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).