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Research Details
Social Dominance Orientation: Revisiting the Structure and Function of a Variable Predicting Social and Political Attitudes, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Abstract
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.
Type
Article
Author(s)
A. K. Ho, J. Sidanius, F. Pratto, S. Levin, L. Thomsen, Nour Kteily, J. Sheehy-Skeffington
Date Published
2012
Citations
Ho, A. K., J. Sidanius, F. Pratto, S. Levin, L. Thomsen, Nour Kteily, and J. Sheehy-Skeffington. 2012. Social Dominance Orientation: Revisiting the Structure and Function of a Variable Predicting Social and Political Attitudes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 38: 583-606.
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