How leaders shape well-being and retention: Dominant leaders undermine and prestigious leaders enhance follower psychological need satisfaction.

Abstract

Dominance and prestige are two key strategies through which people attain rank and influence within groups. Across three studies, we focus on how the deployment of these strategies shapes follower experiences-an important yet less well-understood question-by addressing how dominant and prestigious leaders satisfy the basic psychological needs of followers as outlined by self-determination theory. Using both observational (N₁ = 250) and experimental designs (N₂ = 277; N₃ = 299), we find that dominant leaders undermine followers' need satisfaction (i.e., their need for competence, relatedness, and autonomy), while prestigious leaders enhance it. Moreover, mediation analyses show that these differential patterns of need fulfillment in turn contribute to followers reporting higher leader-directed turnover intentions with dominant leaders but lower turnover intentions with prestigious leaders. Interestingly, when dominance was directed toward outgroup members-rather than ingroup members-followers report greater need satisfaction and lower desire to quit the leader. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).