When Ego Floods the Nation: A Forensic Look at Corruption

Richard Jonathan O. Taduran, Ph.D.  |  11 September 2025

Over coffee with friends, we doom-scroll the latest clips from the Senate hearings on the flood-control scandal. The allegations pile higher than the sandbags in Bulacan: ghost projects, padded contracts, kickbacks allegedly reaching 25–30%, billions unaccounted for.

Then comes Senator Lacson’s latest salvo—naming the so-called “BGC Boys,” former DPWH officials from Bulacan allegedly tied to anomalous contracts and casino losses nearing ₱950 million. The exposé has the cinematic quality of a prestige crime drama: public money laundered through contractors, gambled away, and replenished by the next year’s budget.

It’s hard not to compare the whole thing to Breaking Bad. Except this isn’t TV: our Walter Whites wear barongs, not hazmat suits, and their “empire business” leaves real families underwater every monsoon.

The question is bigger than who’s guilty. It’s why personalities like this keep floating to the top—and why the system seems designed to let them thrive.

Ecology of the Worst

Evolution teaches that traits survive if they confer advantage in a given environment. In low-trust, high-risk settings, short-term opportunism can even be adaptive. Evolutionary psychologists call this a fast life-history strategy: grab resources now, because the future is uncertain.

Cross-national studies back this up. Jonason et al. (2020) found higher narcissism scores in less developed contexts, where inequality and instability are common. These traits may not be “good,” but they help individuals advance when rules are weak.

Think about our governance “ecology.” Enforcement is patchy, procurement opaque, and budgets enormous. Internal audits showed ₱545 billion allocated to flood-control projects since 2022, with only 15 contractors taking nearly 20% of the pie—many projects either substandard or entirely fictitious. In such an environment, cunning and manipulation aren’t just tolerated—they’re rewarded.

This ecology doesn’t just permit certain behaviors. It selects for certain personalities.

The Dark Triad

Psychologists call it the dark triad—three traits that together form a profile disturbingly well-suited for power:

• Psychopathy: Callousness, lack of empathy, thrill-seeking, impulsivity. Psychopaths can make cool-headed decisions about harming others because they simply don’t feel the weight (Paulhus & Williams, 2002).
• Narcissism: Grandiosity, entitlement, hunger for attention. The narcissistic leader must be seen, celebrated, obeyed—criticism is an existential threat.
• Machiavellianism: Strategic manipulation, cynicism, and end-justifies-the-means thinking. The Machiavellian mind treats politics like chess, using alliances, rules, and even laws as pawns.

Studies show these traits are over-represented in leadership roles, partly because confident, manipulative, risk-taking personalities rise faster through competitive hierarchies (Grijalva et al., 2015; Khoo & Burch, 2008). In collectivistic cultures, Machiavellianism in particular has been linked to successful coalition-building—even if it corrodes trust over time (Diller et al., 2021).

Today’s media environment supercharges these tendencies. Research has linked grandiose narcissism with compulsive social-media use, where likes and shares serve as instant narcissistic supply (Casale & Fioravanti, 2018). This explains the “flex culture” we see in political scandals: luxury bags, designer watches, convoys of SUVs proudly displayed online even as their constituents wade through floodwaters.

From a forensic behavioral science perspective, we can profile patterns that raise red flags—not to diagnose from afar, but to highlight risk indicators: repeated deception, image obsession, high-risk spending with little transparency, and an inability to express empathy when harm is exposed (Babiak & Hare, 2006).

The Double-Edged Sword

Filipino values can be both protective and permissive of corruption.

Take pakikisama (smooth interpersonal relations) and utang na loob (debt of gratitude): they foster harmony but can silence whistleblowers. “Walang basagan ng trip” becomes the rule, even when public funds are being siphoned.

Our love for family is a cornerstone of resilience, but too much love can justify excess. Officials pad budgets to guarantee their children’s future, congressmen hoard projects to keep clans in power. “Para sa pamilya” becomes the moral cover for public theft.

And then there is nakasanayan na—we’ve simply gotten used to it. Corruption has been so regular for so long that outrage fatigues quickly. The result? A culture that does not reward reformers but protects the status quo.

This is why dark triad traits can thrive: the environment rewards them, and the culture cushions their fallout.

But we must resist the temptation to see this as uniquely Filipino pathology.

Across Asia, anger is boiling over. In Indonesia, protests over corruption and MPs’ perks have spread nationwide and even abroad. In Nepal, furious demonstrators burned officials’ homes and attacked powerholders, forcing the prime minister to resign.

Corruption is a human problem. When institutions are weak and status performance is rewarded, modern society reverts to tribal logic: my family, my crew, my dynasty must thrive—even if everyone outside my circle suffers.

Breaking the Script

So is corruption an evolutionary trait? In some ways, yes: favoring your kin and exploiting weak systems may have once been a survival strategy. But we no longer live in tribes. We are a nation—and nationhood demands a higher standard than loyalty to one’s clan.

We can choose to build institutions bigger than egos: strengthen audit agencies, empower independent investigations, make procurement data public. We can choose to teach civic ethics that encourage Filipinos to think beyond their families—toward community and nation.

And we can choose to make dark-triad behavior costly rather than rewarding: use behavioral risk screening for high-discretion offices, protect whistleblowers, and ensure that impunity is no longer the default.

Most importantly, we must strip away the excuses. In the finale of Breaking Bad, Walter White admits: “I did it for me. I liked it.” For five seasons he hid behind “for the family.” It’s time to end the alibi of ‘family’ and name corruption for what it is: ego, power, and theft from the nation.