Comment by mwigdahl

I think this research really suffers by not acknowledging that there are different types and scopes of corruption, and these different types impact societies in considerably different ways.

The "four types of corruption" breakdown by Yuen Yuen Ang I think is really informative here, with its two-axis breakdown (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption#:~:text=Petty%20the...).

Amalgamating all corruption into a single corruption index doesn't distinguish between these types, and it seems reasonable that different "flavors" of corruption impact social trust in different ways.