These research studies explore the relationship between religiosity variables and
whistleblowing intentions and behavior. Two scenario-based surveys investigated the
relationship among intrinsic religiosity, the personal trait of extroversion, and whistleblowing
intentions, and an experimental study examined the impact of religious contextualizing (priming)
and intrinsic religiosity on actual whistleblowing behavior. The studies attempted to determine
whether observers of cheating in academic and business organizational settings show intentions
to (in the scenario-based surveys), or do (in the experiment) report cheating and to what extent
their personal religiosity and extroverted personalities and religious prime affect their intentions
and behaviors. A positive relationship was observed between religiosity and whistleblowing
intentions and behavior across the three studies; however, religiosity was not found as a
significant predictor of whistleblowing except in one study scenario, and this was with a very
low magnitude. Religious contextualizing (priming) also was not found to have a significant
positive effect on whistleblowing behavior in the experimental study. These results add to the
few existing and inconsistent findings regarding the association of religiosity and whistleblowing
behavior. The statistically insignificant results pertaining to our study imply that the
organizations’ management should not rely on individual religiosity as a mechanism to support
the reporting of organizational wrongdoing. Instead, management must be vigilant and rely on a
variety of internal controls to monitor such activity.
Keywords: religiosity, religious priming, whistleblowing, experiment