Leaders often deviate from group norms or social conventions, sometimes inno- vating 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 per...
Two studies examined participants’ evaluations of ingroup or outgroup normative and deviant members and changes in agreement with a prescriptive norm. In Experiment 1 (N = 51), the normative target was either a full or marginal ingroup or outgroup member, and the deviant was a full member. In Experiment 2 (N = 113), both targets were full or marginal members, or one was a full member and the other was marginal....
Group researchers have long been interested in how group members respond to deviance, defined as the violation of prescriptive norms about how members should think, feel, or act. Valuable perspectives on reaction to deviance have been offered by scholars in several disciplines, including social psychology, evolutionary psychology, and sociology. Most of the theoretical and empirical work on reaction to deviance...