Who Avoids Punishment? How Discretion and Psychopathy Shape Leaders’ Responses to Misconduct

Punishing misconduct is a key leader responsibility. However, when making punishment decisions, leaders may be overly lenient because of their personal concern for their subordinates’ wellbeing. We propose this mechanism prompts leaders to reduce their punishments when they have the discretion to, but that leaders vary in their likelihood of engaging in such behavior. Integrating insights from the job impact framework and the psychopathy literature, we further propose that discretion reduces the severity of leaders’ punishment decisions, but this effect is attenuated for leaders who are higher in psychopathy and therefore less personally concerned about their subordinates. We tested our theory across five studies. Studies 1 (multisource field survey) and 2a and 2b (experiments) supported our prediction about the relationship between discretion and punishment and the moderating effect of psychopathy on this relationship. Study 2b further established that the effect was mediated by greater prosocial motivation in lower-psychopathy leaders. Studies 3 (critical incident study) and 4 (experiment) further showed that punishment behaviors typical of higher-psychopathy leaders are rated as more effective and moral by both subordinates and third parties, even when these raters are aware of leaders’ psychopathic traits. Our research sheds new light on how leader behaviors that appear more organizationally oriented may nevertheless be driven by darker underlying traits.