Psychological dependence of public servants as factor of corruption behavior

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to identify psychological aspects of preventing corruption in the professional activities of public servants by analyzing the main motives of systemic corruption behavior and socio-cultural aspects of their formation. It is revealed that research on the motives of corruption behavior is associated with several important factors: 1) the stereotypes of understanding of the corruption existing in the Ukrainian society; 2) social factors of corruption behavior - historical, economic, political, cultural, collective-psychological and individual psychological; 3) socio-cultural aspects of the formation of anticorruption consciousness.There are several motives of corruption behavior: game, social, monetary etc. This is due to the existence of the most common frames of mass consciousness, which are recorded in the Ukrainian society regarding the perception of corruption. The determining factors of the occurrence of corruption behavior in the professional activities of public servants are the psychological dependencies of the person, which leads to the use of the concept of psychological research.Corruptive behavior is defined as deviant one and causes the perception of the responsibilities of the public service as an opportunity to obtain satisfaction from the prospect of receiving unlawful benefits and privileges for violating official moral and ethical requirements (the formation of dependence). The types of psychological dependencies of public servants (on power, money, etc.) are distinguished. It is shown that a painful manifestation of such a person’s psychological dependency is kleptomania. In order to prevent corruption in the professional activities of public servants, it is proposed to apply scientifically substantiated psychological and diagnostic support, in particular special methods for determining the propensity for kleptomania and corruption behavior.