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All content in this area was uploaded by Felicia Pratto on Jul 15, 2014
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Social dominance theory and the dynamics
of intergroup relations: Taking stock
and looking forward
Felicia Pratto
University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA
Jim Sidanius
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
Shana Levin
Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, CA, USA
This chapter reviews the last 15 years of research inspired by social dominance
theory, a general theory of societal group-based inequality. In doing so, we
sketch the broad outlines of the theory and discuss some of the controversies
surrounding it, such as the ‘‘invariance hypothesis’’ regarding gender differences
in social dominance orientation (SDO) and the effect of social context on the
expression of SDO. We also discuss the central role of gender in the construction
and maintenance of group-based inequality, and review some of the new research
inspired by the social dominance perspective. Finally, we identify and discuss
some of the most important theoretical questions posed by social dominance
theory that are yet to be researched.
Despite progress in the extension of civil and human rights to broader
segments of the world, the problems of intergroup discrimination, bigotry,
genocide, and the oppression of women and sexual minorities are still
painfully with us. Regardless of a society’s form of government, the contents
of its fundamental belief system, or the complexity of its social and econo-
mic arrangements, human societies tend to organise as group-based social
hierarchies in which at least one group enjoys greater social status and
Correspondence should be addressed to Felicia Pratto, Department of Psychology,
University of Connecticut, 406 Babbidge Road, Unit 1020, Storrs, CT 06269-1020, USA.
Email: felicia.pratto@uconn.edu
The authors wish to thank Miriam Matthews for her helpful comments on an earlier version
of this article.
EUROPEAN REVIEW OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
2006, 17, 271 – 320
Ó2006 European Association of Experimental Social Psychology
http://www.psypress.com/ersp DOI: 10.1080/10463280601055772
power than other groups. Members of dominant social groups tend to enjoy
a disproportionate share of positive social value, or desirable material and
symbolic resources such as political power, wealth, protection by force,
plentiful and desirable food, and access to good housing, health care,
leisure, and education. Negative social value is disproportionately left to or
forced upon members of subordinate groups in the form of substandard
housing, disease, underemployment, dangerous and distasteful work,
disproportionate punishment, stigmatisation, and vilification. Although
the degree, severity, and definitional bases of group-based hierarchical
organisation vary across societies and within the same society over time, the
fact of group-based hierarchical organisation appears to be a human
universal (e.g., Brown, 1991; Lenski, 1984; Tilly, 1998).
Social dominance theory was developed in an attempt to understand how
group-based social hierarchy is formed and maintained. Unlike most other
theories of prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination in social psychology
(e.g., realistic group conflict theory, social identity theory, self-categorisa-
tion theory, stereotype content model), social dominance theory assumes
that we must understand the processes producing and maintaining prejudice
and discrimination at multiple levels of analysis, including cultural ideologies
and policies, institutional practices, relations of individuals to others
inside and outside their groups, the psychological predispositions of
individuals, and the interaction between the evolved psychologies of men
and women (e.g., Pratto, 1999; Sidanius, 1993; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999;
Sidanius, Pratto, van Laar, & Levin, 2004). Moreover, because social
dominance theory views human societies as systems, it theorises how
processes at different levels work together to produce systemic effects.
In addressing the processes structuring human societies, social dominance
theory is more general than theories that focus only on capitalism, empires,
gender, immediate self- or group interest, social identity, or individual dif-
ferences. Social dominance theory is as ambitious as it is because it attempts
to integrate insights from a number of earlier perspectives, with the most
influential being: (a) cultural theories of ideology (Adorno, Frenkel-
Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950; Johnson, 1994), (b) realistic group
conflict theory (e.g., Blumer, 1960; Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood, & Sherif,
1961), (c) neoclassical elitism theory (e.g., Michels, 1911/1962; Mosca
(1896/1939; Pareto, 1901/1979), (d) social identity theory (e.g., Tajfel &
Turner, 1986), (e) Marxism (Engels, 1884/1902; Marx & Engels, 1846),
(f) feminist anthropological analyses of family and labour (Collier, 1988;
Sanday, 1981), and (g) evolutionary psychology (e.g., Wilson & Daly, 1992).
We discuss social dominance theory in five major sections. First, we
summarise the theory and evidence for its basic claims. Second, we discuss
the construct of social dominance orientation, its psychometric properties
and determinants, and some of the controversies surrounding the construct.
272 PRATTO, SIDANIUS, LEVIN
Third, we discuss the central role gender plays in group-based hierarchy.
Fourth, we review some of the new research inspired by social dominance
theory. Finally, we step back from empirical details to regain a larger view of
what social dominance theory is trying to accomplish, and to identify
theoretical issues that remain to be empirically researched.
AN OVERVIEW OF SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY
The trimorphic structure of group-based social hierarchy
Social dominance theory argues that societies producing stable economic
surplus contain three qualitatively distinct systems of group-based
hierarchy: (1) an age system, in which adults have disproportionate social
power over children; (2) a gender system, in which men have dispropor-
tionate social, political, and military power compared to women; and (3) an
arbitrary-set system, in which groups constructed on ‘‘arbitrary’’ bases, that
is, on bases not linked to the human life-cycle, have differential access to
things of positive and negative social value. Arbitrary-set groups may be
defined by social distinctions meaningfully related to power, such as (in
various contexts) nationality, ‘‘race’’, ethnicity, class, estate, descent,
religion, or clan. Parallel trimorphic structures (based on age, sex, and
coalitions) are found in chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and baboons
(Kawanaka, 1982, 1989; Nadler, 1988; Rowell, 1974; Strier, 1994). Such a
social organisation may help primate societies transmit skills, knowledge,
and ideas, while also transmitting roles and power.
Although the trimorphic form of human societies is universal, the
hierarchical severity of these three systems can vary quite dramatically across
different societies and within a given society over time. There are substantial
cultural and class differences in what ages are defined as ‘‘childhood’’ and
whether marriage, sexuality, labour, and freedom are expected of or
prohibited from children. There are radically different degrees of gender
inequality across different societies (though no differences in form such that
women dominate men). For example, women living under Shar’ia law may be
stoned to death for adultery, but women in Sweden now enjoy near political
and economic, though not military, parity with men, although this was not
true in the 1920s. Definitions of arbitrary-set categories and the permeability
of category boundaries also vary across societies and historical periods. For
example, the US racial hierarchy is largely dichotomous (Black/White) and
rigid, but the racial hierarchy in the Dominican Republic contains
approximately six distinct, yet relatively permeable, categories (Sidanius,
Pen
˜a, & Sawyer, 2001b).
Despite several structural and functional similarities among the age,
gender, and arbitrary-set systems of group-based social hierarchy, social
SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY 273
dominance theory argues that each system is qualitatively different, and
hence one system cannot be regarded as merely a special case of another.
Specifically, aside from their function in societal reproduction, there are three
critical differences among these systems (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999; Sidanius &
Veniegas, 2000): flexibility,level of violence, and focus. The age and gender
systems have some flexibility as to who is defined as a ‘‘child’’ versus an
‘‘adult’’ and who is ‘‘male’’ versus ‘‘female’’. But the arbitrary-set system is
distinguished by a very high degree of plasticity, both in terms of which group
distinctions become socially significant and in the permeability of the group
boundaries. Second, although coercion and violence are used to maintain the
age and gender hierarchies, the degree of lethality associated with the
arbitrary-set system is often orders of magnitude greater than that associated
with either the age or gender system. Arbitrary-sets are the only type of system
in which total annihilation is found. That is, there are cases in which one clan
or race or ethnic group has exterminated another. There are no known cases
in which adults killed all the children, or men killed all the women, in a
society. Finally, while by definition, the age system is focused on the control of
children by adults, and the gender system is focused on men’s control of
women, social dominance theory argues that arbitrary-set hierarchy primarily
focuses on the control of subordinate males by coalitions of dominant males.
This, in fact, is a primary reason that arbitrary-set hierarchy is associated with
extraordinary levels of violence.
The masculine focus of arbitrary-set conflict can be seen in several ways.
Men are the most frequent perpetrators of both lethal interpersonal violence
(e.g., Archer, 2000; Daly & Wilson, 1988) and of intergroup violence (see
Goldstein, 2001; Wrangham & Peterson, 1996). Indeed, collective violence
ranging from military campaigns to gangs to lynchings are almost exclusively
instigated, organised, and controlled by men (Edgerton, 2000; Keegan, 1993).
Equally important, men are not only the primary perpetrators of intergroup
violence, but also the primary lethal targets. For example, 69% of Black US
lynching victims between 1882 and 1927 (White, 1969) and over 80% of US
homosexual hate crime victims (e.g., Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2003)
were men. Even the widespread practice of raping enemy women during war
often appears intended to dishonour and humiliate the rape victim’s male
relatives (United Nations, 2002). This is not to diminish the suffering of
women and children in arbitrary-set conflicts, which is often atrocious.
Rather, it is to emphasise that violence in the gender and age systems may
stem from arbitrary-set conflict (see United Nations, 2002).
The male-on-male focus of arbitrary-set conflict can be seen in everyday
forms of group discrimination as well. At the level of social stereotypes,
Eagly and Kite (1987) found that negative national stereotypes are really
differentiated stereotypes of men in those nations; stereotypes of women,
regardless of their nationality, reflect women’s nurturing roles across
274 PRATTO, SIDANIUS, LEVIN
nations. At the level of individual discrimination, the assumption that
arbitrary-set prejudice primarily concerns men seems implicit in the fact
that most studies of race discrimination use only men as targets (e.g.,
Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2002). At the level of institutional
discrimination, there is substantial cross-cultural evidence that men rather
than women are the primary and most ill-treated targets of arbitrary-set
discrimination across a range of domains, including the labour market, the
criminal justice system, the housing market, and the retail market (see
Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). The thesis that both arbitrary-set violence and
arbitrary-set discrimination are primarily male-on-male projects is known as
the ‘‘subordinate male target hypothesis’’ (see Sidanius & Pratto, 1999;
Sidanius & Veniegas, 2000).
Mechanisms producing and maintaining group-based social
hierarchy
According to social dominance theory, group-based social hierarchy is
produced by the net effects of discrimination across multiple levels:
institutions, individuals, and collaborative intergroup processes. Discrimi-
nation across these levels is coordinated to favour dominant groups over
subordinate groups by legitimising myths, or societal, consensually shared
social ideologies.
Legitimising myths. Following classical scholars of social power (e.g.,
Mosca, 1896; Pareto, 1901), social dominance theory assumes that group-
based inequality is not simply the result of the naked use of force,
intimidation, and discrimination on the part of dominants against
subordinates. Rather, as suggested by contemporary scholars of group
dominance and shared representations (e.g., Johnson, 1994, Sanday, 1981,
van Dijk, 1987), social dominance theory states that the decisions and
behaviours of individuals, the formation of new social practices, and the
operations of institutions are shaped by legitimising myths. Legitimising
myths are consensually held values, attitudes, beliefs, stereotypes, and
cultural ideologies.
Social dominance theory distinguishes between two functional types of
legitimising myths. Hierarchy-enhancing legitimising myths (HE-LMs)
provide moral and intellectual justification for group-based oppression
and inequality. Examples include myriad forms of racism, sexism,
heterosexism, stereotypes, notions of ‘‘fate’’, just world beliefs, nationalism,
Confucianism, the doctrine of meritorious karma, classism, the Divine
Rights of Kings, Manifest Destiny, and internal attributions for poverty.
Such disparate myths have been used to argue that inequality is fair,
SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY 275
legitimate, natural, or moral. Hierarchy-enhancing legitimising myths not
only organise individual, group, and institutional behaviour in ways that
sustain dominance, they often lead subordinates to collaborate with domi-
nants in the maintenance of oppression.
However, dominance is seldom uncontested. Ideologies that counter
dominance are called hierarchy-attenuating legitimising myths (HA-LMs).
Examples of hierarchy-attenuating legitimising myths are political doctrines
such as social democracy, socialism, and communism, religious doctrines
such as the preferential option for the poor or inclusive and egalitarian
themes in the New Testament, and humanist doctrines such as the universal
rights of man, feminism, and human rights. Both hierarchy-enhancing
and hierarchy-attenuating myths are tied to the cosmologies, patterns of
behaviour, and relations that constitute culture.
One factor determining the potency of a legitimising myth to either
enhance or attenuate group-based social hierarchy is the degree to which it is
consensual, particularly across members of both subordinate and dominant
groups. While social dominance theory assumes that, everything else being
equal, dominants will generally show greater endorsement of hierarchy-
enhancing legitimising myths than will subordinates, and subordinates will
display greater endorsement of hierarchy-attenuating legitimising myths
than will dominants, within stable hierarchies the theory assumes that there
will be greater ideological consensus rather than dissension across groups. In
other words, within stable social systems, dominants and subordinates will
agree with respect to these legitimising myths more than they will disagree
(see Sidanius & Pratto, 1999, Ch. 4 for a more detailed argument and
empirical evidence).
Institutional discrimination
Like legitimising myths, many institutions can be classified as either
hierarchy enhancing or hierarchy attenuating. Hierarchy-enhancing (HE)
institutions promote and sustain inequality by allocating disproportionately
more positive social value or less negative social value to dominant groups
than to subordinate groups. Powerful hierarchy-enhancing institutions
include profit-maximising financial institutions, transnational corporations,
internal security organisations (e.g., Gestapo, KGB, SAVAK, FBI), and
criminal justice systems. Criminal justice systems are viewed as important
mechanisms of group dominance and control because, compared to
dominants, subordinates are over-represented in prison cells, torture
chambers, and execution chambers across many different societies, even
after accounting for differential rates of criminality between groups
(see Sidanius & Pratto, 1999, Ch. 8). For example, in the United States,
African-Americans are imprisoned at more than six times the rate of
276 PRATTO, SIDANIUS, LEVIN
European-Americans, and African-American men have about a one-third
chance of being imprisoned during their lifetimes. A portion of this
differential imprisonment can be attributed to higher rates of criminal
culpability among African-American men, but a substantial portion is
difficult to attribute to anything other than institutional discrimination (e.g.,
Mauer, 1999; Miller, 1996; Nelson, 2000). This has systematic effects on the
African-American community in terms of lost wages, absent family
members, mistrust of public institutions, and low life expectations
(e.g., Mauer, 1999).
Reducing the consequences of hierarchy-enhancing institutions, but
rarely balancing their impact, are hierarchy-attenuating (HA) institutions.
These disproportionately aid members of subordinate social groups (e.g.,
the poor, ethnic and religious minorities) and attempt to open access to
resources otherwise restricted to dominants (e.g., public services). Prominent
hierarchy-attenuating institutions include human rights, civil rights, and
civil liberties groups; welfare organisations; and religious organisations
devoted to the protection of the poor, the vulnerable, and the oppressed.
Such institutions often lack substantial and permanent funding, force, legal
precedent, or other bases of power. In contrast to the criminal justice and
employment sectors, which regularly allocate negative social value such as
prison terms and dangerous work situations to subordinates, hierarchy-
attenuating institutions rarely allocate negative social value to dominants.
Those that do are often wilfully opposed, delegitimised, and shut down. This
asymmetry in power between the discriminatory elements of hierarchy-
enhancing institutions and counterbalancing efforts of hierarchy-attenuating
institutions maintains hierarchy.
The discrimination perpetrated by hierarchy-enhancing institutions is a
particularly potent cause of group hierarchy for several reasons. First,
institutions can mobilise and allocate vastly larger amounts of resources
than individuals can. Second, large institutions, such as national govern-
ments and multinational corporations, have a larger ‘‘reach’’ in systematic
influence across locales. Third, because institutions perpetuate themselves,
the discrimination they engage in operates over generations, and when
individuals or groups try to fight those practices, institutions typically
defend their discriminatory practices as part of defending the institution
itself. Fourth, institutions establish their own internal norms, which
coordinate the people who work in them and homogenise individual
differences. Fifth, individuals in many institutions, including the military
and corporations, are frequently exempted from personal culpability for
their institutional actions because the institution has special legal status. All
this implies that institutional behaviour is a very influential determinant of
the level of social hierarchy in societies. Institutional discrimination against
arbitrary-set subordinates and women is plentiful across societies in
SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY 277
domains including employment, housing, retail markets, health care, and
education (see Sidanius & Pratto, 1999, Chs 5 – 8).
Individual discrimination
Discrimination perpetrated by individuals in these domains abounds as
well. Discrimination by individuals occurs when an employer decides not
to hire or promote a given job applicant, a real-estate agent decides not to
sell or rent to a potential client, or a prosecutor decides to charge a
defendant with a less serious offence, all due to the target individual’s
ethnicity, nationality, social class, sexual orientation, or gender. Which
groups are generally favoured and which are disfavoured in such decisions
depends in part on the contents of legitimising myths. Further, social
structure often affords hierarchy-maintaining behaviour more than
hierarchy-attenuating behaviour. For example, recommending friends for
jobs favours dominants when unemployment rates differ by group and
friendship patterns are segregated. Tutoring neighbourhood children
favours dominants when education levels differ by group and neigh-
bourhoods are segregated. These, of course, are typical conditions in
hierarchical societies. When thousands of such individual acts of
discrimination are aggregated over time, they stabilise group-based social
inequality.
The structure of society itself, then, facilitates discrimination by indivi-
duals. People in high-power groups usually have more things of positive
social value they can allocate to others, and more power to ensure that
things of negative social value are allocated to people in other groups. For
example, rich people have more means than poor people to prevent or
contest zoning [planning] decisions that locate undesirable things near their
homes. Group segregation and gender role differentiation also mean that
privileges and responsibilities are allocated unequally across arbitrary-set
groups and gender. This does not mean that people’s actions are determined
by their position in the social structure. Rather, a hierarchical structure
implies that the ease of performing actions that maintain or enhance
inequality is greater than the ease of performing actions that attenuate the
hierarchy.
One piece of evidence that people’s actions are not just determined by
their position in the social structure is that there are robust differences
among individuals in the same social positions in terms of which groups
their actions favour, how much they discriminate, how much group
prejudice they hold, and how much they favour discriminatory versus
egalitarian policies. These kinds of differences are not just random or
contextual. Rather, they are associated with an identifiable psycho-
logical orientation concerning hierarchical group relations, namely social
278 PRATTO, SIDANIUS, LEVIN
dominance orientation (SDO). (SDO is discussed in detail in the following
section.)
Collaborative intergroup processes in discrimination
Group-based social inequality is also partly produced and maintained by
intergroup processes; specifically, the collaborative activities of dominants
and subordinates. This collaboration is achieved by behavioural asymmetry,
or coordinated differences in the behavioural repertoires of dominants and
subordinates that produce better outcomes for dominants than for
subordinates. Three major types of behavioural asymmetry are asymme-
trical ingroup bias, self-debilitating behaviours among subordinates, and
ideological asymmetry.
Asymmetrical ingroup bias. The fact that people tend to favour their own
groups over others has been known since before Sumner coined the term
ethnocentrism in 1906, and has been largely confirmed by the voluminous
research inspired by social identity theory. However, because social domi-
nance theory considers group dominance to be a dynamic system, it predicts
that the degree of ingroup bias differs systematically across levels of status
and power. Within stable group-based dominance systems, dominants will
usually display more ingroup favouritism vis-a
`-vis subordinates than will
members of subordinate groups vis-a
`-vis dominants, especially with respect
to dimensions of power and privilege (see Sidanius & Pratto, 1999,
pp. 233 – 234; see also Fang, Sidanius & Pratto, 1998). In its more extreme
form, this asymmetrical ingroup bias is manifested as outgroup favouritism
among subordinates.
Asymmetrical ingroup bias favouring dominants is exaggerated by
people’s endorsement of legitimising myths. The more legitimate the social
system is perceived to be, the greater the degree to which dominants will
display ingroup favouritism compared to subordinates. For example, using
a large random sample of American adults, Sidanius and Pratto (1999,
pp. 237 – 238) found that among those who regarded American society as
fair and just, dominants (Whites) showed higher levels of ethnic ingroup
favouritism than did subordinates (i.e., Blacks and Latinos). In contrast,
among those regarding American society as unjust and unfair, subordinates
showed distinctly higher levels of ethnic ingroup favouritism than did
dominants. This is just one example of the importance of legitimising myths
in helping to regulate the degree of advantage that dominants have over
subordinates.
Self-debilitation. When subordinates engage in self-destructive and
ingroup-damaging behaviours at significantly higher levels than do
SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY 279
dominants, they contribute to their own group’s subordination. We call this
process self-debilitation. Self-debilitating behaviours include higher levels of
criminality, in-group directed violence, harmful substance abuse (e.g.,
cigarette smoking, drug and alcohol abuse), truancy, and school attrition
(Sidanius & Pratto, 1999, Ch. 9).
One example of the role of legitimising myths in self-debilitating
behaviour is that stereotypes of group inferiority lead members of
subordinate groups to under-perform on intellectual tasks in self-evaluative
situations. Such ‘‘stereotype threat’’ has been found for African-Americans
(Steele & Aronson, 1995), women (Spencer, Steele, & Quinn, 1999), people
with lower social class (Croizet & Claire, 1998), and many other subordinate
groups even when they do not endorse stereotypes of their own group’s
inferiority, and even though they can perform as well as equally competent
members of dominant groups when relieved of the threat. In contrast,
members of dominant groups often get a ‘‘stereotype lift’’ in terms of better
performance because of these same stereotypes (e.g., Walton & Cohen,
2003).
Consider another general legitimising myth: that women should be
sexually attractive to men. Research shows that women’s test performance
and eating habits can be debilitated by making them aware of themselves as
sexual objects (e.g., Fredrickson, Roberts, Noll, Quinn, & Twenge, 1998).
Yet many women devote considerable time and expense, and even endure
pain, to present themselves as sexual objects. Much of the power of
legitimising myths is that they can influence one’s behaviour and outcomes
whether one endorses them or not, and whether they are good for one
or not.
From a social dominance perspective, hierarchy-enhancing legitimising
myths are important not only because of the discriminatory behaviour they
induce among dominants and the rationales they provide for institutional
discrimination, but also because of the debilitating and self-destructive
behaviours they induce among subordinates. Stereotypes and other
ideologies that subordinates carry in their heads induce them to behave
in ways that reinforce these stereotypes, thus becoming self-fulfilling
prophecies. Through their influence on the actions of both dominants and
subordinates, hierarchy-enhancing legitimising myths contribute to the
maintenance of group-based hierarchy.
Ideological asymmetry. Consistent with social dominance theory’s view
that social dominance systems serve dominants more than subordinates,
many of the psychological and ideological forces that help sustain group
dominance work better for people in dominant than in subordinate groups.
For example, although hierarchy-enhancing legitimising myths influence the
behaviours of both dominants and subordinates, they are often easier for
280 PRATTO, SIDANIUS, LEVIN
people in dominant groups to endorse (e.g., Sidanius & Pratto, 1999, Ch. 4).
In addition, for people in dominant groups, SDO feels more compatible
with one’s status position (e.g., Pratto, 1999), group and system justification
motives are congruent (e.g., Jost & Burgess, 2000), and there is no conflict
between attachment to superordinate groups, such as the nation, and
attachment to other groups, such as one’s ethnic group (Sidanius, Feshbach,
Levin, & Pratto, 1997). The hypothesis that there is generally greater com-
patibility between psychological processes, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours
that facilitate group dominance among dominant group members than
among subordinate group members is called ideological asymmetry.
In line with the ideological asymmetry hypothesis, SDO (i.e., the desire
for group-based dominance and inequality) relates more strongly to support
for legitimising myths among dominant than among subordinate groups
(Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). There is also asymmetry in the relationship
between SDO and ingroup identification as a function of group position: the
two constructs are positively associated among dominants and negatively
associated among subordinates (e.g., Levin & Sidanius, 1999; Pratto, 1999;
Sidanius & Pratto, 1999; Sidanius, Pratto, & Rabinowitz, 1994d). Moreover,
the combination of high SDO and high ingroup identification among
dominants produces especially strong derogation and discrimination against
subordinates (Overbeck, Jost, Mosso, Flizik, 2004; Sidanius, Pratto, &
Mitchell, 1994c), as predicted by ideological asymmetry. We turn now to a
more detailed discussion of the construct of social dominance orientation.
THE CONSTRUCT OF SOCIAL DOMINANCE
ORIENTATION
The construct of social dominance orientation captures the extent of
individuals’ desires for group-based dominance and inequality. These
desires for social dominance are expressed in individual acts of discrimina-
tion and participation in intergroup and institutional processes that produce
better outcomes for dominants than for subordinates. One way in which
individuals high in SDO justify their discriminatory actions is by supporting
a wide variety of legitimising myths that have in common the notion that
dominant and subordinate groups deserve their relative positions of
superiority and inferiority in the social hierarchy. Specifically, relative to
their low-SDO counterparts, high-SDO individuals show more support for
hierarchy-enhancing legitimising myths and less support for hierarchy-
attenuating legitimising myths, and through these legitimising myths they
show more support for hierarchy-enhancing social policies (e.g., restrictive
immigration policies) and less support for hierarchy-attenuating social
policies (e.g., affirmative action; see Figure 1). According to social domi-
nance theory, hierarchical relationships among groups are both a partial
SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY 281
cause and a partial result of these processes (e.g., Pratto, 1999). Societies that
are structured more hierarchically are likely to have larger mean differences
in SDO between dominant and subordinate groups, and hierarchy-
enhancing legitimising myths and social policies that are more powerful
than hierarchy-attenuating alternatives. Social hierarchy is also reinforced
by SDO and legitimising myths: The higher the levels of SDO, especially
among dominants, the greater the support for hierarchy-enhancing relative
to hierarchy-attenuating legitimising myths and social policies, and the
greater the resulting level of social hierarchy.
By emphasising how SDO functions in this way, social dominance theory
highlights the role that individuals’ value orientations towards inequality
play in both affecting and being affected by social hierarchy. While our
initial conceptualisation of SDO defined it as the extent to which people
desire dominance of the ingroup over outgroups (Pratto, Sidanius,
Stallworth, & Malle, 1994), SDO has been refined as expressing a gener-
alised orientation towards and desire for unequal and dominant/subordinate
relations among salient social groups, regardless of whether this implies
ingroup domination or subordination (Sidanius, Levin, Federico, & Pratto,
2001a; for a critique of this position, see Rubin & Hewstone, 2004).
Social dominance orientation is usually measured by the 14-item SDO
5
Scale or the 16-item SDO
6
Scale and consists of items such as: (a) ‘‘Superior
groups should dominate inferior groups’’ and (b) ‘‘Inferior groups should
stay in their place’’ (see SDO
6
Scale in the Appendix). The original exp-
lorations of the psychometric properties of the SDO scales have shown them
to have high levels of internal and cross-time reliability, construct validity,
Figure 1. Model of hierarchy-enhancing and hierarchy-attenuating legitimising myths mediating
the relationships between SDO and social policies (Source: Sidanius & Pratto, 1999, p. 105).
282 PRATTO, SIDANIUS, LEVIN
and discriminant validity (Pratto et al., 1994). For example, SDO is both
conceptually distinct from and empirically orthogonal to interpersonal
dominance in Americans (see Pratto et al., 1994). Sidanius and Pratto (1999)
found a median reliability for the SDO
5
scale of .82 across 16 independent
samples of 2150 respondents from four different nations (i.e., USA, Canada,
Taiwan, and Mexico). The SDO
6
Scale has been found to have a median
reliability of .83 across 14 independent samples of 4827 respondents from six
different nations (USA, Israel, Palestine, the People’s Republic of China,
New Zealand, and Canada).
In terms of its high levels of construct validity, SDO has been found to be
related to sexism (average r¼.51) and ethnic prejudice against a range of
different minority groups across a number of different countries and
cultures, including the USA, Canada, Mexico, Israel, Taiwan, the People’s
Republic of China, and New Zealand (average r¼.41). In addition, SDO
has been found to be related to a range of hierarchy-enhancing ideologies
and policies such as rape myths (e.g., rape victims are partly to blame for
being raped; r¼.43); nationalism (r¼.51); patriotism (r¼.35); political
conservatism (r¼.28); support for the war against Iraq (r¼.48), the death
penalty (r¼.31), torture (r¼.27), and suspension of civil liberties (r¼.45);
and opposition to both immigration (r¼.30) and extending civil and
economic rights to gays and women (r¼.38, r¼.39, respectively; see e.g.,
Pratto et al., 1994; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). People higher in SDO maintain
beliefs and endorse policies and practices that maintain group dominance in
a variety of ways, whereas people lower in SDO favour ideologies and
practices that ameliorate inequality.
1
SDO is also a powerful predictor of socio-political attitudes even when
other potential predictors are controlled. For example, McFarland and
Adelson (1996) defined a construct of latent prejudice as a composite of
prejudice against Blacks, gays, women, and an index of pseudo-patriotism.
Latent prejudice was then regressed upon a long array of independent
variables in a sample of college students and a sample of adults from the
southern USA. The independent variables included the following: (1) right-
wing authoritarianism (RWA), (2) attributional complexity, (3) need for
structure, (4) self-esteem, (5) collective self-esteem, (6) neuroticism, (7) psy-
choticism, (8) just world beliefs, (9) impression management, (10) self-
deception, (11) hostile aggressiveness, (12) life satisfaction, (13) self-direction,
(14) universalism, (15) traditionalism, (16) conformity, (17) security, (18) SDO
(SDO
5
scale), and (19) several demographic variables. SDO had the strongest
product–moment correlation with the latent prejudice measure in both
1
We use ‘‘low SDO’’ to refer to people who are lower than their peers and ‘‘high SDO’’ to
refer to people who are higher than their peers in SDO, regardless of the level of their absolute
scores on SDO scales.
SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY 283
samples (i.e., adults: r¼.53; students: r¼.48). RWA and SDO were only
marginally related (i.e., r5.22 in both samples), and multiple regression
showed that only RWA, gender, universalism, and SDO made strong and
independent contributions to the prediction of latent prejudice, accounting for
over half the variance in both samples (see Table 1).
Altemeyer (1998) reached similar conclusions using Anglophile Canadian
samples and composite indices of prejudice assessing attitudes towards
homosexuals, Blacks, women, Canadian Aboriginals, Quebecois, and gener-
alised ethnocentrism. Controlling for a large array of other variables
(including RWA), SDO had the largest correlation with the global prejudice
measure. Similar to the results of McFarland and Adelson (1996), Altemeyer
(1998) found that SDO and RWA alone accounted for 50% of the variance
in global prejudice. Research using Swedish respondents confirms this
picture. Ekehammar, Akrami, Gylje, and Zakrisson (2004) regressed a
measure of generalised prejudice—consisting of prejudice against gays,
Blacks, women, and the mentally handicapped—upon RWA and SDO. The
results showed that, even though RWA and SDO were strongly correlated in
this sample (r¼.52), and both RWA and SDO were strongly correlated with
generalised prejudice (r¼.55 and r¼.65, respectively), RWA and SDO both
made independent and significant contributions to the prediction of
generalised prejudice (i.e., b¼.30 and b¼.65, respectively). Although in
some countries (e.g., Germany, Belgium) SDO and RWA correlate sub-
stantially (e.g., Duriez & van Hiel, 2002; Wagner, van Dick, & Zick, 2001),
TABLE 1
Latent prejudice as a function of SDO, RWA, universalism, and gender
in two independent samples
Predictors Simple r Multiple b
Student sample (N¼438)
SDO .48** .29
RWA .47** .42
Universalism 7.30** 7.21
Gender (female) 7.31** 7.21
R
2
¼.53
Adult sample (N¼283)
SDO .53** .29
RWA .47** .44
Universalism 7.40** 7.19
Gender (female) 7.24** 7.17
R
2
¼.55
a
a
This equation also includes attitude complexity, just world beliefs, and hostile
aggression.
**p5.01. Source: McFarland and Adelson (1996).
284 PRATTO, SIDANIUS, LEVIN
in many countries (e.g., Canada, USA) they correlate very little (e.g.,
Altemeyer, 1998; McFarland & Adelson, 1996). Regardless, SDO and RWA
both robustly contribute independently to predicting prejudice and political
attitudes (e.g., McFarland & Adelson, 1996).
Research has also shown SDO to be related to resource allocation
decisions. For example, in one recent study using a large sample of UCLA
undergraduates, Sidanius, Haley, Molina, and Pratto (in press) employed
Tajfel allocation matrices to explore the tendency for people to allocate
relatively fewer economic resources to the ethnic outgroup than to the ethnic
ingroup, even at the cost of lower absolute profit to the ingroup. The results
showed that whereas the tendency to make such ‘‘costly’’ discriminatory
allocations was positively correlated with respondents’ level of identification
with their ethnic group (i.e., identification with Whites), when several
different control variables were considered simultaneously (i.e., gender,
degree of ethnic identification, perceived intergroup competition, and
economic conservatism), only the perceived level of intergroup competition
and SDO were found to be associated with the tendency towards costly
discriminatory social allocations. Thus, the more European-American
students perceived ethnic groups to be in zero-sum conflict with one
another, and the higher the students’ levels of SDO, the greater the degree to
which they made relatively fewer positive allocations to the outgroup than
to the ingroup, even at the cost of lower absolute profit to the ingroup (see
also Sidanius et al., 1994c).
Research comparing reactions to the events of 11 September 2001 among
respondents in the United States and Lebanon shows that SDO is not just a
measure of outgroup aggression, but as proposed by Sidanius et al. (2001a),
a desire for a hierarchical relationship among groups (Henry, Sidanius,
Levin, & Pratto, 2005). Congruent with much other research, RWA and
SDO were found to make independent and positive contributions to support
for aggressive anti-terrorism measures against people in the Arab and
Muslim worlds among American respondents (i.e., b¼.15 and b¼.30,
respectively). However, in Lebanon, while RWA was also positively
associated with support of terrorist activity against the West (b¼.26),
SDO was negatively associated with support of terrorism against the West
(b¼–.36, p5.01). This negative relationship makes perfect theoretical sense
when one remembers that the type of terrorism involved is aggressive action
by the weak (i.e., the Arab and Muslim protagonists) against the strong (i.e.,
Israeli and especially Americans targets). Thus, those high in SDO will side
with the strong against the weak, regardless of their own group membership,
consistent with the notion of ideological asymmetry.
SDO relates not only to support for discriminatory policies in correla-
tional studies, but to discriminatory perceptions and judgements in ex-
perimental research as well. In a jury simulation experiment, Kemmelmeier
SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY 285
(2005) explored perceptions of guilt and severity of punishment in a rape trial
as functions of race of the defendant (Black vs White) and level of SDO.
There were theoretically consistent and significant interactions between
defendant race and SDO. In the Black defendant condition SDO was
positively associated with perceptions of defendant guilt, whereas in the
White defendant condition SDO was negatively associated with perception of
defendant guilt. A similar, statistically significant interaction was found with
respect to sentence severity. In the Black defendant condition SDO was
positively correlated with sentence severity, whereas in the White defendant
condition SDO was negatively correlated with sentence severity. In other
words, as we have seen in the context of terrorism research, people with high
levels of SDO tend to make decisions that reinforce the dominance hierarchy,
while those with low levels of SDO tend to make decisions that undermine
the dominance hierarchy.
Other experimental evidence shows that SDO scores are predictive of
how much people discriminate in job allocation decisions. Michinov,
Dambrun, and Guimond (2005) told 90 White French university students to
assume they were part of an office staff of six employees, plus themselves.
Four of these other employees were light-skinned and European, and two of
these other employees were dark-skinned and of North African ancestry.
Participants placed photographs of the employees in a hierarchical
organisational chart in which the top position was labelled ‘‘Group
Leader’’. Discrimination was measured by the placement and order of
assigning the North African employees. Participants with high SDO scores
hired light-skinned applicants first. More importantly, while those with low
SDO scores tended to assign the North African employees at random across
the hierarchical organisation, those with high SDO scores assigned North
African employees to lower levels in the organisational chart.
SDO also influences how much people actually discriminate in minimal
group experiments. In one such experiment, Pratto (1999) pre-selected
participants to be in the top or bottom third of the SDO distribution. Those
with relatively low SDO scores used the strategy of maximising joint gain for
the groups more than did participants with relatively high SDO scores. In
conditions that increased the salience of group boundaries, those with high
SDO scores used the strategy of maximising relative gain more than did
those with low SDO scores. Other minimal group experiments have also
shown that highly identified high-SDO participants are the most discrimi-
natory (Amiot & Bourhis, 2003; Perreault & Bourhis, 1998; Sidanius et al.,
1994c).
Most minimal group research has focused on the distribution of positive
outcomes (e.g., money or symbolic points) to ingroup and outgroup
members, rather than the distribution of negative outcomes such as
punishments and salary cuts (Mummendey & Otten, 1998). However,
286 PRATTO, SIDANIUS, LEVIN
Amiot and Bourhis (2005) found that SDO measured one month before a
minimal group experiment could predict both positive discriminatory
allocations to ingroup and outgroup members (in the form of salary
increases and cuts in hours of unpaid work) and negative discriminatory
outcomes (in the form of salary cuts and increases in unpaid work; see also
Altemeyer, 2003). In experimental contexts with more mundane realism,
high-SDO participants allocate resources to favour the meritorious, who
already have more, and low-SDO participants favour the needy (Pratto,
Tatar, & Conway-Lanz, 1999, Expts 1 – 3). The kind of discrimination
performed by high-SDO people, then, is not just ingroup favouritism.
Numerous experiments show that high-SDO people discriminate in ways to
promote hierarchy more than low-SDO people do.
Finally, recent experimental research has also shown SDO to be related
to ‘‘stereotype lift’’ effects in theoretically expected directions. As noted
above, ‘‘stereotype lift’’ can be said to occur when members of dominant
groups actually perform better on performance tasks when hierarchy-
enhancing racial stereotypes or images of subordinates (e.g., Blacks) are
primed. For example, Danso and Esses (2001) randomly assigned 100 White
Canadian undergraduates to have a Black experimenter or a White
experimenter while performing arithmetic tests. Consistent with much of
the stereotype lift literature (see Walton & Cohen, 2003), students in the
Black experimenter condition performed significantly better than did
students in the White experimenter condition. In addition, SDO scores
were positively and significantly correlated with test performance. More to
the point, SDO was only correlated with test performance in the Black
experimenter condition, and not in the White experimenter condition. These
results are thus consistent with the notion that members of dominant groups
will put in extra effort to maintain dominance when primed with members of
subordinate groups who happen to be in positions of authority, especially
when individuals in the dominant group have relatively high levels of SDO,
or the desire to maintain group-based social inequality.
Where does SDO come from?
One point of confusion regarding social dominance theory concerns the
theoretical importance of the origins of differences in SDO. Some assume
that social dominance theory should be centrally concerned with the origins
of this orientation. In fact, however, the theory is a theory of social
dominance, not a theory of social dominance orientation. We view measures
of SDO to be a theoretical tool, rather than viewing SDO as a root cause of
social hierarchy. One way in which measures of SDO have been used is as a
metric for assessing the hierarchy-enhancing and hierarchy-attenuating
functions of ideologies. Specifically, social dominance theory argues that
SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY 287
one can test whether a particular ideology is serving as a legitimising myth
and what type of myth it is by examining whether the ideology in question
mediates the relationship between SDO and endorsement of concrete social
policies with clear hierarchy-enhancing or hierarchy-attenuating outcomes
(see Figure 1). For example, the notion that the American criminal justice
system is free of racial bias and fair can be regarded as a hierarchy-
enhancing legitimising belief if it can be shown to positively mediate the
relationship between SDO and support for hierarchy-enhancing social
policies (e.g., the death penalty), and to negatively mediate the relationship
between SDO and hierarchy-attenuating social policies (e.g., legal aid to
indigent prisoners; see also Pratto et al., 2000; Pratto, Stallworth, &
Conway-Lanz, 1998).
Although we have focused on testing broader tenets of the theory rather
than on the origins of SDO, we have posited that it is influenced by at least
five broad forces: (1) group position, (2) social context, (3) stable individual
differences in temperament and personality, (4) gender, and (5) socialisation.
The role of group position
One robust finding in the social dominance literature is that dominants have
higher levels of SDO than subordinates (e.g., European-Americans have
higher levels of SDO than African-Americans, and people with higher
socioeconomic status have higher levels of SDO than those with lower
socioeconomic status; Sidanius, Levin, Liu, & Pratto, 2000). According to
social dominance theory, members of dominant arbitrary-set groups are
expected to have higher levels of SDO than members of subordinate groups
because they want to sustain the privileged access to social and economic
resources that their dominant position affords.
The importance of social context
Despite its description as a broad theory of intergroup relations, some critics
have mistakenly classified social dominance theory as a personality theory
(e.g., Kreindler, 2005; Rubin & Hewstone, 2004; Schmitt, Branscombe &
Kappen, 2003; Turner & Reynolds, 2003), and thus a model that ignores
context. However, as we emphasised at the beginning of this essay and have
discussed at length elsewhere (Sidanius et al., 2004), rather than being a
strict ‘‘personality theory’’ of prejudice, social dominance theory operates at
several levels of analysis, encompassing the level of individual differences
(e.g., attitudinal and behavioural predispositions), the level of social groups
in context, the level of institutions, and the level of competing ideologies
within the social system as a whole. In contrast to Schmitt et al. (2003) and
Turner and Reynolds (2003), the context-specific nature of people’s SDO
288 PRATTO, SIDANIUS, LEVIN
levels is not only something that we have never denied, it is something we
have both argued and empirically demonstrated.
For example, we have never interpreted evidence that European-
Americans tend to have higher SDO scores than African-Americans as
reflecting inherent differences between the personalities and/or genetic
make-up of the people within these groups. Rather, we have attributed SDO
differences between arbitrary-set groups to their hierarchical relationship to
one another (e.g., Fang et al., 1998). Moreover, we have demonstrated that
as the size of the status/power gap between arbitrary-set groups (e.g.,
ethnicities, social classes, religious groups) increases, so does the average
SDO difference between the groups (e.g., Levin, 2004; Sidanius et al., 2000).
For example, as shown in Figure 2, Levin (2004) found that when the status
difference between European- and African-Americans is perceived to be
small, there is no group difference in SDO. But when the status gap in
favour of Whites is perceived to be large, the group difference in SDO is
large as well.
Figure 2. SDO as a function of ethnic group and perceived ethnic status gap in the United States
(Source: Levin, 2004).
SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY 289
According to social dominance theory, when the status gap between
dominant and subordinate arbitrary-set groups varies, group differences in
SDO should vary as well, as higher group status elicits greater desires to
maintain a hierarchical social system in which the ingroup is more
advantaged, and lower group status elicits greater desires to oppose such
a system (see also Guimond, Dambrun, Michinov, & Duarte, 2003; Schmitt
et al., 2003). In an extreme case, as when the status of the groups reverses,
social dominance theory would expect the SDO differences among the
groups to reverse as well. This phenomenon was found by Levin (2004) in
Northern Ireland. Among those who viewed Protestants as having higher
social status than Catholics, Protestants had higher average levels of SDO
than Catholics. However, among those who viewed Catholics as having
higher social status than Protestants, Catholics had higher SDO levels than
Protestants. This same dynamic may explain why higher SDO scores are
found among Blacks than Whites in South Africa at present (Meyer, 2003).
Conversely, if status differences between arbitrary-set groups are not salient
(either chronically or because another group-based distinction has been
primed instead), then we would not expect to find substantial differences in
SDO between the groups (see also Huang & Liu, 2005).
This reasoning also implies that the SDO levels of individuals should
change as a function of the intergroup hierarchy and social identities implied
within different social contexts (see also Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). This thesis
was confirmed in a quasi-experiment among Israeli Jews conducted by Levin
(1996). Levin reasoned that if group position partly drives SDO, then when
SDO is measured after Israeli Jews are primed to think about ethnic
relations among Ashkenazi and Mizrachi Jews (i.e., ethnic prime),
Ashkenazi Jews (high-status Jews) should be higher in SDO than Mizrachi
Jews (low-status Jews). However, when SDO is measured after Israeli Jews
are primed to think about Israeli Arab–Jewish relations (i.e., national
prime), Ashkenazi and Mizrachi Jews should have similar SDO scores
because both groups—as Jews—enjoy equally high status relative to Israeli
Arabs. Furthermore, given the fact that the Israeli Arab–Jewish national
conflict is substantially more severe and threatening than the Ashkenazi–
Mizrachi ethnic conflict, the SDO levels of both groups of Jews should be
substantially higher when SDO is measured after the national prime than
after the ethnic prime.
Levin (1996) tested these hypotheses using a sample of 309 Jewish Israeli
participants (205 Ashkenazi and 104 Mizrachi Jews; 113 males and 196
females). SDO was measured in the context of the Ashkenazi–Mizrachi
(ethnic) conflict and the Israeli Arab–Jewish (national) conflict. Context was
established by priming respondents with a series of survey items about each
conflict situation immediately before they completed the SDO scale. For this
purpose, the 16-item SDO scale was split into two counterbalanced 8-item
290 PRATTO, SIDANIUS, LEVIN
scales. One of these sets of eight SDO items was placed in the survey
instrument after respondents received the ethnic prime (SDO
ethnic
a¼.79),
and the second set of eight SDO items appeared in the questionnaire after
respondents received the national prime (SDO
national
a¼.84). Five
attitudes towards Israeli Arabs and the Jewish character of Israel were also
measured.
As shown in Figure 3, results indicated that there was a significant main
effect of context, as expected, such that SDO measured in the national
context was significantly higher than SDO measured in the ethnic context,
F(1, 272) ¼80.52, p5.001. Furthermore, the two-way interaction between
ethnic group and context was reliable, F(1, 272) ¼4.25, p5.05, indicating
that Ashkenazi Jews had higher SDO scores than Mizrachi Jews in the
ethnic context—Ashkenazi Jews: M¼2.31, SD ¼1.10; Mizrachi Jews:
M¼1.98, SD ¼.80; F(1, 300) ¼8.54, p5.01—but there was no difference
between the SDO levels of the two Jewish groups in the national context:
Ashkenazi Jews: M¼2.75, SD ¼1.17; Mizrachi Jews: M¼2.68, SD ¼1.00;
F(1, 278) 51.
In addition to influencing mean levels of SDO, strong intergroup contexts
should enhance the degree to which SDO correlates with hierarchy-
enhancing attitudes. For example, perceived threat from subordinates is
one way to justify discrimination against subordinates by dominants. In
Levin’s (1996) Israeli study, social dominance theory would expect that SDO
would be related to perceived threat from subordinate group members
among the Jewish participants in both the ethnic and national contexts in
Israel. That is, the theory expects that high-SDO individuals will perceive
Figure 3. SDO as a function of ethnic group and social context in Israel (Source: Levin, 1996).
SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY 291
that subordinate groups (i.e., Mizrachi Jews in the ethnic context and Israeli
Arabs in the national context) pose a greater threat to the dominant group
(Ashkenazi Jews and all Israeli Jews, respectively) than low-SDO individuals
perceive them to pose. However, these correlations should be stronger
when SDO is measured in the context most relevant to the legitimising
myth. Thus, SDO should correlate with perceived threat from Israeli Arabs
more when SDO is measured in the Israeli Arab–Jewish national context
than when it is measured in the Ashkenazi–Mizrachi ethnic context.
Consistent with these expectations, Levin’s (1996) data showed that
correlations between SDO and each of five attitudes about Israeli Arabs
and Jews were stronger when SDO was measured in the Israeli Arab–
Jewish national context than in the Ashkenazi–Mizrachi ethnic context
(see Table 2).
In sum, contrary to the claims of Schmitt et al. (2003), there is a wide
body of empirical evidence that SDO is a general orientation that predicts
prejudice against many different groups and across many different inter-
group contexts, not just the contexts that are primed in a particular
situation. However, as a general orientation that functions to maintain
hierarchies among groups in society, SDO is also sensitive to situational
primes that make some group-based distinctions more salient than others.
That is, when a particular group-based distinction is made salient by a
situational prime, then SDO will relate especially strongly with that parti-
cular group prejudice as a way of attempting to legitimise the hierarchical
relations that exist between these particular groups. Thus, SDO is a good
barometer not only for measuring individuals’ support for hierarchy, and
the functional nature of legitimising myths, but the salience of hierarchy in
social context as well.
TABLE 2
Correlations of five attitudes about Israeli Arabs and Jews
SDO context
(within-participants)
Israeli Arab–Jewish group-relevant attitude
SDO
ethnic
correlation
SDO
national
correlation p 5
Perceived Israeli Arab threat .21 .45 .001
Negative affect towards Israeli Arabs .22 .43 .001
Support for a strong-arm policy towards Israeli Arabs .27 .52 .001
Desires that Israel be a Jewish state with Jewish character .02 .25 .001
Opposition to equal rights for Israeli Arabs .27 .57 .001
Correlations of five attitudes about Israeli Arabs and Jews with SDO
ethnic
and SDO
national
, and
pvalues for tests of significant differences in these relationships. Correlations greater than .20
are significant at the .001 alpha level. Source: Levin (1996).
292 PRATTO, SIDANIUS, LEVIN
SDO as a reflection of individual differences in temperament
and personality
Besides these situationally contingent social identities, SDO scores may
also be influenced by individuals’ temperaments and personalities. For
example, SDO has been found to be negatively related to empathy for
others and the personality factors of Openness and Agreeableness (two of
the Big Five personality dimensions), while being positively associated
with aggressivity, vindictiveness, coldness, and tough-mindedness
(e.g., Altemeyer, 1998; Duckitt, Wagner, du Plessis, & Birum, 2002;
Ekehammar et al., 2004; Heaven & Bucci, 2001; Lippa & Arad, 1999;
Pratto et al., 1994).
At the same, however, and contrary to some recent criticisms of social
dominance theory (e.g., Reynolds, Turner, & Veenstra, 2004; Reynolds,
Turner, Haslam, & Ryan, 2001; Rubin & Hewstone, 2004) and the empirical
evidence, viewing a characteristic as a partial reflection of personality and
temperament does not imply situational invariance. Rather, it implies that
while the absolute levels of SDO might go up or down as a function of
situational influences (e.g., threat, one’s group status, the salience of group
identities), everything else being equal, those with relatively high levels of
SDO in one situation will also have relatively high levels of SDO in
another situation. Thus, when we allude to the relative stability of SDO
scores we are, of course, referring to stability in the z-score, standard score,
or relative sense, and not to absolute constancy. One impressive example of
this relative stability was shown in a 5-year panel study of approximately
2000 UCLA undergraduates. These students’ SDO scores were assessed
annually from the time of their graduation from high school until their
graduation from college 4 – 5 years later (Sidanius, Levin, van Laar, & Sears,
2006a). The test–retest stability coefficients of the SDO scale (i.e., stability of
SDO in the z-score sense) were quite substantial (1-year interval:
stability ¼.84; 2-year interval: stability ¼.83; 3-year interval: stability ¼.80;
4-year interval: stability ¼.76; 5-year interval: stability ¼.74; see also Pratto
et al., 1994).
In addition to this evidence of relative stability across time, there is
evidence of relative stability across situations. For example, using Levin’s
(1996) Israeli data, described above, we found that, even though SDO scores
showed reliable mean differences across the primed ethnic and national
contexts, these scores were nonetheless strongly correlated across these
contexts. Among Ashkenazi Jews, those with relatively high SDO scores in
the Ashkenazi–Mizrachi ethnic context also had relatively high SDO scores
in the Israeli Arab–Jewish national context (r¼.64, p5.001). The relative
cross-situational stability was lower but still substantial and significant
among Mizrachi Jews (r¼.38, p5.001). Thus, we see a tendency for people
SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY 293
who are relatively high in SDO when focusing on their group’s subordinate
status (i.e., Mizrachi Jews in the Ashkenazi–Mizrachi ethnic context) to also
be relatively high in SDO when focusing on their group’s dominant status
(i.e., as Jews in the Israeli Arab–Jewish national context). Such results imply
that individuals do have habitual predispositions towards group-based
hierarchy in general.
In summary, there is evidence that SDO is both a general orientation, in
the sense that it is associated with prejudice towards many different types of
groups across various cultures, and is responsive to relevant social contexts.
Systematic variance between individuals across situations has been con-
sidered a hallmark of personality—not evidence against personality—for
decades (e.g., Mischel & Shoda, 1995).
The effects of gender and socialisation
A fourth factor theorised to be associated with SDO is gender. It is argued
that, everything else being equal, men will have significantly higher levels of
SDO than women. In contrast to SDO differences between arbitrary-set
groups, which are theorised to be completely context dependent, the average
gender difference in SDO is argued to be substantially less context
dependent, if at all. Reasons and evidence for this ‘‘invariance hypothesis’’
are provided in the next section on ‘‘Gender in Social Dominance Theory’’.
Fifth, we expect that SDO is affected by an as yet poorly understood
series of life and socialisation experiences. For example, Duckitt (2001)
proposed that unaffectionate socialisation indirectly leads to SDO. Other
socialisation experiences that may affect SDO include socialisation into
specific doctrines, exposure to traumatic life experiences, multicultural
experiences, observing the competence of members of denigrated groups,
and education.
In conclusion, rather than claim that SDO scores are just a function of
group position and situationally contingent social identities (e.g., Schmitt
et al., 2003) or just a function of stable individual differences, or just a
function of gender or socialisation experiences, we are making the rather
unremarkable claim that all of these factors are involved in determining
people’s orientation towards group-based social inequality. Determining
how such influences interact is a challenge for future research. More
importantly, however, it would be a total misreading of social dominance
theory to believe that finding the causes of SDO will identify the causes of
group-based dominance. As mentioned previously, SDO should be seen as
both a partial result of hierarchical relationships among groups, and a
partial cause of those relationships (e.g., Pratto, 1999). Its utility is as a
research tool for understanding some of the processes that contribute to
group hierarchy.
294 PRATTO, SIDANIUS, LEVIN
GENDER IN SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY
Given its centrality to the social and material facts of human life and to
social reproduction, it is no surprise that gender is also integral to
understanding social hierarchy. All societies require some regular domestic
labour (e.g., food preparation), and children and the sick need care.
Societies organise the fulfilment of these two basic needs through families,
and nearly all families, regardless of size or forms, imply asymmetric
obligations from men and women. Women are obliged to provide more care
for children than men are because of both marriage laws and customs and
restrictions on women’s access to resources outside their relationships with
men (Pratto & Walker, 2004). Hence, the gender system links with the age
system largely through the family. Given arbitrary-set and gender inequal-
ities in access to wealth, dominants are more likely to be able to hire
subordinate females as domestic workers than subordinates are to hire
dominant females. Hence, arbitrary-set inequality is linked to gender
inequality through the family.
Men and women play different roles with respect to group-based
hierarchy. Cross-culturally, men predominate in roles and institutions that
enhance hierarchy, such as police, military, lawyers, judges, and business
executives, whereas women are over-represented in roles that attenuate
hierarchy, such as teachers, social workers, charity volunteers, and the like
(see Pratto & Walker, 2004). This role assortment is driven by both
institutional discrimination at work (e.g., barring women from military and
justice jobs), which is legitimised by sex stereotypes, and by psychological
gender differences, which lead men and women who have choice to
differentially choose hierarchy-enhancing or hierarchy-attenuating occupa-
tions for themselves, respectively (Pratto, Stallworth, Sidanius, & Siers,
1997b).
Compatible with their fundamentally different roles in social hierarchy,
men and women on average also have different social and political attitudes
(see Pratto, Stallworth, & Sidanius, 1997a; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999, Ch. 10
for a review). In general, women support social equality, inclusive traditions,
and policies that protect or care for the most downtrodden, and they favour
progressive policy changes, are less xenophobic, and oppose war more
than men. Men are robustly more supportive of generalised group
inequality than are women (e.g., Ekehammar & Sidanius, 1982; Heaven,
1999; Marjoribanks, 1981; Pratto, 1996; Pratto et al., 1994; Sidanius &
Ekehammar, 1980; Sidanius, Pratto, & Bobo, 1994b). Consistent with social
dominance theory’s invariance hypothesis, men also have higher average
levels of SDO than women, everything else being equal (Levin, 2004; Sidanius
et al., 2000; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999; Sidanius et al., 1994b; Sidanius,
Sinclair, & Pratto, 2006b).
SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY 295
It is important to point out two critical and often overlooked qualifica-
tions to the invariance hypothesis. The first has to do with the ‘‘all other
factors being equal’’ caveat. Because gender is merely one of several factors
associated with an individual’s level of SDO, when testing the invariance
hypothesis, it is critical that other important correlates of SDO be controlled
or at least not confounded with gender (e.g., the hierarchy-enhancing vs
hierarchy-attenuating nature of the social role one occupies). Unlike some
recent attempts to test the invariance hypothesis (e.g., Wilson & Liu, 2003;
see comments by Sidanius & Pratto, 2003), one must compare men and
women under the same situational conditions. For example, it would
obviously make no sense to compare the SDO levels of female members of
death squads to those of male social workers, or, less dramatically, to
compare the SDO levels of men identifying with female gender roles to those
of women identifying with male gender roles.
The second qualification to the invariance hypothesis highlights one of
the main differences between the nature of arbitrary-sets and gender
regarding SDO. As already discussed above, social dominance theory
assumes that SDO differences between any two arbitrary-set groups should
be completely context dependent. That is, such group differences should only
emerge when there are perceived power differences between groups, and
group distinctions are at least minimally salient. In contrast, the invariance
hypothesis asserts that, while the degree to which males have higher SDO
scores than females might be contingent upon certain contextual factors
(e.g., the salience of gender), these contextual factors should not be able to
completely eliminate the gender difference in SDO. This implies that even if
the gender difference is moderated by other factors, this moderation should
result in ordinal rather than disordinal interaction. In other words,
conditions may affect the size of the gender difference in SDO, but women
will not be higher than men, all else being equal.
While evidence of the gender difference in SDO is now incontrovertible,
the origin of this difference remains highly contested. Most critics of social
dominance theory have suggested that the gender difference in SDO should
be subject to the same situational contingencies as are the SDO differences
between different races, ethnic groups, and social classes discussed above.
Social dominance theorists first began addressing these potential criticisms
by exploring the degree to which gender differences in SDO were invariant
across a wide number of contextual and situational factors. In their first
major exploration of this issue, Sidanius et al. (1994b) used a large random
sample of Los Angeles adults to test whether the size of the gender difference
in SDO was contingent upon the following factors: age, political party
affiliation, attitudes about abortion rights, religious affiliation, cultural
region of origin (i.e., USA, Europe and Canada, Latin America, Asia and
the Middle East), ethnicity, education level, income level, and racial
296 PRATTO, SIDANIUS, LEVIN
attitudes. Not only were men found to have higher average SDO levels than
women, but also these gender differences were not moderated by any of the
potential moderators listed above. Similarly, using two general samples
(college students and members of the public called to jury duty), Sidanius
and Pratto (1999, pp. 278 – 280) tested whether the gender difference in
SDO was the same size for those in hierarchy-enhancing and hierarchy-
attenuating criminal justice roles. As expected, those in hierarchy-enhancing
social roles had higher average levels of SDO than those in hierarchy-
attenuating social roles. However, the gender difference in SDO remained
essentially constant across social roles, showing that the gender difference in
SDO was essentially the same for those in hierarchy-enhancing social roles
as for those in hierarchy-attenuating social roles.
This type of analysis has been recently extended in a large-scale
longitudinal study. Sidanius et al. (2006b) followed a sample of UCLA
undergraduates in a panel study. Consistent with previous findings, those
students with hierarchy-enhancing college majors (e.g., business, economics,
marketing) had significantly higher SDO scores than those with hierarchy-
attenuating college majors (African studies, anthropology, ethnomusicol-
ogy), across all five waves of the study (i.e., from pre-college high-school
graduates to college seniors). More importantly, the gender difference in
SDO was reliable across students’ year in college, and was not moderated by
the distinction between hierarchy-enhancing and hierarchy-attenuating
majors. That is, the gender difference in SDO was the same magnitude
among students with hierarchy-enhancing majors, hierarchy-attenuating
majors, and neutral majors, despite the general trend of decreasing SDO
scores over the course of university exposure (see Table 3). The gender
difference in SDO was not attenuated or socialised away through college
education. Furthermore, inspection of the effect sizes for gender and
academic major (see partial Zin Table 3) showed that while gender and
academic major had essentially the same power to predict SDO scores
among freshmen (i.e., partial Z¼.08 in both cases), the effect of gender was
consistently stronger than the effect of academic major among the students
when they were pre-college, sophomores, juniors and seniors.
The most popular explanation for this gender difference is that it is due to
the differential status and power of men over women (e.g., Eagly, Diekman,
Johannesen-Schmidt, & Koenig, 2004; Ward, 1995). If this is the case, then
gender differences in SDO should be reduced when men and women are
more equal, just as with arbitrary-set SDO differences. To test the
robustness of the invariance hypothesis across different cultures and as a
function of differential status and power differences between arbitrary-set
groups and genders, Sidanius et al. (2000) examined over 7000 respondents
from nine independent samples from six different nations (USA, the former
USSR, Israel, Palestine, the People’s Republic of China, and New Zealand).
SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY 297
Consistent with social dominance theory’s assertion of the qualitative
difference between arbitrary-set and gendered systems of social inequality,
SDO differences between arbitrary-set groups systematically changed as a
function of the differential status and power gaps between these groups
across nations. For example, when objective status differences between
arbitrary-set groups in different nations were larger (e.g., larger social-class
distinctions in the USA versus the former USSR), there were larger
differences in SDO between the groups (i.e., the working class and the
middle class). However, despite archival data documenting differences in
gender power and status gaps across different nations (e.g., the smaller
gender power/status gap in the USA vs Palestine), gender did not interact
with nation. That is, gender differences in SDO were essentially invariant
across nation (for similar results, see Sidanius & Pratto, 1999, Ch. 10).
2
Levin (2004) also demonstrated the differential sensitivity of arbitrary-set
and gender differences in SDO to power and status differentials. Using res-
pondents from the United States, Israel, and Northern Ireland, she showed
TABLE 3
SDO as a function of gender, academic sector, and year in college
Gender
Pre-college
(N ¼1956)
Freshmen
(N ¼2015)
Sophomores
(N ¼1667)
Juniors
(N ¼1358)
Seniors
(N ¼1213)
Means
Hierarchy-attenuators Men 2.20 1.93 2.03 2.13 1.99
Women 1.87 1.68 1.70 1.77 1.67
Neutrals Men 2.52 2.14 2.23 2.25 2.19
Women 1.99 1.91 1.94 1.99 1.79
Hierarchy-enhancers Men 2.55 2.25 2.30 2.28 2.25
Women 2.10 2.03 1.90 1.95 1.85
Effects
F-ratio (Sector) 3.97* 7.46*** 11.10*** 3.82* 4.73**
F-ratio (Gender) 36.87*** 14.49*** 35.16*** 33.67*** 45.19***
F-ratio
(Gender6Sector)
5151515151
Partial (Gender) .13 .08 .14 .15 .19
Partial (Sector) .06 .08 .11 .08 .09
*p5.05; **p5.01; ***p5.001. Source: Augmented from Sidanius et al. (2006b).
2
For exceptions to the general trend of finding that gender differences do not interact with
other factors, see Huang and Liu (2005) and Sidanius et al. (1995). In the latter study, however,
while men had significantly higher SDO scores than women across the four nations of Australia,
Russia, Sweden, and the USA, the gender differences were significantly greater in Sweden and
Russia than they were in Australia or the USA.
298 PRATTO, SIDANIUS, LEVIN
that SDO differences between arbitrary-set groups (European-Americans vs
African-Americans, Ashkenazi vs Mizrachi Israelis, and Catholic vs
Protestant Northern Irish) increased when the status differences between
these arbitrary-set groups were perceived to be larger (the data for
European-Americans vs African-Americans are shown in Figure 2).
However, using the same American data that were used to compare
European-Americans and African-Americans, no such moderation as a
function of perceived status was found with respect to gender differences in
SDO. As shown in Figure 4, men had higher levels of SDO than women,
and to approximately the same degree, when the status differences between
the sexes were perceived to be small and when they were perceived to be
large.
Figure 4. SDO as a function of gender and perceived gender status gap in the United States
(Source: Levin, 2004).
SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY 299
Some critics of the invariance hypothesis have proposed that the gender
difference in SDO can be explained in terms of the gendered social identities
and self-construals that men and women adapt (e.g., Dambrun, Duarte, &
Guimond, 2004; Foels & Pappas, 2004; Wilson & Liu, 2003). For example,
Foels and Pappas (2004) have argued that SDO differences between men
and women are accounted for by the differential gendered identities of men
and women. Thus, once these gender identities are considered, participant
sex is no longer associated with SDO (see Figure 5).
In this type of argument, gender identity is usually operationalised by use
of the Bem Sex Role Inventory (Bem, 1974), which asks respondents to
indicate the degree to which they regard masculine, feminine, and neutral
characteristics as being true of themselves. These characteristics include the
following: forceful, competitive, assertive, dominant, aggressive, sympa-
thetic, warm, tender, and gentle—all characteristics that have been found to
be related to SDO (see Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Now, it is clear that, on
average, men will tend to rate themselves as higher on the masculine
characteristics, while women will rate themselves as being higher on the
feminine characteristics. The question is why? Cultural determinists (e.g.,
Dambrun et al., 2004; Foels & Pappas, 2004; Wilson & Liu, 2003) would
argue that the reason men have self-construals as aggressive, competitive,
and dominant, while women have self-construals as sympathetic, warm, and
tender, is predominantly due to the culturally determined and essentially
arbitrarily assigned social roles given to men and women. This is a plausible
explanation, but it is also possible that these SDO-related and gendered
construals of self are not just due to arbitrarily assigned roles, but are
Figure 5. Model of masculine and feminine self-construals as mediators of the relationship
between sex and SDO (adapted from Foels & Pappas, 2004).
300 PRATTO, SIDANIUS, LEVIN
somewhat accurate perceptions of how men and women act and think. If the
latter is closer to the truth, then rather than being a refutation of the
invariance hypothesis, the model depicted in Figure 5 is quite consistent with
the invariance hypothesis, and merely specifies the mediating mechanisms
connecting sex with SDO. Because there is no definitive means of deter-
mining the degree to which gendered self-construals are the result of arbi-
trarily assigned and socialised social roles or the expressions of behavioural
and attitudinal predispositions of men and women, the degree to which the
model in Figure 5 is either a refutation or a confirmation of the invariance
hypothesis is indeterminate.
Gender and reproductive strategies
Although we continue to believe that it is important to examine those
aspects of hierarchical environments and context that might contribute to
gender differences in SDO, the very large set of null findings have also led us
to consider what might be common about gender across social environ-
ments. Trivers’ (1972) parental investment theory suggests that males and
females in sexually reproducing species will exhibit differing reproductive
behaviours to the extent that they invest differentially in their offspring.
Women usually invest more of their time and physical resources to achieve
reproductive success (a child who survives to reproduce) than men do. As a
result, women are more selective about potential mates and mating
conditions than men (e.g., Buss, 1989). In contrast, men are more concerned
with not investing in children they have not conceived (e.g., Buss, 1989),
invent ways to guard women’s sexuality (e.g., Dickemann, 1979, 1981;
Wilson & Daly, 1992), and are more sexually jealous (e.g., Buunk &
Dijkstra, 2004) than women. Compared to women, men may also accrue
greater reproductive benefit by having access to multiple sexual partners and
using more ‘‘short-term’’ mating strategies (Buss & Schmitt, 1993). Such
greater reproductive benefit in men, however, may be contingent on the
extent to which men are able to exert control over and monopolise sexual
access to multiple women, and expropriate other men’s labour for their own
families (Betzig, 1993). Social dominance theory suggests that this
differential reproductive benefit resulting from the control over both women
and the resources of other men is one of the primary reasons for the
apparently universal tendency for men to display higher levels of aggression
and SDO than women.
Evolutionary adaptation is, of course, the product of the interplay of
organisms and their environment over time. Hence it should come as no
surprise that gender differences in this suite of reproductive strategies are
both afforded by stratified societies (e.g., Gailey, 1987) and help to recreate
the inequality that exists in such societies both among men and between men
SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY 301
and women (Betzig, 1993). For this reason, Pratto and Hegarty (2000)
hypothesised that in hierarchical societies these gendered reproductive
strategies would be more strongly associated with SDO in each sex to the
extent that parental investment theory implies that the strategy would be
more successful for each sex. Specifically, they predicted that sexual
jealousy, opposition to adoption, and own expected infidelity should be
more strongly related to SDO among men than among women, whereas
desire for a high-status and economically powerful mate should be more
strongly associated with SDO among women than among men.
In four American samples and using multiple measures, these hypotheses
were confirmed. Among contemporary adults, then, SDO facilitates
reproductive strategies and gender differences in those strategies that are
sexist and dominating. Men and women low in SDO, in contrast, have
more similar ideals regarding their own heterosexual relationships and
would be expected to have less jealous and less gender-stereotypic
relationships.
Pratto and Hegarty’s (2000) results are consistent with the idea that the
predisposition for SDO is, in part, one aspect of a suite of reproductive
strategies. A poorly understood point is why such a process could result in
men being predisposed to be higher in SDO than women. For example,
Dambrun et al. (2004) believe that Pratto and Hegarty’s (2000) finding
that SDO is associated with ‘‘women’s’’ reproductive strategies more in
women and is associated with ‘‘men’s’’ reproductive strategies more in men
‘‘goes against the argument that SDO leads to reproductive fitness in men
but not in women’’ (p. 295). When a species is characterised by heavier
female than male investment in offspring, parental investment theory
implies that women will be more selective about choosing a mate than
men, resulting in the stronger selection of traits that women desire in men
than in the selection of traits that men desire in women. These stronger
selection pressures for men than women may be the reason why the
predisposition for dominance could be selected more in men than in
women.
Nonetheless, as there is almost no evidence of any prehistoric behavioural
and psychological state, Pratto and Hegarty’s results are far from definitive
proof of past evolutionary processes. They do imply, however, that gendered
SDO is at work in determining the nature of contemporary societies,
especially the confluence of gender and arbitrary-set inequality. The contem-
porary role of gender and of gender differences in SDO in hierarchical
societies is, in our view, too important to overlook. Moreover, to the
extent that gender-role socialisation and gender identification contribute to
gender differentiation in SDO, then culture is augmenting the reproduction
of group hierarchy through the disparate attitudes and roles of men and
women.
302 PRATTO, SIDANIUS, LEVIN
Examining gender in hierarchical societies is not naturalising
inequality
Our theorising about the evolutionary basis of gender predispositions for
SDO does not imply that nothing can be done about gender inequality or
group hierarchy. On the contrary, social dominance theory implies that
changing legitimising myths, reducing institutional discrimination against
both subordinate groups and women, constraining male violence, and
making women’s access to resources independent of their relationships with
men would greatly reduce gender inequality as well as inequality among
men. Such changes are, of course, an important part of the feminist and
progressive agendas. Social dominance theory contributes to this process by
helping to identify the particularly problematic behaviours of both men
(e.g., refusing to care for children) and women (e.g., underpaying domestic
labour), and the particularly problematic institutional and cultural practices
that lock gender, age, and arbitrary-set inequality together. Such an open-
eyed analysis cannot be gained by ignoring the fact that children need
substantial care, that the gender system is largely what addresses this need,
and that dominant arbitrary-set women also have a stake in arbitrary-set
inequality. This is not ‘‘naturalising’’ inequality, nor is it pretending that it
does not exist or that it is a special case of something else. The proximate
factors that help create gender inequality, including job discrimination,
marriage and divorce laws, child-rearing customs, and war, are all con-
sequences of collective decisions and deliberate human action.
NEW RESEARCH ON SOCIAL DOMINANCE
THEORY
In addition to stimulating new research examining basic theoretical pro-
positions, including explanations for gender differences in SDO, social
dominance theory has generated new research on the nature and correlates
of SDO and on SDO as a theoretical tool to understand other phenomena,
as well as on the group, intergroup, institutional, and societal processes that
are more faithful to the multi-levelled nature of the theory.
When we introduced well-tested scales to measure SDO, we argued that it
should correlate with culturally consistent prejudice against salient groups,
regardless of the definition of the group and the contents of the ideology that
legitimised such prejudice (Pratto et al., 1994). Since the publication of this
earlier work, SDO has been shown to correlate with prejudice against a wide
range of subordinate arbitrary-set groups defined by religion, race, and
ethnicity (e.g., Duriez & van Hiel, 2002; Heaven & Quintin, 2003; Levin,
2004; Pratto et al., 2000) and with prejudice against foreigners and immi-
grants in several nations (e.g., Esses, Dovidio, Jackson, & Armstrong, 2001;
SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY 303
Pratto & Lemieux, 2001; Wagner et al., 2001). SDO also robustly correlates
with many kinds of sexist beliefs, behaviours, and policies (e.g., Bates &
Heaven, 2001; Heaven, 1999; Lippa & Arad, 1999; Pratto et al., 2000;
Russell & Trigg, 2004), with prejudice against gays and lesbians, with
opposition to gay rights (e.g., Davies, 2004; Whitley, 2001; Whitley &
gisdottir, 2000), and with membership in right-wing political parties (e.g.,
Aiello, Chirumbolo, Leone, & Pratto, 2005; Altemeyer, 2004, Pratto et al.,
1997a; van Hiel & Mervielde, 2002).
As we had hoped, personality researchers have augmented our con-
ceptual understanding of SDO and distinguished it further from RWA (e.g.,
Altemeyer, 1998; Roccato & Ricolfi, 2005). People high in authoritarianism
perceive the world to be a dangerous place, are easily threatened, and value
security (e.g., Duckitt & Fisher, 2003; Duckitt et al., 2002; Duriez & van
Hiel, 2002; Heaven & Connors, 2001). In contrast, people high in SDO
believe the world is a zero-sum game and, because they desire power
(Altemeyer, 2004; Duriez & van Hiel, 2002), they will use others to get ahead
(Altemeyer, 1998; Duckitt et al., 2002; Lippa & Arad, 1999; Pratto, 1999).
This belief is compatible with the relative meanness of those high in SDO:
they believe that harming people is legitimate, are observably disagreeable,
cold, and vindictive, are low in benevolence, and do not hesitate to humiliate
others (Altemeyer, 1998; Duriez & van Hiel, 2002; Lippa & Arad, 1999;
Pratto, 1999; Thomas & Esses, 2004; Wilson, 2003). Their dog-eat-dog
mentality leads them to support economic competition and war over social
welfare programmes (e.g., Duriez & van Hiel, 2002; Pratto et al., 1997a).
Rather than being basically frightened like people high in authoritarianism,
people high in SDO tend to be callous, confident, and cruel.
Pratto et al. (1994) also posited that SDO has to do with the inclusiveness
of one’s basic relations to others. They predicted that low-SDO people
would have more inclusive identities than those high in SDO, who would
want to distance themselves from inferior others. As such, they reasoned
that SDO should correlate negatively with empathic concern (see also
Pratto, Lemieux, Glasford, & Henry, 2003). Research in other paradigms
confirms this way of understanding SDO in terms of inclusiveness of
identity. SDO correlates negatively with the value of universalism (Duriez &
van Hiel, 2002). Manipulations to increase common ingroup identity with
immigrants decrease prejudice in low-SDO people, but not in high-SDO
people (Esses et al., 2001). Threats to naturally high group status make high-
SDO people more implicitly prejudiced, whereas they make low-SDO people
lose their implicit prejudice (Pratto & Shih, 2000). Fundamentally, those low
in SDO desire connections with other people, whereas those high in SDO
want to rank superior to others (see also Pratto, 1999; Sidanius, Cling &
Pratto, 1991a). In a related extension, Frey and Powell (2005) conceptualise
perceptions of justice as stemming from either an interdependent, connected,
304 PRATTO, SIDANIUS, LEVIN
and empathic worldview, like low SDO, or an independent, competitive, and
status-conscious one, like high SDO.
Social dominance theory has also expanded understandings of how
people in different groups relate. For example, Fang et al. (1998) argued that
the psychological bias to preserve hierarchy should be manifested in more
opposition to interracial marriage as the status of the partner’s ethnic group
decreases. As expected, in a large Los Angeles random sample, the rank
order of interest in intermarriage followed social status ratings such that
Whites were most preferred as partners, followed by Asians, Hispanics, and
then Blacks. Moreover, the degree and sign of the relation of SDO to
opposition to interracial marriage depended on group status. For
dominants, SDO related to opposition to interracial marriage, but for
subordinates, SDO related to support for interracial marriage. Such
differences imply that Blacks and Whites with compatible SDO levels are
unlikely to form romantic relationships because they do not agree on the
desirability of interracial marriage. These kinds of behavioural asymmetries
in relationship formation help to maintain group boundaries.
Social dominance theory has also been employed to understand why
people in different groups lack consensus on the existence of group
inequality. Whereas SDO serves to divide attitudes between arbitrary-set
groups such that members of these different groups would not form close
relationships, SDO unites people in different arbitrary-set groups in blinding
them to structural inequality. As a case in point, Shorey, Cowan, and
Sullivan (2002) found that Whites perceive more discrimination against their
group, and Hispanics perceive less discrimination against their group, to the
extent that they are high in SDO. In a related line of research, Eibach and
Ehrlinger (2006) showed that European-Americans and African-Americans
spontaneously use different reference points in deciding whether enough
racial equality has been achieved. Because European-Americans use a
reference point of a more unequal past, they believe that racial equality has
largely been achieved, whereas African-Americans, who hold an ideal of
true equality, perceive current race relations as falling short. In further
experiments, Eibach and Keegan (2006) showed that majorities, especially
when they are high in SDO, perceive intergroup change to represent more of
a loss to the ingroup than do minorities. In turn, they judge such changes as
unfair. These kinds of studies show the utility of understanding the roles
that both the power position of individuals and their own predilections play
in determining intergroup attitudes and behaviour.
Social dominance theory has also refined the idea of ‘‘person-organisa-
tion fit’’ (e.g., Furnham, 2001), the notion developed from research in
organisational psychology (e.g., Adkins, Russell, & Werbel, 1994; Holland,
1996) that there is congruency between the basic values, orientations, and
behavioural predispositions of individuals and the functional character of
SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY 305
the social institutions in which these individuals work. Specifically, social
dominance theory argues that for hierarchy-enhancing and hierarchy-
attenuating institutions to enact their respective hierarchical functions well,
the psychological character of individuals, especially their levels of SDO and
their endorsement of legitimising myths, should match the hierarchical
character of the institutions in which they work. In fact, in a survey of
California voters, Pratto et al. (1997b) found that voters’ SDO levels
matched their occupations: SDO scores were highest among those in
hierarchy-enhancing occupations, followed by those in neither hierarchy-
enhancing nor hierarchy-attenuating occupations, and were lowest among
those in hierarchy-attenuating occupations. Furthermore, using a large
sample of university students, Sidanius, van Laar, Levin, and Sinclair (2003)
found that those students showing congruency between their SDO attitudes
and their college majors (i.e., high-SDO/hierarchy-enhancing majors and
low-SDO/hierarchy-attenuating majors) enjoyed greater institutional
rewards (i.e., higher grades) than those showing incongruency between
their SDO and their college majors (i.e., low-SDO/hierarchy-enhancing
majors and high-SDO/hierarchy-attenuating majors), everything else
being equal. These data reinforce the idea that people are differentially
rewarded for holding situationally and institutionally congruent attitudes
towards group-based inequality (see also Kemmelmeier, Danielson, &
Basten, 2005).
Because of the importance of this type of congruency for the functioning
of institutions, we have speculated that there should be several redundant
mechanisms that produce it. Thus far, five such mechanisms have been
proposed and substantiated empirically: (a) self-selection, or people
choosing jobs in institutions that are congruent with their SDO levels (see
Pratto et al., 1997b; Sidanius, Levin, & Pratto, 1996; Sidanius et al., 2003;
see also Umphress, Smith-Crowe, Brief, Dietz, & Watkins, in press); (b)
institutional selection, or the tendency for institutions to hire personnel
whose SDO levels match the hierarchy-enhancing or hierarchy-attenuating
function of the institution (e.g., Pratto & Espinoza, 2001; Pratto et al.,
1997b); (c) institutional socialisation, transforming individuals’ values and
ideologies to be more congruent with the hierarchy-enhancing or hierarchy-
attenuating functions of the institutions in which people work (e.g.,
Sidanius, Pratto, Martin, & Stallworth, 1991b); (d) differential reward, or
the tendency for individuals to be rewarded by institutions more if they
match the institution’s hierarchy-enhancing or hierarchy-attenuating func-
tion (e.g., Leitner & Sedlacek, 1976; van Laar, Sidanius, Rabinowitz, &
Sinclair, 1999); and (e) differential attrition of individuals out of incongruent
social institutions (see Haley & Sidanius, 2005).
These processes have systemic causes and consequences. People select
institutions, and institutions select people, whose preferred legitimising
306 PRATTO, SIDANIUS, LEVIN
myths and values are compatible. This implies that people’s co-workers are
likely to reflect back and affirm their own prejudices, beliefs, and values.
People in hierarchy-enhancing institutions are not likely to be challenged
by people who hold hierarchy-attenuating beliefs and attitudes because such
people work in different institutions and jobs. Institutions inculcate
functionally compatible ideologies through their own institutional culture
and norms, and give employees practice at using such ideologies in their
work. For example, Pratto et al. (1999, Expt. 4) showed that having people
role-play a hierarchy-attenuating job or a hierarchy-enhancing job induced
people to make allocations usually associated with being low or high in
SDO, respectively. The tendencies to enhance hierarchy or to attenuate it are
all coordinated through legitimising myths among individuals, their local
work-groups, institutions, and how the institution allocates resources.
An even deeper cross-level analysis—from individuals, to social roles, to
institutions, to societal structure—can be seen in several intersecting lines of
research addressing one of the most robust and proximate causes of group-
based dominance, namely use of the criminal justice system to enforce social
hierarchy. For the state to use its system of military/police and courts to
enforce social hierarchy, three conditions must be met. First, the criminal
justice system must be staffed by people with prejudicial and punitive
attitudes that are consistent with their roles. In support of this contention,
Guimond (2000), among others, has shown that police academy training
actually increases racism, xenophobia, and other discriminatory attitudes,
particularly in members of dominant groups. Dambrun, Guimond and
Duarte (2002) found that French law students (hierarchy-enhancers) have
higher SDO scores and more negative stereotypes of Arabs than French
psychology students (hierarchy-attenuators). Sidanius, Liu, Pratto, and
Shaw (1994a) found that Los Angeles police officers are higher in SDO and
punitiveness than members of the public, whereas public defenders are lower
than the public. Similarly, Whitehead (1998) found more support of the
death penalty among district attorneys than among public defenders, who
are more concerned that the death penalty is applied in a racially biased
manner.
The second condition that must be met in order for the criminal justice
system to enforce social hierarchy is that the public must tolerate the group
prejudice of the criminal justice system. Such support would also be
expected to be a function of group position. Consistent with social
dominance theory, there is considerable research showing that European-
Americans generally favour the police more than African-Americans do.
For example, Howell, Perry, and Vile (2004) showed that Whites’ support
for the police stems from their assumptions about the zero-sum nature of
race relations and from their racial privilege: In cities with White majorities
and White mayors, Whites supported the police more than Blacks. In cities
SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY 307
with Black majorities and Black mayors, Whites’ positive attitudes about the
police fell, matching Blacks’ attitudes, and did so to the extent that Whites
believed that race-relations are zero-sum. In other words, Whites’ greater
support of the police is contingent on their being the dominant local group,
consistent with social dominance theory.
Third, if the criminal justice system is effective in enforcing group
dominance as we predict, then there should be more inequality where it is
most forcefully applied. Because the death penalty has been repeatedly
shown to be disproportionately used against members of subordinate
arbitrary-set groups, the death penalty is a good marker for the operation of
institutional discrimination. Mitchell and Sidanius (1995) tested whether
there is more inequality in states where the death penalty is used more often.
Comparing the 50 US states and comparing 147 nations around the world in
separate studies, they indeed found that the greater the economic and
political inequality in the state, the higher the use of the death penalty, even
controlling for demographic and criminality factors. Together, this research
shows how group dominance works as a system, infecting the attitudes of
individuals, social roles, and institutional behaviour in a coordinated,
interdependent, and self-perpetuating manner. Thus, social dominance
theory has always examined more than individual differences and the
person–group interface; it is a broad theory that generates novel hypotheses
about how different aspects of group dominance systems work in conjunc-
tion with one another.
BACK TO THE BIG PICTURE: WHERE WE HAVE
BEEN AND WHERE WE GO FROM HERE
As a broad theory that addresses the hierarchical nature of societies, social
dominance theory incorporates social processes that occur within societies,
not just within individuals or groups. In particular, social dominance theory
has emphasised the shared nature of cultural belief systems and their links to
social structure and psychological processes in its subtheory of legitimising
myths. It also incorporates an analysis of institutional discrimination
because institutions play such a large role in perpetuating or changing social
structure. For this reason, social dominance theory does not have a
psychological ‘‘root cause’’ such as ‘‘group interest’’ or ‘‘system justifica-
tion’’ or ‘‘positive identity striving’’ or ‘‘punitive child-rearing’’ or ‘‘escape
from ambiguity’’ or ‘‘terror management’’ or even ‘‘SDO’’ to explain
everything else in the theory. Instead, it tries to integrate all the useful levels
of analysis within societies; for example, how individual beliefs, attitudes,
and behaviours influence institutional roles and practices and vice versa,
how cultural ideologies reify power and vice versa, and how gender and
arbitrary-set oppression enable one another.
308 PRATTO, SIDANIUS, LEVIN
As a social psychological theory, social dominance theory understands
individuals within their larger social-structural, cultural, and institutional
contexts, but allows that, even within a given context, individuals can
systematically differ from one another and have agency in affecting
hierarchical outcomes. Ignoring the multiple levels that social dominance
theory addresses has led some to accuse the theory of being essentialist or
reductionist. In fact, our research has shown: (a) how groups differ as a
function of their power, (b) how groups change, (c) how much people in
different groups share ideologies, (d) how much individuals differ, and (e)
how individuals who differ act the same in some situations. In conducting
this research, we have relied on the fundamental assumptions of empiricism:
(1) that similar consequences, such as structural inequality, have similar
causes; and (2) that testing particular hypotheses derived from a well-
specified theory is useful in advancing knowledge. For this reason, social
dominance theory is neither an epistemology nor a political ideal. Social
dominance theory has integrated theories from across the social sciences,
but because it focuses on different outcomes or different levels of analysis
than many of them, it should be understood more as a complement than as a
rival to them.
Major questions needing more research
Social dominance theory has been part of and helped to promote some
important changes within social psychology. Unlike when we began in 1989,
many scholars are now seriously researching power (e.g., Keltner,
Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003) and how it operates in organisational
settings (e.g., Vescio, Gervais, Snyder, & Hoover, 2005), not just social
status, self-esteem, and self-categorisation. Researchers who once restricted
their attention to individual cognitive processes are now expanding their
interests to include different forms of dominance and the contents of shared
stereotypes and how they legitimise structural relations (e.g., Glick & Fiske,
1996). Whereas for decades the largest interface that social psychology
considered was the person–group interface, scholars now acknowledge the
existence of social systems, cultural ideologies, and social institutions (e.g.,
Jost & Banaji, 1994; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999, pp. 213 – 214).
Most importantly, we believe that social dominance theory demonstrates
that social psychological theories do not have to use the motivations of
individuals as their main heuristic; theories can be useful across more than
one or two levels of analysis (e.g., culture, person–group). Indeed, it is
crucial to consider the material, cultural, institutional, gendered, and
political contexts in which people live to develop truly social psychological
theories. For example, in contrast to analysing gender as a function only of
psychological difference, social role, or reproductive strategies, social
SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY 309
dominance theory has expanded all three levels to examine how gender
interfaces with numerous kinds of power (Pratto & Walker, 2004) and
how gender is an integral aspect of group-based hierarchies. Despite
substantial evidence for the processes social dominance theory has
identified, the theory and its perspective on the dynamics of systemic power
suggest some new pressing questions that need to be addressed with
empirical research.
Intersection between gender hierarchy and arbitrary-set hierarchy. Gen-
der inequality and arbitrary-set inequality are interdependent because they
are mutually enabling and linked through many factors. We need to know
more about the relationships among age, gender, and arbitrary-set inequal-
ity to understand how changes to one system will affect the other systems.
For example, does increasing women’s political representation or economic
independence change the degree of arbitrary-set inequality? Do programmes
to alleviate arbitrary-set inequality affect men and women differently, and
do they work equally well for both? What kinds of child-care patterns are
associated with more or less gender equality? More research is also needed
on the subordinate male target hypothesis, such as on how the nature of
prejudice and stereotypes differ for dominant and subordinate men versus
women, and on their consequences, including how differential discrimina-
tion between men and women in subordinate groups affects relationships
between them.
The creation and change of legitimising ideologies. We have always
argued that ideologies are closely linked to culture and that whether
ideologies serve hierarchy-attenuating or hierarchy-enhancing functions
must be ascertained with knowledge of the political-historical context
(Sidanius & Pratto, 1993). But no one has yet developed a general theory of
either the contents of legitimising ideologies or how to predict their function
with respect to hierarchy. More detailed research on the processes of how
ideologies get transmitted, on the different consequences of ‘‘knowing’’
versus ‘‘endorsing’’ a legitimising ideology, and on how conflicts between
alternative ideologies are resolved promises to be fruitful.
Determinants of the degree of hierarchy. Social dominance theory first
noted that there is a remarkable similarity among non-subsistence societies
in that they are all structured as group-based dominance systems (e.g.,
Sidanius & Pratto, 1993), regardless of whether they are empires,
democracies, or sheikdoms. There are, however, important differences in
the degree to which societies are hierarchically structured, and it is
important to identify and systematically investigate the factors that
determine these differences. In our view, some important candidates are
310 PRATTO, SIDANIUS, LEVIN
how competitive the economic basis of a society is, how open and
heterogeneous versus how closed and traditional the society is, how much
honour (e.g., Cohen & Nisbett, 1994) versus community (e.g., Sidanius
et al., 2001b) are culturally valued, the criticality and degree of scarcity of
labour (Tuchman, 1978), the availability of weapons, whether critical labour
can be performed by anyone or only by particular groups (e.g., Harris,
1993), and population pressure (e.g., Dickemann, 1979).
Intersocietal dynamics and instability within societies. As social dom-
inance theory has focused mainly on intergroup relations within stable
societies, it has yet to address power relations between societies, between
groups belonging to different societies, or the dynamics of newly emerging
power hierarchies in transitional societies (e.g., South Africa after apartheid;
for exceptions see, e.g., Lemieux & Pratto, 2003; Levin, Henry, Pratto, &
Sidanius, 2003). This very likely would require further elaboration on the
meaning of dissensual and consensual ideologies, of resource control, and of
the nature of force across societies, but may prove especially useful given
current global dynamics. In addition, social dominance theory could con-
tribute to understanding societal instability, for example, in terms of
identifying why ideologies become less powerful, how different groups can
change their positions by using new forms of power, and how external
dynamics affect internal politics.
In the last 15 years, social dominance theory has inspired more expansive
thinking about intergroup relations, group differences and their causes,
the functions of stereotypes and other legitimising myths, gender and
gender inequality, and the psychological consequences of having or
lacking power. We hope in the next 15 years that considerably more
attention will be devoted to the larger questions social dominance theory has
identified.
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SOCIAL DOMINANCE THEORY 319
APPENDIX
SDO
6
Scale
INSTRUCTIONS
Below are a series of statements with which you may either agree or disagree.
For each statement, please indicate the degree of your agreement\disagreement
by circling the appropriate number from ‘1’ to ‘7’. Once again, remember that
your first responses are usually the most accurate.
Strongly
Disagree/
Disapprove
Strongly
Agree/
Favor
1. Some groups of people are just more
worthy than others ............................
1 23456 7
2. In getting what your group wants, it is
sometimes necessary to use force
against other groups ..........................
1 23456 7
3. It’s OK if some groups have more of a
chance in life than others ..................
1 23456 7
4. To get ahead in life, it is sometimes
necessary to step on other
groups ................................................
1 23456 7
5. If certain groups of people stayed in
their place, we would have fewer
problems ............................................
1 23456 7
6. It’s probably a good thing that certain
groups are at the top and other groups
are at the bottom .................................
1 23456 7
7. Inferior groups should stay in their
place ....................................................
1 23456 7
8. Sometimes other groups must be kept
in their place ......................................
1 23456 7
9. It would be good if all groups could be
equal ..................................................
1 23456 7
10.Groupequalityshouldbeourideal.... 1 23456 7
11. All groups should be given an equal
chance in life......................................
1 23456 7
12. We should do what we can to equalize
conditions for different groups ..........
1 23456 7
13. We should increase social equality...... 1 23456 7
14. We would have fewer problems if we
treated different groups more
equally .................................................
1 23456 7
15. We should strive to make incomes
more equal .........................................
1 23456 7
16. No one group should dominate in
society ................................................
1 23456 7
Note to users: Items 9 – 16 should be reverse coded. The reverse coded items are usually intermixed
with the non-recoded items.
320 PRATTO, SIDANIUS, LEVIN
