Quasi-experimental study reveals positive explicit yet negative implicit public value preferences in civil servants, suggesting a complex dual cognitive structure in administrative ethics.
Key Points
To evaluate whether civil servants' public value preferences follow a dual-attitudes model characterized by incongruence between implicit and explicit dimensions.
Conducted a quasi-experimental design based on the dual-attitudes model from social psychology.
Assessed and compared public value preferences between a civil servant group (n = 109) and a non-civil servant control group (n = 116).
Civil servants exhibited a distinct two-dimensional structure of public value preferences spanning explicit and implicit domains.
Compared to non-civil servants, civil servants reported significantly more positive explicit public value preferences but demonstrated relatively negative implicit public value preferences.