leadership
Definition
Leadership refers to a position of social and political authority whose occupants are judged by followers according to both their actions and the identity dynamics that bind leaders to their groups. Within partisan political contexts, leaders are evaluated through the lens of ingroup membership, meaning that followers consistently apply different standards of forgiveness to their own leaders than to those of opposing parties. A longitudinal study of 535 UK voters in the 2024 general election found that supporters of all four main parties were more willing to forgive trust violations committed by their own leader, a pattern driven by identity maintenance pressures rather than genuine trust, since pre-election trust predicted forgiveness of outgroup but not ingroup leaders. In organizational settings, leadership also operates as a structural position carrying distinct responsibilities for policy implementation, with managers expected to translate intended diversity and inclusion policies into enacted practices while simultaneously modeling those policies as core organizational values.
Sources: Lalot & Abrams (2025), Bokern et al. (2026)
Related Terms
- ingroup outgroup (1 shared article)
- forgiveness (1 shared article)
- transgression credit (1 shared article)
- trust violation (1 shared article)
- diversity (1 shared article)
- D&I policy (1 shared article)
- inclusion (1 shared article)
- policy support (1 shared article)
- policy resistance (1 shared article)
Applications
Leadership and Transgression Credit
Transgression credit is the willingness to accept errant ingroup leadership, and research on the 2024 UK general election demonstrates that this willingness operates asymmetrically across partisan lines. Voters for the Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, and Reform UK parties all granted greater forgiveness to their own leaders than to outgroup leaders, with a partial eta-squared of .26 confirming the strength of the bias. The populist leader Nigel Farage was the single exception, receiving no significant increase in post-election forgiveness, which suggests that anti-establishment positioning places a ceiling on the credit followers extend.
Sources: Lalot & Abrams (2025)
Leadership and Diversity and Inclusion Policy
Managers occupy a structurally distinct position in the implementation of diversity and inclusion policy, functioning as intermediaries between policy intent and employee experience. Data from 2,639 employees in a Dutch organization showed that managers were overrepresented among Champions and Reluctants and underrepresented among Ambivalents and Opponents, a distribution that differed significantly from that of non-managerial employees. This pattern indicates that organizational position shapes not only the likelihood of policy support but also the form that support or resistance takes.
Sources: Bokern et al. (2026)
Leadership and Party Identification
Party identification is negatively associated with willingness to forgive outgroup leaders, meaning that stronger partisan attachment predicts harsher judgment of opposing leaders following an election. National identification, conceived as a superordinate identity that encompasses both ingroup and outgroup, showed the opposite pattern, being positively associated with outgroup leader forgiveness.
Sources: Lalot & Abrams (2025)
