It's not you, it's me: How follower perceptions of utility affect impressions of self‐serving leader behavior
研究了追随者如何感知和回应领导者的自私行为，发现领导者的典型性会通过影响追随者对自身获益的推断来缓冲负面评价，基于两个实验（N=327和N=314）验证了中介和调节效应。
Abstract Much of the research on negative leader behavior focuses on overtly harmful behaviors, overlooking subtler forms of self‐interest like self‐serving leadership, where leaders prioritize their own interests, potentially to their followers' detriment. Our research extends the conceptualization of self‐serving leader behaviors and explores how followers perceive and respond to it. Specifically, we explore how social categorization induces followers to support leaders when they engage in self‐serving behavior. Building on social identity theories, we hypothesize that leader prototypicality buffers negative perceptions of self‐serving leader behaviors by impacting followers' inferences of the extent to which they will benefit from their self‐serving leader. The results of an experimental vignette study ( N = 327) and a time‐lagged correlational study ( N = 314) show that self‐serving leader behavior was associated with lower perceived utility, which in turn predicted lower perceived leader effectiveness. Prototypicality moderated the association between self‐serving behavior and perceived utility in both studies, although the direction of this moderation differed by study design and is consistent with the view that prototypicality derives its meaning from ongoing relational and identity processes (Study 2) rather than isolated cues (Study 1).