shapes these decisions. In collectivist societies, where loyalty to family, ethnic networks, and professional circles runs deep, the informal atmosphere of a work group may matter as much as any formal policy.

The theoretical engine behind the study is social identity theory, first articulated by Turner and colleagues in 1979. The theory holds that a person’s self-concept is shaped as much by internalized group affiliations as by personal traits. Previous experiments support its dark side for ethics: social ties foster altruism toward ingroup members and reduce punishment for their misbehavior, and ties increase favoritism in bribery experiments. Researchers have also described social spirals in which ingroup loyalty establishes norms supporting corrupt practices, pressures members to conform, and creates opportunities for misconduct to grow.

To test these ideas experimentally, Ogungbamila recruited 384 employees—227 women and 157 men with a mean age of 31.17 years—enrolled in weekend part-time programs at a Nigerian public university. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four groups, each reading a vignette about a major financial fraud their group uncovered during a routine review. All four versions contained identical core information: reporting the fraud would save the organization from bankruptcy, enable payment of ten months of owed salaries, keep many employees in work, and the organization explicitly encouraged reporting and provided legal and institutional protections. The only difference was a single sentence about the perpetrators’ social relationship to the group.

Group A received no information about social affiliation at all. Group B learned the perpetrators had no social ties to them. Group C learned the perpetrators were rivals of their group. Group D learned the perpetrators had strong social ties to them. Participants were instructed to vividly imagine themselves in the scenario and then complete two measures: the newly developed six-item Group Member Whistleblowing Intentions Scale, which assesses willingness to report corruption in line with perceived group expectations, and the 18-item group version of the Corruption Tolerance Inventory, which measures the tendency to condone wrongdoing committed by members of one’s social or occupational ingroup.

A preliminary manipulation check with 40 part-time employees foreshadowed the main results with striking clarity. When the perpetrators were portrayed as rivals, all ten participants—100 percent—said they would report the fraud. When the perpetrators had strong social ties to the group, nine of ten—90 percent—said they would not. With no social affiliation, 70 percent were ready to report, and with no information at all, opinion split evenly at 50 percent. A single relational cue, it seemed, could flip the ethical verdict.

The main study confirmed the pattern statistically. The type of social affiliation significantly affected both whistleblowing intentions, F(3, 380) = 24.19, p < 0.001, and corruption tolerance, F(3, 380) = 46.99, p < 0.001. Follow-up Tukey HSD tests showed that whistleblowing intentions were highest when perpetrators were rivals (M = 14.79), significantly exceeding every other condition. Intentions rose steadily with social distance from the perpetrators. Corruption tolerance showed the mirror image: participants with strong social ties to the fraudsters reported the highest tolerance (M = 52.67), far above the rival condition (M = 40.91), so tolerance increased with social closeness. Both hypotheses were supported.

The correlational data added demographic texture. Whistleblowing intentions declined as tacit support for corruption rose, r(382) = −0.38, p < 0.001, confirming the two constructs sit at opposite ends of the corruption spectrum. Older participants tended to condone corruption more, and women reported significantly higher intentions to blow the whistle than men, though gender made no difference in corruption tolerance. The author interprets the rivalry effect with caution: heightened reporting against outgroup perpetrators may reflect not only fairness motives but also strategic intent to disadvantage competing groups, a question future research must disentangle.

The theoretical implications reach beyond Nigeria. The study extends social identity theory by demonstrating that the same mechanisms promoting teamwork and solidarity can weaken anti-corruption efforts, encouraging differential treatment of wrongdoing depending on the perpetrator’s social identity. It also challenges the assumption that anti-corruption norms are applied uniformly across social actors—support for reporting appears to be a social identity process, not merely a moral one. Earlier cross-cultural work supports this: Indonesians in high-corruption-prevalence contexts were less permissive of corruption than Dutch participants, suggesting people condone wrongdoing when it serves ingroup interests rather than viewing it as the source of their socioeconomic problems.

For organizations, the practical message is sobering. Ethical behavior is governed not only by formal rules and sanctions but by informal social relationships, and employees may stay silent when perpetrators belong to valued networks regardless of the seriousness of the offense. The author recommends ethical training that helps employees recognize ingroup favoritism, confidential reporting channels and strong anti-retaliation protections to reduce the psychological costs of reporting, and diversity and inclusion policies that foster a superior organizational identity prioritizing shared values over group interests. Notably, the study warns against manufacturing intergroup rivalry as a whistleblowing strategy—rivalry-driven reports may not be ethically motivated and can encourage unscrupulous accusations. Because hypothetical vignettes capture intentions rather than real group decisions, and participants were part-time employees, the author urges field studies in natural organizational settings to clarify how loyalty, moral disengagement, and perceived threat operate when the fraudster is truly one of us.

Subject of Research: Friends in deed? How connections with corruption perpetrators shape whistleblowing intentions and corruption tolerance in group members

Article Title: Friends in deed? How connections with corruption perpetrators shape whistleblowing intentions and corruption tolerance in group members

Article References: Ogungbamila, B. (2026). Friends in deed? How connections with corruption perpetrators shape whistleblowing intentions and corruption tolerance in group members. Frontiers in Organizational Psychology, 4, Article 1848564. https://doi.org/10.3389/forgp.2026.1848564

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/forgp.2026.1848564

Keywords: Friends, deed, connections, corruption, perpetrators, shape, whistleblowing, intentions, tolerance, group, members, scientific research

The review, led by Marisol Lila, Enrique Gracia, Cristina Expósito-Álvarez and Rocío Pérez-Sabater of the University of Valencia, draws together systematic reviews, meta-analyses and methodologically rigorous primary studies, with particular emphasis on findings from samples of known male perpetrators rather than community surveys alone. The authors argue that understanding individual-level psychological processes is essential for improving prevention and intervention, even though violence ultimately arises from interacting influences across multiple social and ecological levels. Their synthesis organizes the evidence into two broad domains: developmental and clinical vulnerabilities on one hand, and cognitive-affective drivers on the other.

In the first domain, the reviewers examine childhood trauma exposure, personality disorders, insecure attachment and substance use. Meta-analyses consistently show that men who experienced maltreatment in childhood, whether abuse, neglect or witnessing violence between their own parents, face elevated odds of becoming violent toward their partners in adulthood. The association is reliable but not deterministic; most survivors of childhood adversity never perpetrate violence. Studies of probation samples and batterer intervention programs further indicate that cumulative trauma predicts offending severity, and that post-traumatic stress symptoms among perpetrators are linked to treatment engagement difficulties and higher recidivism. Recent work also highlights the role of masculine discrepancy stress, the distress some men feel when they perceive themselves as falling short of masculine ideals, in linking childhood trauma to later violence through emotion dysregulation.

Personality pathology emerges as another robust thread. A meta-analysis in Clinical Psychology Review found that personality disorders, particularly borderline and antisocial configurations, predict intimate partner violence perpetration. Related research on narcissism and psychopathy shows that these traits not only raise the risk of violence but also forecast worse treatment outcomes, including dropout and repeated reassault among program participants. The classic typology of male batterers proposed by Holtzworth-Munroe and Stuart in the 1990s, which distinguished subtypes differing in severity and generality of violence, continues to find empirical support, with subtypes differing in treatment completion and recidivism. Attachment insecurity adds a further layer: meta-analytic work shows that both anxious and avoidant attachment dimensions are associated with perpetration, often operating through psychological distress, substance use and affect dysregulation.

Substance use occupies a prominent place in the review. Meta-analyses confirm that alcohol problems are among the most consistent correlates of partner violence, and event-based diary studies show that physical aggression is far more likely to occur on days when men drink. The reviewers describe mechanisms such as alcohol myopia, in which intoxication narrows attention to immediate provocations and impairs inhibitory control, while noting that antisocial personality traits and trait jealousy can moderate the alcohol-violence link. Illicit drug use, including marijuana and opioids, shows similar associations in samples of men arrested for domestic violence. Importantly, substance use also predicts treatment attrition, meaning that offenders with alcohol and drug problems are less likely to complete the very programs designed to change their behavior, although those who do complete can show meaningful gains.

The second broad domain concerns cognitive-affective drivers: cognitive dysfunctions, anger and hostility, empathy deficits, and sexist or otherwise violence-supportive attitudes. Neuropsychological research summarized in the review points to subtle but reliable deficits in executive functioning among perpetrators, including impulsivity, poor attention switching and impaired working memory, which together undermine the capacity to inhibit aggressive responses during conflict. Meta-analytic evidence on anger and hostility confirms that these emotional states are among the strongest psychological correlates of perpetration, and clinical studies show that anger disturbances predict long-term criminal recidivism. The reviewers emphasize shared mechanisms that cut across domains: emotion dysregulation, hostile attribution of intent to a partner’s behavior, and impaired inhibitory control appear repeatedly as pathways through which childhood trauma, personality pathology, attachment insecurity and intoxication are translated into violence.

Empathy and related social-cognitive capacities also feature prominently. Studies of court-mandated offenders reveal deficits in emotional decoding, perspective taking and empathic concern, and some work documents atypical facial responses to others’ suffering, with low sadness and even elevated happiness displayed toward victims’ distress. Alexithymia, the difficulty identifying and describing one’s own emotions, is associated with impulsivity and cognitive and empathic dysfunction in perpetrators and offers new targets for intervention. Neuroimaging studies add biological texture, linking coercive partner behavior to lower brain volume in emotion-regulation regions and altered resting-state connectivity in social mentalizing networks, although the authors caution that such findings describe correlates rather than proven causes.

Attitudes complete the cognitive picture. The review examines ambivalent sexism, distinguishing hostile sexism, which protects men’s power, from benevolent sexism, which guards traditional gender roles, and cites meta-analytic evidence linking both to violence-against-women attitudes and behaviors. Perpetrators commonly deploy denial, minimization, justification and victim-blaming, and validated scales now measure the perceived severity, acceptability and responsibility attribution surrounding intimate partner violence against women among both the general population and offenders. Implicit attitudes toward violence have even been shown to predict treatment outcomes, suggesting that conscious beliefs capture only part of the attitudinal architecture sustaining abuse.

Crucially, the reviewers stress that these psychological drivers show small-to-moderate but reliable associations with perpetration and predict clinically relevant outcomes, including violence severity, treatment engagement and dropout, and recidivism. No single factor is sufficient, and the drivers rarely operate in isolation; instead they interact through shared mechanisms. This convergence leads the authors to argue that psychological explanations should be understood as complementary to, not competing with, broader ecological accounts of intimate partner violence. The practical payoff is a case for assessment-guided, responsivity-based interventions tailored to each perpetrator’s individual risk profile, consistent with the risk-need-responsivity model of offender rehabilitation.

Evidence for such tailoring is already accumulating. Randomized controlled trials of the Strength at Home program, which addresses trauma-related emotional dysregulation, have reduced partner violence in military and civilian samples. Integrated treatments combining cognitive behavioral therapy with substance abuse care have shown efficacy for substance-dependent offenders, and motivational enhancement therapy for alcohol problems among partner-violent men has produced promising results. Pilot trials of cognitive training designed for perpetrators have improved cognitive flexibility and reaction time, while individualized motivational plans within batterer intervention programs have improved completion rates. The Valencia group’s own randomized trial of integrated motivational strategies for perpetrators with substance use problems adds further support. Together, these findings suggest that the era of one-size-fits-all batterer programs may be giving way to a more precise, psychologically informed science of intervention, one that treats the wounded boy behind the violent man not as an excuse for abuse, but as a clinical target in the service of safety for women.

Subject of Research: Psychological drivers of men's perpetration of intimate partner violence against women

Article Title: Psychological drivers of men’s perpetration of intimate partner violence against women

Article References: Lila, M., Gracia, E., Expósito-Álvarez, C., & Pérez-Sabater, R. (2026). Psychological drivers of men’s perpetration of intimate partner violence against women. Nature Reviews Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-026-00616-4

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1038/s44159-026-00616-4

Keywords: intimate partner violence, perpetrators, childhood trauma, personality disorders, attachment insecurity, substance use, anger and hostility, empathy deficits, sexism, emotion dysregulation, recidivism, batterer intervention programs