The Immoral Prince: Examining the relationship between differential power dynamics, moral disgust, and group leadership.

Alongside the benefits of group leadership come the responsibilities to uphold the norms and expectations of the group. Recent thematic analysis of tweeted expressions of Moral Disgust identified widespread Moral Disgust at abuses of power in leaders – Leader Moral Violations. We explore the levels of Moral Disgust reported towards exploitative power relationships and people’s willingness to follow these leaders. This poster presents two experiments. Experiment One (n=51) presented eight vignettes across different power dyads measuring Disgust felt towards both actor and action. Experiment Two (n = 73) presents the same eight vignettes in a replication of Experiment One, with the additional measures of leader’s strength and peoples willingness to follow. In Experiment One we found that Power Dyad was predictive of Disgust, with high power exploitation of lower power individuals being the most Disgusting. In Experiment Two, we were able to replicate the findings of Experiment one, and additionally found that leaders willing to exploit other leaders were the most likely to be followed and perceived at strong. We argue that leaders who commit Moral Violations by exploiting there power are perceived as the most Morally Disgusting, especially when they are exploiting those in low power, and so Moral Disgust may serve as a tool to police poor leadership. When leaders exploit other leaders they are seen as stronger and easier to follow, especially in times of conflict, suggesting a caveat to this Moral Disgust. Understanding the Disgust felt towards immoral leaders demonstrates that context and group needs are important in people’s perceptions of Leader Moral Violations.