Loyalty, Psychological Closeness, and Perceptions of Whistleblower Credibility

Building on research showing that binding moral foundations (loyalty, authority, and purity) are positively related with victim blaming (Niemi & Young, 2016) and negatively related with credibility assessments of victims who make accusations of wrongdoing (Dodson, Goodwin, Chambers, Diekmann, & Graham, 2019), the current research further examined the relationship between loyalty and whistleblower credibility and identified one possible mechanism for this relationship – psychological closeness. We also examined similar relationships for whistleblower blame and employability. Results from a pilot study and preregistered replication showed that both loyalty moral concerns in general and loyalty to the violator in particular were negatively related with perceptions of whistleblower credibility and employability, and that perceived psychological closeness to the violator helped explain these relationships.