Bending The Rules: A Path to Leadership, but at What Cost?

Rule benders are more likely than rule abiders or breakers to be chosen to lead.

Posted October 4, 2025 | Reviewed by Margaret Foley

Among the myriad perplexities of Trump’s second term is the question of how his appeal has managed to survive his knack for bending and breaking rules, laws, and social mores and traditions. By common sense and experience, we would expect that people who disobey the rules will tend to experience negative consequences—this, after all, is one reason rules are established in the first place, to guide people’s behavior toward cooperation and fairness, thus enabling social functioning.

Moreover, when it comes to social and political leadership , one would expect that leadership would be conferred on those who play by the rules, as it were. Rule followers, we intuit, would be rewarded with promotion and power. Trump’s case runs counter to this expectation. So, what gives?

The leadership literature has shown that social rank is often obtained via two independent paths . The first is the path of dominance, which refers to "behaviors that rely on force or threat of force to obtain social rank” (Homan et al., 2024). (For example, searching for a leader, members of a team might choose to rally around the loudest, most assertive person.) Leadership roles obtained by dominance are more likely to be imposed and are associated with subordinates’ fear and intimidation.

The second path is via prestige, by which an individual’s reputation and achievements render them deserving of leadership in the eyes of group members. (For example, the best, most well-known athlete on a team may be chosen as captain.) Unlike the dominance path, which involves aggression and force, the prestige path to leadership relies on an individual’s ability to display skills and knowledge that are valued by the group, which consequently secures others’ admiration and voluntary consent to the person’s leadership role. While those who lead from dominance may help protect the group from outside threats, those who lead from prestige facilitate the group’s internal flourishing by ensuring knowledge and skills acquisition and utilization.

A recent (2024) paper by Astrid Homan of the University of Amsterdam and colleagues looked to provide insight about people’s responses to normative and counter-normative behavior as relates to leadership. The authors hypothesized that rule breakers will be less likely to end up in leadership because, while breakers may demonstrate dominance, they will be perceived as low in prestige and thus be seen less as leadership material compared to those who are rule abiders. Their second hypothesis was that rule benders—those who behave in ways that infringe a rule without technically breaking it—will become attractive leadership candidates because they are perceived as high in both dominance and prestige.

In their first study, 149 participants were asked to consider a car company, in dire need of revenue, that needed to complete a large amount of administrative work to be allowed to sell cars. Three solutions were presented to keep the business in operation.

Relying on crowdfunding (rule abider)
Selling cars anyway (rule breaker)
Selling memberships that include a free car—this way, cars can find new owners while technically no cars are sold, so there is no need to keep records preventing the sale of cars (rule bender).

Participants were then asked to indicate their willingness to grant leadership to the person in each of the scenarios and then the extent to which they perceived that person as prestigious and/or dominant. Results revealed that, as hypothesized, rule breakers were seen as more dominant and less prestigious than rule abiders. Rule breakers' reduced prestige, in turn, resulted in reduced leadership granting.

The results further showed that, as hypothesized, rule benders were rated as more dominant than rule abiders and more prestigious than rule breakers. As predicted, rule benders were granted more leadership than either rule abiders or rule breakers. In sum, while rule breakers were more dominant than rule benders, the benders’ higher prestige ratings carried the day, resulting in greater leadership granting.

Study 2, involving 480 participants, hypothesized that since rule bending may signal both dominance and prestige, it should provide an advantage in competitive leadership contests across contexts. The researchers varied the context within which leadership was to be granted, asking participants to judge the suitability of a person for a leadership position in various competitive and cooperative settings.

Results revealed that rule benders did best in both competitive and cooperative contexts. Rule breakers (higher dominance and lower prestige) were granted less leadership in cooperative contexts than both rule abiders and rule benders. Still, while rule breakers were granted the least leadership overall, they were granted more leadership in the competitive than in the cooperative setting. This suggests that rule breakers’ leadership appeal may increase in adverse environments.

Overall, the results suggest that while rule breaking (compared to rule abiding) signals high dominance, it is also linked to low prestige, hence undermining rule breakers' path to power. However, rule benders were rated as high on both prestige and dominance and were hence more likely to be perceived as leadership material. Moreover, the leadership appeal of non-abiders tends to increase under conditions of competition , since their dominance is perceived as an asset. Alas, while dominance confers benefits in competitive situations, it hinders potential leaders’ appeal in cooperative contexts. Prestige, however, helps make people more appealing leader candidates across contexts.

The results suggest that the leadership appeal of rule bending constitutes a risk factor for organizations and society, since rule benders tend to operate in the gray area between adherence and violation and are thus able to manipulate the very rules devised to keep checks and balances on powerful leaders. As rule benders gain leadership, they enact a self-reinforcing loop, receiving ever more influence, which facilitates further rule bending, which will ultimately include bending those rules that serve to uphold the social order, collaboration , and peace.

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Noam Shpancer, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology at Otterbein University and a practicing clinical psychologist in Columbus, Ohio.

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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.