Łapownictwo w moralnej ocenie religijnych i niereligijnych studentów stacjonarnych i niestacjonarnych

The article presents the results of my sociological research regarding full-time and extramural students’ attitudes towards bribery as a common form of corruption. The research encompassed 480 students representing the following areas of study: computer science, management, marketing, pedagogy, sociology, philosophy, law and Catholic theology. The attitudes of students towards bribery were correlated with four independent variables: sex, mode of study (full-time and extramural), field of study, and having a religious or non-religious (laic, secular) worldview. The study illustrates that student’s attitude towards corruption, including bribery depends most on whether the subject represents a religious or a non-religious outlook. The religious students are characterized by a deeper moral sensitivity than are non-religious students, and therefore more often morally condemn giving and accepting bribes, as well as other forms of corruption. The students of Catholic theology condemned bribery most strongly, compared to the students of other areas of studies. More than one-forth of the students surveyed admitted giving or receiving a bribe at least ones in their lifetime, including some of the theology students. However, 72% of the students surveyed did not have any personal experience associated with bribery. According to these students, bribery and other forms of corruption are morally illicit. In the legal dimension, they are simply ordinary criminal offences, and should be opposed in any place and at any time. In students’ moral appraisal bribery is a „contiguous” phenomenon, and it is easily passed on from the elder generation (parents) to the younger (children). The students expressed their opinion that corruption in Poland, and bribery in particular, is an insidious social plague, visible in every sphere of social life, and difficult to combat. Bribery seems to have a moral license in Poland as sometimes it is the „only” way to have something done expediently.