Studies have argued that the higher levels of public service motivation (PSM) found in bureaucrats as compared with others lead to the positive civic and political behaviors seen in government employees. This study extends those findings to see if high PSM could have any negative effects on these same behaviors. Drawing from research on identity theory, it is hypothesized that a salient “public service identity” could contribute to bureaucrats being more apt than others to report that they have voted in elections when they actually had not. Logit models using data covering a span of almost 30 years in the United States find support for the hypothesis. This work suggests that viewing PSM through the lens of identity theory may have broad implications for the field of public administration.
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