Serving the Group, Breaking the Rules: Which Leadership Dimensions Shield Leaders From Ingroup Punishment for Moral Transgressions?

Ingroup members often grant leaders leniency after moral transgressions, yet literature has not provided clear causal evidence about which leadership attributes most effectively buffer punitive responses. Although some studies have suggested that such transgression credit primarily stems from leaders’ identity prototypicality, the existing evidence is mainly drawn from cross‐sectional designs, and the few experiments are statistically low‐powered, do not systematically compare different dimensions of leadership, and seldom test the joint effects of moral violation type and target. In a preregistered, high‐powered experiment ( N = 1159) within non‐WEIRD context (Türkiye), we tested whether the four attributes (i.e., prototypicality, advancement, entrepreneurship, and impresarioship), outlined by the social identity model of leadership, differentially shape punishment of an ingroup leader who commits a moral violation, and whether any protective effects depend on the violated moral foundation (care vs. fairness) or the target of harm (ingroup vs. outgroup). We found that leaders described as identity‐advancing received the least punishment from ingroup members relative to the other dimensions. Violations that harmed the ingroup elicited greater punishment than identical violations that harmed an outgroup. Care violations produced greater punishment than fairness violations. There were no interactions, indicating that the protective effect of identity advancement was not contingent on violation type or target. The findings integrate identity leadership and moral judgment by showing that protection from ingroup punishment is explicitly tied to perceived advancement of collective interests.