Social dominance orientation: revisiting the structure and function of a variable predicting social and political attitudes.
Social dominance orientation (SDO) is one of the most powerful predictors of intergroup attitudes and behavior. Although SDO works well as a unitary construct, some analyses suggest it might consist of two complementary dimensions--SDO-Dominance (SDO-D), or the preference for some groups to dominate others, and SDO-Egalitarianism (SDO-E), a preference for nonegalitarian intergroup relations. Using seven samples from the United States and Israel, the authors confirm factor-analytic evidence and show predictive validity for both dimensions. In the United States, SDO-D was theorized and found to be more related to old-fashioned racism, zero-sum competition, and aggressive intergroup phenomena than SDO-E; SDO-E better predicted more subtle legitimizing ideologies, conservatism, and opposition to redistributive social policies. In a contentious hierarchical intergroup context (the Israeli-Palestinian context), SDO-D better predicted both conservatism and aggressive intergroup attitudes. Fundamentally, these analyses begin to establish the existence of complementary psychological orientations underlying the preference for group-based dominance and inequality.
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, William James Hall, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. arnoldho@fas.harvard.edu
Arnold K
AK
Ho
Jim
J
Sidanius
Felicia
F
Pratto
Shana
S
Levin
Lotte
L
Thomsen
Nour
N
Kteily
Jennifer
J
Sheehy-Skeffington
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001290:Attitude; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007557:Israel; D007585:Jews; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D009949:Orientation; D011057:Politics; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D011582:Psychological Theory; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012923:Social Class; D012930:Social Dominance; D012933:Social Identification; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014481:United States; D044465:White People; D055815:Young Adult