Michael Byers
The football coach Bill Belichick, one of only three head coaches to have won six titles or more in the National Football League, ran into trouble in 2007 when he was caught cheating. In the infamous Spygate scandal, a video assistant for his New England Patriots was caught filming the New York Jets’ defensive signals—a violation of NFL rules. Belichick claimed in an emergency meeting that he simply “misinterpreted” a league rule, according to ESPN. Among the penalties it meted out, the NFL fined the Patriots $250,000 and Belichick himself double that amount.
So were Patriots fans outraged? Yes, but not at the coach. Many of them saw the scandal as an unfair, jealousy-driven attack on their team’s reputation. The reaction illustrates a research finding of JPMorganChase’s Elizabeth Huppert (a graduate of Chicago Booth’s PhD program) and Booth’s Emma Levine: Many people in a group don’t mind dishonesty from a leader so long as it benefits them rather than their competitors. That season, the Patriots had a perfect regular season record, and sportswriters voted Belichick the Associated Press NFL Coach of the Year.
Many people see dishonest leadership as rampant in modern politics and other domains. (In a 2025 survey from Pew Research Center of adults in 25 countries, nearly half of respondents said few or none of their elected officials were honest.) The researchers—after reviewing past findings on ethical dilemmas, honesty, intergroup conflict, and person perception (or, how we form opinions about others based on things such as appearance and behavior)—propose a theoretical framework for understanding when and why people see dishonesty as a valuable trait in leaders.
Dishonesty, write Huppert and Levine, means “communicating in a way that fosters false beliefs in others.” That can include lying, intentionally misleading, or dodging questions. Members of an in-group—the people being led—tend to ignore or even value dishonesty from their leaders when it results in a win for their team, the researchers explain.
This is especially true when people adopt zero-sum thinking, at which point “they view in-group successes as directly linked to out-group failures,” the researchers write. It’s “us versus them” thinking: If we win, you lose; and if we lose, you win. For example, CEOs engage in zero-sum thinking when they believe that rival companies must be undermined for their own companies to thrive.
“In reality, the world rarely looks like that, but that’s what conflict does,” Levine says. When people engage in zero-sum thinking, they are more likely to reward a leader who tries to advance the group’s interests by any means necessary, including by lying. In these cases, lying can be seen as both benevolent and competent.
When 'us versus them' thinking takes over
However, Huppert and Levine warn, this advantage can wear off. Someone who engages in “repeated acts of dishonesty may no longer appear competent over time.”
This gets to the long-term costs of electing and propping up dishonest leaders. Over time, dishonesty can erode trust and breed cynicism, according to the researchers. Someone who is willing to lie to help a group may be just as willing to lie in a way that would hurt it. An in-group perceives a leader’s dishonesty as benevolent only when it helps them, not when it solely benefits the leader, Huppert and Levine argue.
They highlight potential ways leaders can combat the urge to be dishonest. Chief among the strategies: Find ways to reduce zero-sum thinking, such as lessening in-group and out-group comparisons and highlighting solutions that allow both groups to win. The researchers also suggest accentuating common identities so that people can start to relate to and feel less threatened by those in another group. Reminding leaders of the influence and control their group has also tends to make the out-group feel less threatening.
It’s especially important for leaders to recognize their influence and reprioritize honesty, the researchers write. A leader’s willingness to find solutions that help everyone win can create a more honest world.
Elizabeth Huppert and Emma Levine, “The Rise of Dishonest Leaders: Causes and Solutions,” Academy of Management Perspectives, August 2023.
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