Deviance Credit: Tolerance of Deviant Ingroup Leaders is Mediated by their Accrual of Prototypicality and Conferral of their Right to be Supported

Leaders often deviate from group norms or social conventions, sometimes innovating and sometimes engaging in serious transgressions or illegality. We propose that group members are prone to be more permissive toward both forms of deviance in the case of ingroup leaders compared to other ingroup members or outgroup members and leaders. This granting of ‘deviance credit’ is hypothesized to be underpinned by perceptions of an ingroup leader’s prototypicality of the group (‘accrual’) and belief that occupancy of the role confers a right to be supported (‘conferral’). Analyses of data from four studies demonstrate that both accrual and conferral (a) mediate evaluations, inclusion and punishment of deviant leaders, and (b) they make independent contributions to deviance credit. Implications for leadership, marginalization, corruption, innovation and transformation are discussed.