Social dominance orientation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Social dominance orientation (SDO), is a personality variable which predicts social and political attitudes. It is a widely applied Social Psychological scale. SDO is conceptualised as a measure of individual differences in levels of group-based discrimination and domination; that is, it is a measure of an individual's preference for hierarchy within any given social system.
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[edit] SDO personality
A 'high SDO' person will agree with statements such as "Sometimes other groups must be kept in their place" and "It's probably a good thing that certain groups are at the top and other groups at the bottom."
These items from the scale show that although its authors describe it as a personality scale, it is in fact a catalog of attitudes. Normally, a personality scale is one with items in the "Do you behave" or "I behave" format. The claim that the scale measures personality is therefore tendentious. It would be more accurate to call it an attitude scale.
The term "personality" is normally expanded by psychologists as "behavior tendency" (so a person with a dominant personality is one who tends to behave in a dominant way) and it has been recognized since the work of La Piere in the 1930s that whether scales of behavioral intention (such as personality scales) predict behaviour is uncertain and requires proof (validation). The same is a fortiori true of scales (such as attitude scales) that have even less direct reference to behavior -- and many attitude scales (such as the California F scale of Adorno and his associates) have in fact been found to be very poor predictors of behavior indeed. Great caution is therefore needed in assessing how high scorers on the SDO might behave.
As intergroup dominance, SDO is "distinct from interpersonal dominance" according to Pratto and Sidanius.
It might be worth noting that there are other scales measuring constructs which seem similar to SDO but which do not have the same correlates. 1). Scores on the Ray (1976) Directiveness scale have been shown as unrelated to both politics and racism. 2). The Ray (1972a) Egalitarianism scale showed that people who rejected the notion of social equality were the better adjusted ones. 3). Surveys with the Ray (1972b) scale of politically deferential attitudes showed that it was REJECTION of social dominance that is deviant.
References:
Adorno,T.W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D.J. & Sanford, R.N. (1950). "The authoritarian personality" New York: Harper.
La Piere, R. (1934) Attitudes and actions. "Social Forces" 13, 230-237
Ray, J.J. (1972a) Militarism, authoritarianism, neuroticism and anti-social behavior. J. Conflict Resolution, 16, 319-340. (See particularly Appendix H)
Ray, J.J. (1972b) The measurement of political deference: Some Australian data. British J. Political Science, 2, 244-251.
Ray, J.J. (1976) Do authoritarians hold authoritarian attitudes? Human Relations, 29, 307-325.
Titus, H.E. & Hollander, E.P. (1957) The California F scale in psychological research: 1950-1955. "Psychological Bulletin", 54, 47-64.
[edit] Social dominance theory
SDO was first proposed by Jim Sidanius and Felicia Pratto as part of their Social Dominance Theory (SDT), which proposes that societies can reduce group conflict using legitimizing myths, which allow intergroup prejudice and inequality.
[edit] Group-based or Individual Dominance?
Robert Altemeyer construes SDO as a measure which includes aspects of personal dominance, so that high-SDO individuals will aspire to gain more power and climb the social ladder. Altemeyer's research suggested that high SDO scorers were competitive on a personal level (agreeing with items such as "Winning is more important than how you play the game") and were also quite Machiavellian (manipulative and amoral) agreeing with items such as "There really is no such thing as 'right and wrong'. It all boils down to what you can get away with."
This conception of SDO as including elements of personal dominance runs somewhat counter to Sidanius & Pratto's ideas. It seems intuitively obvious that there should be a large overlap between levels of group-based and personal dominance; and as such the SDO measure will reflect not only group-based dominance, but levels of interpersonal dominance as well.
[edit] Early Development of SDO
John Duckitt has suggested a model of attitude development for SDO, suggesting that unaffectionate socialisation in childhood causes a tough-minded attitude. The world is then viewed as a competitive place, similar to the jungle of the evolutionary past. A desire to compete, which fits with social dominance orientation, influences ingroup and outgroup attitudes.
[edit] Biology
Sidanius and Pratto propose that one mediating factor in SDO is androgens, noting primarily that males tend to have higher SDO scores than females, and are also observed to be more socially hierarchical. The biological reason for this difference in dominance is increased levels of androgens, primarily testosterone. Male levels of testosterone are much higher than that of females. Higher levels of androgens are correlated with sexual aggression, dominance, spontaneous aggression and decreased restraint of aggression. There is also a correlation between gains in social status and increased testosterone. Thus there is a potential link between social dominance and aggression.
[edit] Connection with Right Wing Authoritarianism
SDO is commonly deployed with the Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) scale. SDO correlates with Right Wing Authoritarian and together they predict to varying degrees many forms of prejudicial attitudes, such as sexist, racist and anti-homosexual attitudes. There is very little evidence that either scale predicts much in the way of behavior, however.
Both scales are catalogues of broadly aggressive social attitudes -- attitudes of a type which had a lot of support from the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century (e.g. the two Presidents Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson) -- but which are likely to find support today only among extreme conservatives. That the two scales correlate is to be expected from their similar content.
The SDO scale has been generally very well received by psychologists and is widely used in attitude research.
A dissenting view about its worth can however be found in an article by J.J. Ray under the title: "Social dominance orientation: Theory or artifact?". It is online here: http://jonjayray.cafe150.com/sdo.html
[edit] See also
[edit] Bibliography
- Sidanius, Jim and Pratto, Felicia (2001). Social Dominance: An Intergroup Theory of Social Hierarchy and Oppression. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-80540-6
