“Just Looking Out for Us”: Understanding the Role of Ingroup Prototypes in Follower Support of Self-serving Leadership

Much of the research on negative leader behaviour focuses on the antecedents and consequences of said behaviour; follower reactions to this behaviour are less understood. The present research explores how social categorization motivates followers to support self-serving leaders. Building on social identity theories, I hypothesize that followers perceive self-serving, but prototypical leaders to be more group-serving than non-prototypical self-serving leaders. Additionally, I propose that followers make implicit calculations of how much they expect to benefit (i.e., subjective expected utility) and this, along with the outcome of the leader’s actions (i.e., experienced utility), will also impact follower perceptions of the leader’s effectiveness and their willingness to support that leader. The results of three studies support that leader prototypicality leads to follower assumptions of a leader’s group-serving motivations, which then increases perceptions of leader effectiveness and followers’ support of the leader. This relationship is moderated by subjective expected utility and experienced utility.