Moral Identity as a Lens for Interpreting Honesty of Indirect Leaders

This study extends the moral identity literature to show how followers' moral identity acts as a perceptual filter of leaders' honesty. Participants witnessed political leaders either lying or telling the truth in an experiment. Followers were more satisfied with honest leaders, and this effect was moderated by followers' moral identity: the more central morality was to followers' self-identity, the more negatively they rated leaders who lied....