The aim of the three-year project “Novelties of Criminal Law in Legal Consciousness” was to measure the knowledge and attitudes of lay people concerning criminal law including regulatory novelties with a questionnaire-based survey. In this paper, the authors analyse the responses to questions related to active bribery of public officials. The research has verified our hypothesis that the average person has a fragmented knowledge even about this sector of criminal law. However, this is partly due to the fact that the respondents – compared to the differentiation of the legal regulation – usually have schematic knowledge on the topic. The answers were strongly influenced by attitudes towards this type of criminality. It was not substantiated, however, that this knowledge is substantially affected by socio-economic factors, by media consumption or by encountering criminality. Our hypothesis regarding the novelty of regulation has been only partially proven: there are more than three times more people whose answers reflect the old regulation than the new one. However, this was not necessarily due to actual knowledge of the older regulation, but rather to the fact that it was more in line with respondents insensitivity to legal distinctions.