When our leaders harm outgroups: How leader prototypicality and situational ambiguity shape outgroup solidarity and leader punishment

When prototypical leaders commit organizational transgressions, highly-identified members of the organizations are motivated to punish their leaders, due to increased group-based image concerns. However, do similar dynamics apply when high-status ingroup leaders transgress against vulnerable low-status outgroups? Moreover, does this lead to outgroup solidarity? To address these gaps, we conducted three pre-registered experiments with European, Australian, and British samples, respectively ( N total = 1,039). The first two studies, in which we manipulated leader prototypicality, focused on EU and Australian leader transgressions regarding the treatment of refugees. Moderated mediation analyses showed that, when their leader was prototypical, high-identifiers exhibited greater outgroup solidarity, indirectly through increased group-based image concerns. The third study, conducted in the UK, examined prototypical leader transgressions regarding minority mental health issues following the 2024 riots. This study manipulated transgression ambiguity and found that high-identifiers’ image-based outgroup solidarity was more pronounced when the transgression case was clear-cut rather than ambiguous. Across all studies, low-identifiers expressed outgroup solidarity through perceptions of injustice about the treatment of outgroups, regardless of leader prototypicality and transgression ambiguity. These findings integrate the transgressive leadership literature with solidarity-based collective action research by highlighting leader prototypicality as a key factor in eliciting outgroup solidarity through image concerns among individuals highly invested in high-status transgressor groups, especially when transgressions are clear-cut. Implications are discussed.