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Social Dominance Orientation: A Personality Variable Predicting
Social and Political Attitudes
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Citation Pratto, Felicia, James Sidanius, Lisa M. Stallworth, and Bertram
F. Malle. 1994. Social dominance orientation: A personality
variable predicting social and political attitudes. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology 67, no. 4: 741-763.
Published Version doi:10.1037/0022-3514.67.4.741
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Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
1994,
Vol.
67,
No.
4,
741-763Copyright
1994 by
the American Psychological Association, Inc.
0022-3514/94/S3.00
Social Dominance Orientation: A Personality Variable Predicting Social
and Political Attitudes
Felicia Pratto, Jim Sidanius, Lisa
M.
Stallworth, and Bertram
F.
Malle
Social dominance orientation
(SDO),
one's
degree
of preference for inequality among social groups,
is introduced. On the basis of social dominance theory, it is shown that (a) men are more social
dominance-oriented than women, (b) high-SDO people seek hierarchy-enhancing professional roles
and low-SDO people seek hierarchy-attenuating
roles,
(c)
SDO was
related to beliefs in a large num-
ber of social and political ideologies that support group-based hierarchy (e.g., meritocracy and rac-
ism) and to support for
policies
that
have
implications for intergroup relations
(e.g.,
war,
civil rights,
and
social
programs),
including
new
policies.
SDO was distinguished from interpersonal dominance,
conservatism, and authoritarianism. SDO was negatively correlated with empathy, tolerance, com-
munality, and altruism. The ramifications of SDO in social context are discussed.
Group conflict and group-based inequality are pervasive in
human existence. Currently, every continent is enduring some
form of ethnic conflict, from the verbal debate over multicul-
turalism in the United States and Canada to civil war in Liberia
and Bosnia. Other conflicts between groups are ancient: the Eu-
ropean persecution of
Jews,
"Holy Wars" waged by Christians
and Muslims around the Mediterranean, imperialism in South
America, and anti-Black racism in northern Africa and else-
where. Regardless of the intensity of the conflict, the partici-
pants
justify their behavior to others by appealing to historical
injustices, previous territorial boundaries, religious prohibi-
tions,
genetic and cultural theories of in-group superiority, or
other such ideologies.
Prompted by the ubiquitous nature of group-based prejudice
and oppression, we developed social dominance theory (see
Pratto, in
press;
Sidanius,
1993;
Sidanius
&
Pratto,
1993a).
The
theory postulates that societies minimize group conflict by cre-
ating consensus on ideologies that promote the superiority of
one group over others (see also Sidanius, Pratto, Martin, &
Stallworth, 1991). Ideologies that promote or maintain group
inequality are the tools that legitimize discrimination.
To
work
smoothly, these ideologies must be widely accepted within a so-
ciety, appearing as self-apparent truths; hence we call them hi-
erarchy-legitimizing
myths.' By contributing to consensual or
normalized group-based inequality, legitimizing myths help to
stabilize oppression. That is, they minimize conflict among
groups by indicating how individuals and social institutions
should allocate things of
positive
or negative social value, such
as
jobs,
gold,
blankets,
government
appointments,
prison terms,
and
disease.
For
example,
the ideology of anti-Black racism has
been instantiated in personal acts of discrimination, but also in
institutional discrimination against African-Americans by
banks,
public transit authorities, schools, churches, marriage
laws,
and the penal system. Social Darwinism and meritocracy
are examples of other ideologies that imply that some people
are not as "good" as others and therefore should be allocated
less
positive social value than others.
Thus far, we have given examples of legitimizing myths that
enhance or maintain the degree of social inequality. Other ide-
ologies may serve to attenuate the amount of inequality. For
example, the "universal rights of man" and the view summa-
rized by "all humans are God's children" are inclusive, egali-
tarian ideologies that explicitly do not divide persons into cate-
gories or groups. To the extent that such ideologies are widely
shared, there should be less group inequality. There are, then,
two varieties of legitimizing
myths:
hierarchy-enhancing legiti-
mizing
myths,
which promote greater degrees of social inequal-
ity, and hierarchy-attenuating legitimizing myths, which pro-
mote greater social equality.
Felicia
Pratto,
Lisa
M.
Stallworth, and Bertram
F.
Malle,
Department
of Psychology, Stanford University; Jim Sidanius, Department of
Psy-
chology, University of California at
Los
Angeles.
We
are grateful to a number of
people
for their diligence and creativity
in this research: Erron Al-Amin, Jill Andrassy, Sahr Conway-Lanz,
Nick
Clements,
Magda Escobar, Jack Glaser,
Louis
Ibarra,
Kent Harber,
John Hetts, Amy Lee, Johanna Jensen, John Moore, Jenn Pearson,
Holly Schaefer, Margaret Shih, Stacey Sinclair, Gayatri Taneja, Jack
Wang, and Wes Williams. Bob Altemeyer, Monisha Pasupathi, Vernon
Schabert, Michael Mitchell, Steve Gangestad, Corinne Kosmitzki, Ted
Goertzel, and three anonymous
reviewers
provided useful comments
on
a draft of
this
article.
Correspondence concerning this article should
be
addressed
to
Felicia
Pratto, Department of Psychology, Jordan Hall, Stanford University,
Stanford, California 94305-2130.
SOCIAL DOMINANCE ORIENTATION
Given our theoretical postulate that acceptance of legitimiz-
ing myths has significant influence on the degree of inequality
in societies, it is quite important to understand the factors that
lead to the acceptance or rejection of ideologies that promote or
attenuate inequality. Social dominance theory postulates that a
1 The term myth is meant to imply that everyone in the society per-
ceives these ideologies as explanations for how the world is—not that
they are false (or true). Social dominance theory is meant only to de-
scribe the
social
and psychological processes that act
on these
ideologies,
not to ascertain whether these ideologies are true, fair, moral, or
reasonable.
741
742
PRATTO, SIDANIUS, STALLWORTH, AND MALLE
significant factor is an individual-difference variable called so-
cial dominance orientation (SDO), or the extent to which one
desires that one's in-group dominate and be superior to out-
groups.
We
consider SDO to be a general attitudinal orientation
toward intergroup relations, reflecting whether one generally
prefers such relations to be equal, versus hierarchical, that is,
ordered along a superior-inferior
dimension.
The theory postu-
lates that people who are more social-dominance oriented will
tend to favor hierarchy-enhancing ideologies and policies,
whereas those lower on SDO will tend to favor hierarchy-atten-
uating ideologies and policies. SDO is thus the central individ-
ual-difference variable that predicts a person's acceptance or re-
jection of numerous ideologies and policies relevant to group
relations.
Another way that individuals' levels of SDO may influence
their contribution to social equality or inequality is in the kinds
of social roles they take on, particularly, roles that either en-
hance or attenuate inequality. We thus predict that those who
are higher on SDO will become members of institutions and
choose
roles
that maintain or increase social inequality, whereas
those who are lower on SDO will belong to institutions and
choose roles that reduce inequality.
The purpose of the present research was to demonstrate that
individual variation in SDO exists and to show that this con-
struct behaves according to the theory outlined above. Specifi-
cally, our goals were (a) to develop a measure of SDO that is
internally and temporally reliable, (b) to show that SDO is re-
lated to the attitudinal and social role variables specified by so-
cial dominance theory (predictive validity), (c) to show that the
measure is not redundant with other attitude predictors and
standard personality variables (discriminant validity), and (d)
to show that SDO serves as an orientation in shaping new
attitudes.
HYPOTHESES
The first set of hypotheses we tested was derived from social
dominance theory and concerned those variables to which SDO
should strongly relate, termed predictive
validity.
The second set
of hypotheses, termed discriminant validity, states either that
SDO should be independent of other variables or that SDO
should have predictive value in addition to the effects of these
other variables. We also hypothesized that SDO should relate
moderately to certain other personality variables, from which
SDO is conceptually distinct. The third set of hypotheses we
tested concerns SDO's power to predict new social attitudes.
Predictive Validity
Gender
The world over, men and women hold different roles with re-
gard to the maintenance of
hierarchy.
Ubiquitously, men serve
as military leaders and hold leadership roles in religious, social,
political, and cultural spheres
(e.g.,
Brown,
1991,
pp. 110, 137).
Moreover, men hold more hierarchy-enhancing attitudes, such
as support for ethnic prejudice, racism, capitalism, and right-
wing political parties, than do women (e.g., Avery, 1988; Eisler
& Loye,
1983;
Ekehammar & Sidanius, 1982; Shapiro & Ma-
hajan, 1986; Sidanius & Ekehammar, 1980; see review by Si-
danius,
Cling, & Pratto, 1991). On the basis of these general
societal patterns, we have predicted and shown that, on average,
men are more social dominance-oriented than women (see
Pratto,
Sidanius,
&
Stallworth,
1993;
Sidanius, Pratto,
&
Bobo,
in press). We tested this hypothesis with the measure of SDO
developed in the present research.
Legitimizing Myths
Ethnic Prejudice
One of the major kinds of ideology concerning relative group
status is ethnic prejudice. In the United States, the most long-
standing and widely disseminated version of ethnic prejudice is
anti-Black racism. Therefore, we predicted that SDO would be
strongly related to anti-Black racism in the present U.S. sam-
ples.
In the United States, a theoretical and empirical debate
about how best to measure anti-Black racism has been con-
ducted for some time (e.g., see Bobo, 1983; McConahay, 1986;
Sears,
1988;Sniderman&Tetlock, 1986a, 1986b). Social domi-
nance theory merely postulates that SDO should predict what-
ever ideologies are potent within the culture at the time of mea-
surement. From our theoretical viewpoint, it does not matter
whether the basis for racism is fairness (e.g., Kluegel & Smith,
1986),
genetic or biblical racial inferiority theories, symbolic
racism (e.g., Sears, 1988), or family pathology (e.g., Moynihan,
1965).
Any potent ideology that describes groups as unequal
and has policy implications is a legitimizing myth and should,
therefore, correlate with SDO. During the period the present
research was conducted, our subjects' country was engaged in a
war against Iraq, so we also measured anti-Arab racism and
expected it to correlate with SDO.
Nationalism
A more general kind of in-group prejudice that can occur in
nation-states
is
nationalism, chauvinism, or patriotism. Koster-
man and Feshbach (1989) suggested that procountry feelings
(patriotism) can be distinguished from comparative prejudice,
that
is,
that one's country
is
better than other countries (nation-
alism),
and as such should dominate other countries (chauvin-
ism).
Even so, all three reflect attitudinal bias in favor of the
national in-group, and thus we postulated that patriotism, na-
tionalism, and chauvinism would all be significantly related to
SDO.
Cultural Elitism
All societies share the idea that one of the defining features of
those who belong to their society (are part of the
in-group,
or are
considered by them to be human)
is
that they are "cultured." In
some societies, including English and American society, an
elitist ideology built on the cultured-not cultured distinction
postulates that the elite class has "culture" not shared by mid-
dle-
and working-class people and is therefore more deserving
of the "finer things in life."
We
term this legitimizing myth cul-
tural elitism, and we expected it to correlate with SDO as well.
Sexism
We
believe that antifemale sexism
is
a ubiquitous legitimizing
myth, although, as with ethnic prejudice, the content basis of
SOCIAL DOMINANCE ORIENTATION743
sexist ideology varies widely with religion, cultural history, and
technology. In the present
U.S.
samples, we used scales that as-
sess sexism as the extent to which people believe men and
women are "naturally" different and should
have
different work
roles outside and inside the home (Benson & Vincent, 1980;
Rombough
&
Ventimiglia,
1981)
and the extent
to
which people
believe that women rather than men can be blamed for un-
wanted sexual advances such as rape and sexual harassment
(Burt, 1980). We predicted that all of these would be positively
correlated with
SDO,
even controlling for subject sex.
Political-Economic Conservatism
Political-economic conservatism is associated with support
for capitalism
versus
socialism
(e.g.,
Eysenck,
1971).
Given that
capitalism implies that some people and businesses should
thrive, while those who are less "competitive" should not, we
consider political-economic conservatism to be a hierarchy-en-
hancing legitimizing myth that should positively correlate with
SDO (see also Sidanius & Pratto, 1993b). Other policies sup-
ported by conservatives, such as that women should stay home
with children and that the USSR must be kept in its place, di-
vide people into groups "deserving" different treatment, so we
feel conservatism generally can be viewed as a legitimizing
myth. In fact, Wilson's extensive work on the body of attitudes
that make up conservatism shows that a preference for hierar-
chical social relationships
is one
of conservatism's many dimen-
sions (Wilson,
1973,
p. 22).
Noblesse Oblige
A
hierarchy-attenuating ideology that
exists
in many cultures
is that those with more resources should share them with those
who have fewer resources
(e.g.,
the Marxist maxim, "From each
according
to
his
[sic]
ability, to each according
to
his need," and
the potlatch custom of the Kwakiutl). The English-American
version
is
called
noblesse
oblige,
which
we
expected to be nega-
tively correlated with SDO.
Meritocracy
Another hierarchy-enhancing ideology is that wealth and
other social values are already distributed appropriately, based
on the deservingness of the recipients. The Protestant work
ethic and just world theory are examples of meritocratic ideol-
ogies,
so we administered standard measures of belief in the
Protestant work ethic and belief in a just world and predicted
that they would be positively correlated with SDO. In the
United States, attributions for poverty due to laziness or to
some other inherent fault in the poor are predicated on the idea
that equal opportunity is available to all (Kluegel & Smith,
1986),
so we wrote an equal opportunity scale and predicted
that it would correlate positively with SDO.
Social Policy Attitudes
According to social dominance theory, individuals who are
social dominance oriented
will
favor social practices that main-
tain or exacerbate inequality among groups and will oppose so-
cial
practices that reduce group
inequality.
The particular social
policies that correlate with SDO may vary from society to soci-
ety, but we predicted that SDO would relate to support for, or
opposition to, the following policies in
U.S.
samples.
Social Welfare, Civil Rights, and Environmental Policies
We
expected SDO to correlate with opposition to social poli-
cies that would reduce inequality between U.S. nationals and
foreigners or immigrants, rich and middle class or poor, men
and women, ethnic groups, heterosexuals and homosexuals,
and humans versus other species. As such, we measured our
subjects' attitudes toward a variety of government social pro-
grams, racial and sexual discrimination laws, gay and lesbian
rights,
domination of foreigners, and environmental
policies.
In
several samples we also assessed attitudes toward "interracial
dating" and "interracial marriage," because miscegenation has
been central to the
U.S.
racial policy debate.
Military Policy
Because the military is a symbol of nationalism and can be
one of the chief means of domination of one nation over others,
we
expected
SDO
to correlate positively with expressed support
for military programs and actions.
Punitive Policies
Despite its stated creed to enact equality before the law, the
U.S.
criminal justice system shows class and ethnic bias at all
levels from arrest to plea bargaining to sentencing
(e.g.,
Bienen,
Alan, Denno, Allison, & Mills, 1988; General Accounting
Office, 1990; Kleck, 1981; Nickerson, Mayo, & Smith, 1986;
Paternoster, 1983; Radelet & Pierce, 1985; Reiman, 1990; Si-
danius, 1988). As one example, in a review of 1,804 homicide
cases in South Carolina, Paternoster (1983) found that in cases
where Blacks killed Whites, rather than other Blacks, prosecu-
tors were 40 times more likely to request the death penalty. For
this
reason,
we
expected support for "law and order"
or
punitive
policies, particularly the death penalty, to be positively related
to SDO (see also Mitchell,
1993;
Sidanius, Liu, Pratto,
&
Shaw,
1994).
Discriminant Validity
Interpersonal Dominance
SDO,
or preference for unequal relationships among catego-
ries
of people,
is
conceptually distinguishable from the common
personality conception of interpersonal dominance, which con-
cerns
the extent to which individuals
like
to
be
in charge and are
efficacious. For example, people who score high on the Califor-
nia Personality Inventory (CPI) Dominance scale are confident,
assertive, dominant, and task oriented, whereas people who
score low are unassuming and nonforceful (Gough,
1987,
p.
6).
People who score high on the Jackson Personality Research
Form (JPRF) Dominance scale attempt to control their envi-
ronments and influence
or
direct other
people;
they are forceful,
decisive, authoritative, and domineering (Jackson, 1965). We
tested this theoretical distinction between social and task or in-
terpersonal dominance by using the CPI and JPRF Dominance
subscales in several samples reported here. We predicted that
SDO would not correlate with these two measures.
744PRATTO, SIDANIUS, STALLWORTH, AND MALLE
Authoritarianism
There is clearly some theoretical similarity in the effects of
social dominance theory's SDO construct and authoritarian
personality theory's authoritarian construct (see Adorno, Fren-
kel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950). High-SDO people
and authoritarian personalities are theorized to be relatively
conservative, racist, ethnocentric, and prejudiced, and they
should show little empathy for lower status
others.
Our concep-
tion of
SDO,
however, differs from classical authoritarianism in
several respects. First, classical authoritarian theorists viewed
authoritarianism
as
an aberrant and pathological condition and
as
a form of ego-defense against feelings of inadequacy and vul-
nerability (see also Frenkel-Brunswik, 1948, 1949). SDO, how-
ever,
is
not conceived of in clinical terms,
as
an aberrant person-
ality
type,
or
as a
form of ego-defense. Rather, SDO
is
conceived
of as a "normal" human propensity on which people
vary.
Sec-
ond, authoritarian personality theory emphasized the sources
of authoritarianism as springing from psychodynamic pro-
cesses. Specifically, Adorno et al. (1950) postulated that strict
and harsh parental styles would provoke conflicts between the
child and parents that would be "unresolved." As a way of
re-
solving
these,
the child as an adult would submit to authorities
and be intolerant of those who would not. In contrast, we theo-
rize that such a personal history is unnecessary to developing a
relatively high SDO tendency. Rather, both temperament and
socialization probably influence one's level of
SDO.
Third and
most important, whereas authoritarianism is primarily con-
ceived as a desire for individual dominance resulting from ex-
periences with authority figures, SDO is regarded as the desire
that
some
categories of
people
dominate
others.
Because the two
constructs are defined differently, measurements of each should
not be highly correlated.
Given that authoritarianism should predict many of the same
variables we postulate SDO should predict, it is important for
us to show that SDO has explanatory value in addition to au-
thoritarianism. We tested the "marginal utility" of the SDO
construct by testing whether correlations between SDO and
support for legitimizing myths and policies are significant after
partialing out authoritarianism.
Conservatism
Political-economic conservatism serves as a legitimizing
myth in our theory, and thus
we
expect it to correlate positively
with SDO. Conservatism is also a well-known robust predictor
of social and political attitudes (e.g., Eysenck & Wilson, 1978;
Wilson, 1973). To show that SDO has utility in addition to po-
litical-economic conservatism,
we
tested whether SDO substan-
tially correlated with social attitudes after partialing out
conservatism.
Standard Personality Variables
Because
we
think our concept of SDO is a yet unstudied per-
sonality dimension, we expected it to be independent of other
standard personality variables such as self-esteem and the Big-
Five personality dimensions: Extraversion, Agreeableness,
Openness, Neuroticism, and Conscientiousness (see Costa &
MacRae,
1985;
John, 1990, for reviews).
Empathy,
Altruism,
Communality,
and
Tolerance
People who are highly empathic with others would seem to
be less
prejudiced and discriminatory against
out-groups.
Thus,
it is reasonable to expect a general concern for other people to
be negatively correlated with SDO. Similarly, any general pro-
social orientation might mitigate prejudiced feelings and behav-
iors toward out-group members, so altruism should be nega-
tively correlated with
SDO.
Furthermore, people who are quite
inclusive in their definitions of what constitutes an in-group
should be less able to discriminate against out-groups, so we
expected communality to be negatively correlated with SDO.
And
finally,
because tolerance is the antithesis of prejudice, we
might expect that a general measure of tolerance would be neg-
atively correlated with a general desire for in-group superiority.
We used Davis' (1983) multidimensional empathy scale, Super
and Nevill's (1985) altruism subscale, the Personal Attribute
Questionnaire (PAQ) Communality scale (Spence, Helmreich,
& Stapp, 1974), and the Jackson Personality Inventory (JPI)
Tolerance scale (Jackson,
1976)
to test
these
hypotheses. If SDO
has merit as a new personality variable, none of these corre-
lations should be very high.
PRESENT RESEARCH
Overview
We
examined data from
13
samples to test the predictive and
discriminant validity and reliability of our measure of SDO.
Our logic in using this large number of samples is to examine
statistically significant results that are reliable across samples.
We organized the results by topic, but we report the results in
each sample so that the reader can see the magnitude of effects
in each sample and the stability of the results across samples.
At the end of the Results section, we provide a summary of the
results in the form of meta-analyses.
Data Collection
Generally, subjects were college students who participated in
a study called "Social Attitudes" for partial course credit. All
of their responses were anonymous and confidential, and they
completed batteries of self-administered questionnaires. Sub-
jects in Samples
2,
3b, 5,6,8, 9, and
13
spent about
1
hr in our
laboratory completing the questionnaires. The experimenter
described the study as designed to measure students' social atti-
tudes and personal preferences. Subjects in Samples
1
and 13
completed the SDO scale after participating in unrelated exper-
iments, and subjects in the remaining samples completed the
SDO scale and follow-up scales in two consecutive mass-testing
sessions normally conducted on subject pool participants. All
subjects completed a demographic background sheet and our
14-item SDO scale intermixed with related items, a National-
ism scale based on Kosterman and Feshbach's (1989) measure,
along with other attitude or experience measures, each having
their own instructions and response scales. We also adminis-
tered some standard personality or attitude scales according
to the instructions of their authors. In several samples we
also administered ideological (legitimizing myths) or policy
attitude items on a questionnaire entitled "Policy Issues
Questionnaire."
SOCIAL DOMINANCE ORIENTATION745
Measures
SDO
In previous archival studies, we measured proxies for SDO
using items dealing with equality from the National Election
Study or the S6 Conservatism scale (see Sidanius, 1976). In de-
veloping the present measure of
SDO,
we tested over 70 items
whose content we felt related to SDO or to constructs one can
define
as
separate but that might
be
considered adjacent to SDO
(e.g., nationalism and prestige-striving), following Loevinger's
(1957) suggestion about scale construction. However, on the ba-
sis of our desire to develop a simple, unidimensional scale that
is balanced, we selected 14 items from this extensive question-
naire as the SDO scale. The selected items concerned the belief
that some people are inherently superior or inferior to others
and approval of unequal group relationships (see items in Ap-
pendix A). The 14-item SDO scale was balanced in that half
the items indicated approval of inequality and half indicated
approval of equality (see items in Appendix
A).
We
assume that
these items tap a latent construct and
so we
are interested in the
relationships between the scale mean and other measures rather
than relationships between individual SDO items and other
measures.
SDO is an attitudinal orientation, so instructions read,
"Which of the following objects or statements do you have a
positive or negative feeling towards? Beside each object or state-
ment,
place a
number from'
1'
to
'7'
which represents the degree
of your positive or negative feeling." The scale was labeled very
positive
(7),
positive
(6),
slightly positive
(5),
neither
positive nor
negative
(4),
slightly negative
(3),
negative
(2),
and
very negative
(1).
The order of the SDO items and the filler items differed
among Form A, completed by Samples 1, 2, 3, and 4; Form B,
completed by Samples 5, 6, 7, 8, and 12; and Form C, com-
pleted by Samples 9, 10, and
11.
The format and instructions
for the three forms were identical, and we saw no evidence that
results pertinent to reliability or validity issues differed across
the questionnaire form. Subsequent to the present research, we
have used just the 14 items on a questionnaire and found reli-
ability coefficients of
.90
and predictive validity results similar
to those reported below.
Political-Economic Conservatism
Some of the standard
scales
assessing political-economic con-
servatism actually measure individuals' support for particular
social policies
(e.g.,
the C-scale, Wilson
&
Patterson, 1968). Be-
cause we wished to measure political-economic conservatism
separately from policy attitudes, and because we wanted to use
a measure that should not vary with time and place, we used a
self-identified liberal-conservative measure in all samples. On
the
demographic background
sheet,
the political-economic con-
servatism question read, "Use one of the following numbers to
indicate your political views in the accompanying categories."
Below these instructions
was
a scale labeled
very liberal
(1),
lib-
eral
(2),
slightly liberal
(3),
middle of the
road
(4),
slightly
con-
servative
(5),
conservative
(6), and very
conservative
(7) and a
blank next to each type of
issue:
"foreign policy issues," "eco-
nomic issues," and "social issues." Political-economic conser-
vatism
was
the mean of self-ratings on these three items.
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism research has been fraught with measure-
ment difficulties. After surveying the authoritarianism mea-
surement literature, we decided to administer two rather
different measures of authoritarianism, both of which are bal-
anced: the Right Wing Authoritarian
(RWA)
scale by Altemeyer
(1981) and Goertzel's (1987) bipolar personality measure.
Goertzel (1987) intended his adjective checklist to measure the
personality rather than the ideological aspect of authoritarian-
ism, but did show that it correlates with attitudes toward poli-
cies falling along toughness and consistency dimensions. Alte-
meyer's
(1981) scale is the
only other internally reliable measure
of authoritarianism that is close to the original conception of
authoritarianism, including conventionalism, authoritarian
submission, and authoritarian aggression (see Duckitt, 1989,
for a review).
Original Legitimizing Myths and Policy Attitudes
The consent form and instructions informed subjects that
their opinions and preferences toward a variety of
ideas,
kinds
of people,
events,
and
so
forth would
be
measured. On our "Pol-
icy
Issues
Questionnaire"
we
included items from various legit-
imizing myth or policy attitude scales. Items from each scale
were interspersed throughout the questionnaire. Next to each
item was a 1-7 scale, and the instructions read, "Which of the
following objects, events, or statements do you have a positive
or negative feeling towards? Please indicate your feelings by cir-
cling the appropriate number alongside each item. Use one of
the following responses. Remember, your first reaction is best.
Work
as
quickly
as
you can." The scale points were labeled
very
negative
(1),
negative
(2),
slightly negative
(3),
uncertain or
neu-
tral
(A),
slightly
positive
(5),
positive
(6),
and very
positive
(7).
Items from the original legitimizing myths and policy atti-
tude scales were selected for their content and for their internal
reliability across samples. These scales are shown in Appendix
B.
Several personality measures were used as
well;
these are de-
scribed in the Method section.
Method
Subjects
Although our 1,952 subjects were college students, they represent
some diversity in terms of
sex,
ethnicity, and income groups, coming
from public and private universities in California. Demographic infor-
mation about the samples
is
shown in Table 1.
Samples and Procedures
Sample 1 (spring 1990) consisted of
98
University of California at
Berkeley undergraduates
who
completed the CPI Dominance, Flexibil-
ity, and Capacity for Status subscales (Gough, 1987), the JPRF Domi-
nance subscale (Jackson, 1965), the JPI Tolerance subscale (Jackson,
1976),
and the Rosenberg (1965) Self-Esteem Scale (RSE).
Sample
2
(fall and winter 1990-1991) consisted of 463 San Jose State
University (SJSU) undergraduates who completed the CPI and JPRF
Dominance subscales; Mirels and Garrett's (1971) Protestant Work
Ethic Scale; the Just World Scale (Rubin & Peplau, 1975); the four-
factor Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), which measures empathy
(Davis, 1983); a number of policy attitude measures; and some demo-
graphic descriptors.
746
PRATTO, SIDANIUS, STALLWORTH, AND MALLE
Table
1
Description
of
Samples
Measure
n
Age range
%
men
%
women
%
Euro-American
%
Asian-American
%
Hispanic
%
Black
%
Arab-American
Under 20K
20-30K
30-40K
40-55K
55-7OK
70-100K
100-150K
15O-2OOK
200K.+
1
98
17-34
50
50
48
23
13
15
1
2
463
15-56
47
53
38
40
8
5
2
12
9
11
17
20
14
8
5
5
3a
81
17-21
3b
57
17-21
51
49
58
16
4
14
6
45
Sample
6
Age and gender breakdown
190
47
53
144
17-35
49
51
49
17-23
69
31
Ethnic breakdown
38
40
8
5
2
53
24
10
8
0
59
24
15
2
0
Family income
10
8
5
10
10
21
15
13
8
21
16
12
8
19
14
6
3
1
6
6
8
10
10
19
19
11
11
7
224
50
50
49
25
10
6
1
8
115
17-59
40
60
29
51
14
2
3
17
13
13
15
17
13
5
2
5
9
97
17-36
33
67
19
45
17
10
8
19
15
17
12
15
9
2
3
6
10
231
54
46
67
22
4
4
1
11
100
12
135
59
41
50
33
10
4
1
13
46
100
0
52
33
11
0
4
Note. Missing numbers indicate that information was not available. Samples 4, 7, 10-13 are probably similar in age distribution and range to
Sample 3. Income was self-reported annual family income in thousands of dollars.
Sample 3a (September, 1990) consisted of 81 Stanford University un-
dergraduates who completed the SDO scale as part of a mass-testing
session. Sample 3b included 57 subjects from the same population who
participated in a study in our lab in December, 1990, during which they
completed the SDO scale again and a number of attitude and personal-
ity measures. The overlap of these two samples (N = 25 with complete
data) was used to assess the cross-time reliability of
SDO.
Sample 4 (January, 1991) consisted of 190 Stanford University un-
dergraduates who completed the SDO scale and an attitude scale about
the Iraq war assessing environmental concerns in the war, anti-Arab
racism, willingness to sacrifice for the war, willingness to restrict civil
liberties for the war effort, and support for the use of military force by
the United States against Iraq.
Sample
5
(fall 1991) consisted of 144 SJSU undergraduates who com-
pleted the RSE (Rosenberg, 1965), the Rombough and Ventimiglia
(1981) Tri-Dimensional Sexism Scale, the Sexist Attitudes Toward
Women Scale (Benson & Vincent, 1980), the Rape Myths Scale (Burt,
1980),
the Altruism subscale from the Values Scale (Super & Nevill,
1985),
and the IRI (Davis, 1983). We also measured policy attitudes
toward gay rights, women's equality policies, militarism, punitiveness,
racial policies, and environmental policies. In addition, we measured
ideologies such as anti-Black racism, elitism, patriotism, belief in equal
opportunity, and opposition to miscegenation.
Sample 6 (September, 1991) consisted of 49 Stanford undergraduates
who completed the same measures as subjects in Sample 5.
Sample 7 (September, 1991) consisted of 224 Stanford undergradu-
ates who completed a battery of personality questions, including Malle
and Horowitz's (1994) bipolar descriptions of Factors I (Extraversion),
II (Agreeableness), IV (Neuroticism), and V (Conscientiousness) of the
Big-Five personality dimensions (see John, 1990, for a review). A few
weeks later, in the 3 days including and following the day Clarence
Thomas was confirmed to the Supreme Court, those subjects who had
given their prior permission were telephoned and asked four questions
about their opinions regarding this Supreme Court nomination. In all,
149 subjects were reached by telephone, and the response rate was
100%.
Sample 8 (February, 1992) consisted of
115
Stanford undergraduates
who completed the PAQ (Spence et al., 1974), CPI Dominance scale
(Gough, 1987), JPRF Dominance scale (Jackson, 1965), JPI Tolerance
scale (Jackson, 1976), IRI (Davis, 1983), RSE (Rosenberg, 1965), a
post-Iraq war attitude survey, a general war attitude survey, and a num-
ber of other policy attitude measures similar to those in Sample 5.
Sample 9 (April, 1992) consisted of 97 SJSU undergraduates. They
completed the CPI and JPRF Dominance subscales; the JPI Tolerance
subscale; the IRI; the Protestant Work Ethic Scale; all 19 of the author-
itarian bipolar adjective choices (Goertzel, 1987); Altemeyer's (1981)
30-item RWA Scale; John, Donahue, and Kentle's (1992) Big-Five Per-
sonality Inventory; the PAQ; McConahay's (1986) Modern Racism
Scale; and Katz and Hass' (1988) Pro-Black, Anti-Black, and Humani-
tarian-Egalitarian Scales. They also completed a number of policy atti-
tude items similar to those for Sample 5.
Sample 10 (March, 1992) consisted of
231
Stanford undergraduates
who completed the SDO scale. Two weeks later, 176 of these subjects
completed a comprehensive survey about their ideologies and general
attitudes about the death penalty and their attitude about the execution
of Robert Alton Harris, who was executed by the state of California the
day before the survey was administered.
Sample 11 (March, 1991) consisted of 100 Stanford University un-
dergraduates who completed the SDO scale and a battery of other ques-
tionnaires including Snyder's (1974) self-monitoring
scales;
Fenigstein,
Scheier, and Buss' (1975) Self-Consciousness
scales;
and Malle and Ho-
rowitz' (1994) bipolar adjective versions of Factors I and IV of the Big-
Five personality dimensions.
Sample 12 (January, 1992) included 139 Stanford undergraduates
SOCIAL DOMINANCE ORIENTATION747
who completed the SDO scale in a mass-testing session. Of
these,
70
also completed Malle and Horowitz' (1994) measures of Factors I
and
IV.
Sample
13
included 46 undergraduate men at Stanford during 1990-
1991 who were selected to be in an experiment on the basis of having
either extremely high or low SDO scores in Samples 3,4, and
11.
They
participated
in the
experiment between
6
weeks and
8
months after their
first testing and completed the SDO scale again.
Results
We first present the internal and temporal reliability of our
SDO scale. We then examine whether this measure related to
the ideological, policy
attitude,
and hierarchy role variables
pre-
dicted by social dominance theory. We show that SDO was ei-
ther independent of other personality variables with which it
might be confused or that it predicted the attitudinal outcomes
over
and above the effects of these other
variables.
We
also show
that it was not redundant with other personality measures. Fi-
nally,
we
show that SDO predicted new social and political atti-
tudes.
To
summarize the results across
samples,
we report sim-
ple averages
of the internal reliability coefficients across samples
and averaged correlations across samples using Fisher's z-to-r
transformation.
Reliability of the SDO Measure
Unidimensionality
We conducted two kinds of analyses to confirm that the 14
SDO items assessed a single construct. First, within each sam-
ple,
principal-components analyses of the 14 SDO items
showed that a single dimension captured the bulk of the vari-
ance in these items. That is, there was a precipitous drop be-
tween the values of the first and second eigenvalues in every
sample. Second, we subjected our largest sample, Sample 2 {N
= 446 with complete data on all SDO items) to confirmatory
factor analysis. Using maximum-likelihood estimation, we
tested a model in which all 14 items were driven by a single
latent construct. Each item had a statistically significant rela-
tionship to the latent factor
(ps <
.0001).
By
freeing only
3
of 91
possible off-diagonal elements of
the
66
matrix,2 we obtained a
satisfactory x2/dfratio of 2.89
(e.g.,
Carmines
&
Mclver, 1981),
suggesting that our data are consistent with a model in which a
single dimension underlies responses to all the items. Thus, the
14
items appear to measure a unitary construct.
Internal
Reliability
Item statistics showed that the 14-item SDO scale showed
good internal reliability across all samples, averaging a = .83
(see internal reliability coefficients and item statistics by sample
in Table
2).
Item analyses also showed that all items
were
highly
correlated with the remainder of the scale in every sample. The
average lowest item-total correlation across samples was .31
and the average highest item-total correlation across samples
was
.63.
Item 7 had the lowest item-total correlation in 4 of 12
independent samples (Z =
3.52,
p
<
.001). Item 9 had the high-
est item-total correlation in 3 samples (Z = 2.40, p < .01). No
other items were either the most or least correlated across sam-
ples
in numbers that differed from chance
using a
binomial test.
Stability of SDO
Measure Over
Time
We measured the stability of scores on our scale over time in
two
samples.
Twenty-five of the subjects in Sample
3 were
tested
on
SDO twice
at a 3-month interval. Their
SDO
scores substan-
tially correlated from Time
1
to Time 2 (r =
.81,
p < .01). The
mean difference from Time
1
to Time 2 was 0.09 on a 7-point
scale,
which did not differ reliably from zero
{t <
1).
In contrast,
the Time
1-Time
2
correlation for the 10-item RSE
was
.50.
Sample 13 consisted of
46
of the highest and lowest scoring
men on the SDO scale from Samples 3, 4, and 11, who com-
pleted that scale again some months later. The correlation in
this sample from Time
1
to Time 2 was .84 (p < .001), and the
mean difference in scores from Time
1
to Time
2 was
essentially
zero (M
=
0.03, t < 1; for the high group, M = -0.03 and for
the low group, M = 0.09). All of the subjects first classified as
"high" or "low" on SDO met this criterion again in the second
testing. The near-zero mean changes within both groups are
particularly telling because one could have expected at least
some regression toward the mean. Thus, even in different test-
ing contexts, our SDO measure appears highly stable in the
short term.
Predictive Measures
Gender Differences
The gender difference
we
expected showed in all but
two
sam-
ples;
men were higher on SDO than women (see point-biserial
correlations in Table 2).
SDO and
Hierarchy Role
A question on the demographic background questionnaire
asked subjects in what sector of
the
economy they intended to
work after graduation. There were 20 career choices provided.
Theoretically,
we
define those whose work
is
primarily aimed at
protecting, serving, or benefiting elite members of society more
than oppressed members of society "hierarchy-enhancing."
Those whose work benefits the oppressed more than elites we
define as "hierarchy-attenuating." As such, we classified sub-
jects as (a) hierarchy enhancers (those intending careers in law,
law enforcement, politics, and business); (b) "middlers" who
would not obviously attenuate or enhance inequality through
their professional work, such as science and
sales;
or (c) hierar-
chy attenuators (those intending to be in such professions as
social work or counseling; see also Sidanius, Pratto, Martin, &
Stallworth, 1991). We predicted that hierarchy enhancers
would have higher SDO levels than hierarchy attenuators, and
that middlers' SDO levels would fall somewhere between the
other
two.
Sample
2 was
large enough to test this
hypothesis;
we
also combined Samples 5, 6, 8, and 9 to replicate the test. Be-
cause more women tend to go into hierarchy-attenuating ca-
reers,
and because we know that SDO exhibits a gender differ-
ence,
we also included subject sex as an independent variable
along with hierarchy role. SDO was the outcome variable in
simultaneous regression-style analyses of variance (ANOVAs)
2 The freed elements of the matrix corresponded to Items 8 and 9,
Items
2
and
4,
and Items
10
and
11
in Apendix A.
748PRATTO, SIDANIUS, STALLWORTH, AND MALLE
Table 2
Coefficient
Alphas,
Correlation With Subject
Gender,
and
Average
Item
Means
and
Variances
by
Sample for
14-Item Social Dominance Orientation Scale
Measure
a
M
Variance
1
.85
.29**
2.44
0.14
2
.83
.27**
2.74
0.22
3a
.84
.32**
2.55
0.18
3b
.85
.31*
2.31
0.17
4
.84
.32**
2.59
0.21
5
.81
.11
2.97
0.40
Sample
6
.84
.36*
2.50
0.24
7
.89
.28*
2.59
0.23
8
.82
.27**
3.02
0.18
9
.80
.03
3.12
0.36
10
.83
.30**
3.13
0.66
11
.81
2.91
0.27
12
.83
.26**
2.60
0.23
Note. Positive correlations with gender indicate that men were higher than women
*p<.05.
**p<.0l.
with planned contrasts. In Sample 2, the results were as ex-
pected: Those who intended to work in hierarchy-attenuating
professions had lower SDO levels (M
=
2.28) than did middlers
{M
=
2.72),
F(
1,432)
= 5.49, p
<
.05,
and also lower
levels
than
those intending to work in hierarchy-enhancing professions
(M
= 2.88), F(l, 432) =
10.21,
p <
.01.
Men also had higher SDO
levels (M
=
3.03) than women (M
=
2.51),
F(
1,432)
=
36.86,
p
<
.001.
In the merged sample, hierarchy attenuators again had
lower SEX) levels (M
=
2.64) than hierarchy enhancers (M =
3.09), F(l, 378) =
5.01,
p < .05. Middlers' SDO levels were in
the middle (M
=
2.94) and were not distinguishable from those
of either enhancers or attenuators. Again, men (M = 3.07) had
higher SDO levels than women (M
=
2.90), F(\, 378) = 3.72, p
= .05. Results from both these large samples indicate that in-
tended hierarchy attenuators did indeed have lower SDO levels
than intended hierarchy enhancers, even after controlling for
subjects' sex.
SDO and
Hierarchy-Legitimizing
Myths
We
hypothesized that SDO should be related to any social or
political ideology that helps legitimize group-based inequality.
Ideologies. The three-item index of self-described political
ideology had good internal reliability, averaging a = .78 across
samples (see Table 3). SDO correlated positively and signifi-
cantly with political-economic conservatism in 7 of
8
samples,
averaging r =
.38;
conservatives were higher on SDO than liber-
als (see Table 3). The scales measuring meritocratic ideologies,
the Protestant Work Ethic and Just World
Scales,
had fairly low
internal reliabilities in all
samples,
considering that they are 19-
and 20-item
scales,
respectively
(see Table
3).
In
a
Stanford sam-
ple (Sample 3b), but not in two samples from SJSU (Samples 2
and 9), the Protestant Work Ethic Scale and Just World Scale
had significant positive correlations with SDO (see Table 3).
This suggested to us that variations in the cultural background
of these samples may affect the ideologies known to and ac-
cepted by them. Results from our demographic questionnaire
showed that compared with Stanford, SJSU tends to have more
first-generation American, more Catholic, and fewer Euro-
American students.
The other legitimizing myth scales that
we
constructed fared
better
(see
items for
all
other scales Appendix
B).
The national-
ism, patriotism, cultural elitism, and equal opportunity mea-
sures all had good internal reliability and were positively corre-
lated with SDO (rs ranged from .22 to .67), with only one ex-
ception (see Table 3). These correlations showed that the more
subjects tended to prefer group dominance in general, the more
nationalistic and patriotic they were (average rs = .51 and .45,
respectively) and the more they subscribed to cultural elitism
(average r
=
.40) and equal opportunity ideologies (average r =
.46).
As predicted, the noblesse oblige scale was strongly nega-
tively correlated with SDO in every sample, ranging from -.39
to -.69 (see Table 3). In Samples 1, 3a, and 7 (not shown in
Table 3), SDO correlated -.47, -.56, and -.67 with noblesse
oblige
(ps
< .01), for an overall average correlation of-.54.
Ethnic
prejudice.
SDO was strongly correlated with our
anti-Black racism measure in every
sample,
ranging from .42 to
.65 and averaging .55 (see Table 3). In Sample 4, we also mea-
sured anti-Arab racism (a = .73), which correlated with SDO
(r =
.22,
p < .05). In Sample 9, we administered McConahay's
(1986) seven-item Modern Racism Scale (a = .79), which cor-
related
.53
with
SDO.
Katzand Hass' (1988) 10-item Pro-Black
Scale (a = .68)
was
negatively correlated with SDO (r
=
—.38,
p
< .01), and their 10-item Anti-Black Scale (a = .62) was posi-
tively correlated with SDO (r = .30, p < .01). These results,
using rather different racism measures, are consistent with the
idea that generalized preference for
group
dominance drives be-
lief in culturally specific forms of ethnic prejudice.
Sexism.
We
assessed antifemale sexism in Samples
5
and 6
with several measures, all of which proved to be internally reli-
able.
These measures were highly correlated with SDO
(rs
rang-
ing from .34 to .63; see Table 4). Across both samples and all
sexism measures, the average correlation
was
.47.
Partial corre-
lations controlling for gender with SDO were also reliable and
of about the same magnitude. For this reason, the large corre-
lations between
SDO
and sexism cannot be attributed to gender
differences on SDO or sexism measures.
In summary, all of the measured ideologies (hierarchy-legiti-
mizing myths) except the Protestant Work Ethic Scale and Be-
lief in a Just World Scale were reliably correlated with SDO in
the expected directions across virtually all samples. SDO was
most strongly related with ideologies concerning group preju-
dice against other nations, ethnic
groups,
and women.
SDO and Policy Attitudes
We hypothesized that SDO would predict support for social
policies with implications for the distribution of social value
among
groups.
We
assessed attitudes toward chauvinist policies
(United States dominating other national groups), law and or-
SOCIAL DOMINANCE ORIENTATION749
Table 3
Coefficient Alphas
of Legitimizing
Myth Scales
and
Correlations With Social Dominance Orientation
Sample
No
of
Sample
2
Sample 3b Sample
5
Sample 6 Sample
8
Sample
9
Sample 10
Measure items (n = 408) (n
=
57) Sample 4 (n = 144) (n = 49) («=115) (n = 95) (n
=
156)
Coefficient
a
Political-economic conservatism
3 .69 .83 .89*
Protestant Work Ethic
19 .68 .75
Just World
20 .55 .42
Nationalism
6 .75 .88 .80"
Patriotism
12
Cultural elitism
7
Equal opportunity
6
Noblesse oblige
6 .58 .80 .69"
Anti-Black racism
5 .68 .77
.80
.68
.83
.67
.65
.68
.70
.71
.86
.89
.78
.76
.73
.74
.80
.78
.56
.60
.72
.73
.66
.80
.59
.49
.72
.77
.78
.62
.54
Political-economic conservatism
Protestant Work Ethic
Just World
Nationalism
Patriotism
Cultural elitism
Equal opportunity
Noblesse oblige
Anti-Black racism
.26**
-.03
.09
.52**
-.39"
.57**
Correlations
.28*
.33*
.43**
.41**
-.54**
.42**
44»*b
.53**"
_43*.b
.11
.43**
.43**
.51**
.51**
-.60**
.49**
.72**
.67**
.65**
.23
.51**
.61**
.24*
.51**
-.69**
.65**
.17*
.03
.47**
.22*
.44**
.34**
-.50**
.52**
.55**
.72**
-.72**
•n=180. »« = 90.
*p<.05.
**p<.0l.
der policies, military programs, gay rights, women's rights, so-
cial programs generally, racial policies, and environmental pol-
icies in most of our samples (see coefficient alphas in Table 5).
Support for chauvinist policies and law and order policies
were positively correlated with SDO in almost all samples, av-
eraging .34 and
.28,
respectively. Support for military programs
was positively correlated with SDO
in
all samples, averaging
.44.
Support for gay rights, women's rights, social welfare pro-
grams, ameliorative racial policy, miscegenation, and environ-
mental policy
were
significantly negatively related to SDO in all
but three cases (see Table
5).
These relationships were of about
the same magnitudes as the policy attitudes described above.
We assessed political party preference by having subjects rate
themselves from
strong Democrat
(1) through
independent
(4)
to strong
Republican
(7)
and others. Excluding
"others,"
Repub-
lican political party preference correlated positively and sig-
nificantly with SDO in six out of six samples, averaging .28 (see
Table 5).
In addition
to
support for military programs, we expected
support for military action including war
to be
positively related
to
SDO.
We
tested
this
hypothesis
by
surveying attitudes toward
war in general and specific attitudes toward the war against Iraq
fought
by
the United
States
and other nations at
the
time
of data
collection. In fall 1990, while Iraq was occupying Kuwait and
the United States was amassing troops near Iraq, data from
Sample
2
were collected, including
a
single war policy item,
"Going to war to maintain
low
oil prices." This item correlated
.30 with SDO (p < .01). In January, 1991, when the United
States and allies had just begun bombing Iraq,
we
administered
a balanced scale concerning
war
and related attitudes
to
Sample
4.
A reliable (a
=
.85) eight-item pro-war scale correlated .51
with SDO (p < .01). One year later, we asked Sample 8 about
Table 4
Coefficient Alphas
of Sexism
Scales
and
Correlations With
Social
Dominance Orientation Within
Samples
Measure
Rombough
&
Ventimiglia sexism
Sex
differences
Internal (household) labor
External (paid) labor
Sexist Attitudes Toward Women
Rape Myths
No.
of
items
20
5
10
6
40
10
Coefficient a
Sample 5
.90
.68
.89
.78
.91
.84
Sample 6
.94
.65
.94
.85
.94
.75
Correlations
Sample 5
.44**
.38**
.34"
.45**
.46"
.46"
Sample 6
.54"
.56"
.63"
.36*
.55"
.40**
*p<.05.
"/x.Ol.
750PRATTO, SIDANIUS, STALLWORTH,
AND
MALLE
Table 5
Coefficient Alphas
of
Policy
Scales,
Correlations With
Social
Dominance
Orientation,
and
Partial Correlations
Controlling for
Conservatism,
Across
Samples
Policy scale
Chauvinism
Law and order
Military programs
Gay
&
lesbian rights
Women's rights
Social programs
Racial policy
Miscegeny
Environmental
policies
Chauvinism
Law and order
Military programs
Gay
&
lesbian rights
Women's rights
Social programs
Racial policy
Miscegeny
Environmental
policies
Republican party
preference
Chauvinism
Law
and order
Military programs
Gay
&
lesbian rights
Women's rights
Social programs
Racial policy
Miscegeny
Environmental
policies
No.
of
items
8
4
3
2
4
10
7
2
5
2
(«
=
455)
.64
.67"
.82
.63
.78
.71
.96
3b
(n =
50) 4
Coefficient
a
.73
.71
.75
.91
.72
.77
.81
.97
Sample
5
(n
= 129)
.59
.73
.85
.69
.79
.68
.93
.71
6
(n
= 37)
.73
.IT
.67
.86
.63
.86
.72
.94
.80
Correlations of social dominance orientation and policy items
.08
.33**
-.32**
-.42**
-.50**
-.42**
-.31**
.15**
.23*
.27*
-.50**
-.32**
-.31**
-.46**
-.15
.25*
.37**
.30**
.33**
-.29**
-.39**
-.29**
-.23**
-.30**
-.27**
.24**
.49**
.59**
.70**
-.55**
-.34*
-.70**
-.62**
-.31*
-.40**
.45**
Partial correlations removing political-economic conservatism
-.02
.16***
-.28***
-.38**
-.30***
-.33***
-.28***
.15
.18
-.32**
-.31**
-.27*
-.30**
-.19
.40**
.29***
.31***
-.29***
-.35***
-.30***
-.22***
-.31***
-.27***
.16
.31*
.40**
-.14
-.27*
-.49**
-.38**
-.08
-.31*
8
(n
= 100)
.67
.80°
.66C
.60c
.91
.24*
-.52**
-.55**
-.54**
-.25*
.33**
.25***
-.46***
-.50***
-.49***
-.23**
9
(n =
89)
.58
.77"
.59
.83
.74
.81"
.77
.87
.76
.14
.19
.47**
-.17
-.42**
-.39**
-.34**
-.18
-.47**
.27*
.06
.15
.46***
-.15
-.40***
-.37***
-.31***
-.17*
-.46***
* Three
items.
b
Two
items.
c Six
items.
d
Seven
items.
*p<.05.
**p<.0\.
***/><.001.
their attitudes toward the Iraq
war.
The resulting Iraq
War
Atti-
tudes scale was reliable
(a
= .85) and correlated .29 with
SDO
Does
SDO,
then, unconditionally predict support
for
war,
or
only
war for
certain purposes?
We
attempted
to
answer this
question
by
designing
a
General War Attitudes scale including
two kinds
of
items,
namely, Wars
of
Dominance,
which we ex-
pected to relate positively to
SDO,
and Wars
for
Humanitarian
Reasons, which we
did not
expect
to
relate positively
to
SDO.
This scale
was
administered to Sample
8
in January, 1992. Fac-
tor analysis confirmed that these were two independent dimen-
sions.
The Wars
of
Dominance scale (eight items) was reliable
(a
=
.82) and correlated positively with SDO
(r=
.31,p< .01).
The Humanitarian
Wars
scale (six
items)3
was
also
reliable (a =
.73) and correlated negatively with SDO
(r =
-.41,
p <
.01),
so
SDO is
not
merely antipacifism. The Wars of Dominance scale
was positively correlated with support
for
the Iraq war
(r =
.63,
p
<
.001),
but the
Humanitarian Wars scale was uncorrelated
with support
for the
Iraq
war (r =
.07). These results suggest
that
SDO
does
not
predict support
for war
unconditionally;
rather,
SDO
predisposes people
to
endorse group dominance
ideologies, thus facilitating support for
wars
of dominance.
Discriminant
Validity
We expected SDO
to
correlate with political-economic
con-
servatism,
and
indeed
it
did. However,
to
show that SDO
has
! Two unreliable items were eliminated from the scale.
SOCIAL DOMINANCE ORIENTATION751
utility
as
a predictor of policy attitudes over and above political-
economic conservatism,
we
computed the correlations between
SDO
and the policy attitudes reported above after partialing out
political-economic conservatism. Of the
41
significant zero-or-
der correlations between SDO and policy attitudes in Table 5,
only 5 become nonsignificant when political-economic conser-
vatism is partialed out.4 A few of
the
very high zero-order cor-
relations were
reduced substantially, but many more partial cor-
relations were almost the same as the zero-order correlations
(see Table
5).
Across all the samples, then, there was no consis-
tent evidence that political-economic conservatism could re-
place SDO as a predictor of the policy attitudes
we
assessed.
In Sample 9, we assessed another rival predictor of policy at-
titudes, namely authoritarianism, using two measures. Alte-
meyer's 30-item RWA scale had good internal reliability {a =
.78);
Goertzel's measure was adequate for a bipolar scale (a =
.53).
Both measures of authoritarianism correlated with politi-
cal-economic conservatism (r = .31 for RWA, r = .29 for the
Goertzel measure, both ps < .01), confirming their validity.
Neither,
however,
correlated strongly with
SDO.
RWA
correlated
.14 (ns) with SDO, and the Goertzel measure correlated .18
with SDO (p <
.
10).
Correcting these correlations for attenua-
tion yielded slightly higher correlations (r* = .18, p < .05 for
RWA;
r*
=
.28,
p <
.01
for the Goertzel measure).
We
also computed partial correlations between SDO and the
policy attitudes, partialing the two authoritarianism measures
and political-economic conservatism. In Sample 9, all the poli-
cies that showed significant zero-order correlations with SDO
also had significant correlations with SDO, partialing out the
effects of political-economic conservatism, RWA, and the
Goertzel measure. Both authoritarianism measures showed
substantial zero-order correlations with attitudes that were not
as highly correlated with SDO in this sample: gay rights (r =
-.51 for
RWA,
r
=
-.31 for the Goertzel
measure,
ps
<.01) and
chauvinistic policies (r = .38 for
RWA,
p <
.01,
r = .25 for the
Goertzel measure, p < .05). As Peterson, Doty, and Winter
(1993) showed recently, authoritarianism still predicts social at-
titudes, particularly those relevant to untraditional sexual prac-
tices and prejudice against foreigners.
Because authoritarian personality theory (Adorno et al.,
1950) also postulates that authoritarianism should predict eth-
nocentrism, racism, nationalism, and conservatism, we tested
whether SDO would still predict belief in these legitimizing
myths, controlling for authoritarianism. All the reliable zero-
order correlations between SDO and ideological measures were
reliable after controlling for RWA and the Goertzel measure,
except for the correlation with political-economic conserva-
tism. The correlation between SDO and political-economic
conservatism, partialing
RWA,
was
. 13
(p =
.
11).
Partialing the
Goertzel measure, the correlation between SDO and political-
economic conservatism was .16 (p = .07), and partialing both
measures, the correlation was .13 (jo = .11). Although the rela-
tionship between SDO and conservatism may be explained by
their joint relationship to authoritarianism, the relationships
between SDO and racism and nationalism cannot.
Dominance and
Self-Esteem
Conservatism and authoritarianism were the only rival vari-
ables we
identified as predictors of social and political attitudes,
and the analyses above show that SDO substantially related to
such attitudes, even when controlling for political-economic
conservatism and for authoritarianism.
To show a
different kind
of discriminant
validity,
we
tested whether
SDO
correlated with
other personality
measures.
If any of these were
large,
we
would
then be obliged to test the partial correlations with the social
and political attitudes discussed above.
Only once did SDO correlate with the CPI and JPRF Domi-
nance subscales across
five
samples (see Table 6). On average,
CPI Dominance correlated .03 with SDO, and JPRF Domi-
nance correlated -.006. These results clearly indicate that SDO
is independent of interpersonal dominance. In Sample 1, SDO
was
also unrelated to CPI Flexibility (r = .06) and Capacity for
Status (r
=
.05). For the most part, SDO was also uncorrelated
with self-esteem in Samples
1
through 9, averaging -.08 (see
Table 6).
Other
Personality Measures
We
used data collected by other researchers at Stanford dur-
ing mass testing sessions to further investigate the discriminant
validity of
SDO.
SDO was uncorrelated with all the self-moni-
toring and self-consciousness scales in Sample
11.
In Samples
7,
9, 11, and 12, SDO correlated -.06, -.11, .08, and -.19,
respectively, with Extraversion; none of these correlations
differed reliably from
zero.
SDO
correlated
-.02,.
13,
-.08, and
.21 in those samples, respectively, with Neuroticism; none of
these differed reliably from zero. SDO correlated -.03 with
Agreeableness in Sample 7 and -.41 (p < .01) in Sample 9.
SDO correlated -.04 and -.
14
with Conscientiousness in Sam-
ples
7
and 9, neither of which differed reliably from zero. SDO
correlated -.28 with Openness (p < .01) in Sample 9. These
data do not suggest that SDO is redundant with any of the Big-
Five
dimensions and strongly imply that SDO
is
independent of
Extraversion and Neuroticism. Across this set of correlations,
there was also no evidence that SDO is related to the positively
valued personality dimensions (e.g., Extraversion and Calm-
ness) as opposed to the negative dimensions (e.g., Introversion
and Neuroticism).
Convergent Validity
Empathy,
Altruism, and Communality
We expected that feelings of closeness and kindness toward
others should mitigate desire to dominate other
groups,
so em-
pathy, altruism, and communality should correlate negatively
with
SDO.
We
first
tested whether different varieties of empathy
were negatively related to SDO using Davis' (1983) IRI. The
Concern for Others subscale was significantly negatively corre-
lated with SDO in every sample (rs ranged from —.40 to —.53
and averaged -.46;
see
Table
7).
High dominance-oriented peo-
ple expressed less concern for others than did low dominance-
oriented
people.
The patterns of correlations between SDO and
the other subscales were not as consistent across samples, but
when they were significant, all correlations were negative (see
Table 7). The total Empathy scale was negatively correlated
4 One other correlation actually became significant because partial
correlations use one-tailed tests.
752PRATTO, SIDANIUS, STALLWORTH,
AND
MALLE
Table 6
Coefficient Alphas
of
Interpersonal Dominance
and
Self-Esteem
and
Correlations
With Social Dominance Orientation Within
Samples
Measure
CPI Dominance
JPRF Dominance
Rosenberg Self-Esteem
CPI Dominance
JPRF Dominance
Rosenberg Self-Esteem
No.
of
items
35
19
10
1
(n
=
98)
.82
.81
.87
-.11
-.04
-.09
2
(« = 403)
.79
.81
.87
-.03
.13**
-.18
3a 3b
(n
=
80) (n
=
57)
Coefficient a
.79
.74
.88 .88
Correlations
-.17
-.17
.09 .01
Sample
4
(n
=
90)
.90
.16
5
(« = 144)
.87
-.23**
6
(« = 56)
.85
-.01
8
(« = 115)
.71
.73
.84
.24**
.01
-.29**
9
(n
=
95)
.71
.69
.83
.20
.04
-.14*
Note. CPI = California Psychological Inventory; JPRF = Jackson Personality Research Form.
*p<.05.
**p<.0l.
with
SDO in 5 of
6
samples (averaging
r =
-.31),
but not as
highly
as the
Concern
for
Others subscale.
We
conclude that
concern
for
others
is the
form
of
empathy that precludes
the
desire to dominate other groups.
As one might expect, altruism was correlated with
the
Con-
cern for Others subscale
in
Samples
5
and
6 (ps
< .001) and was
negatively correlated
with
SDO (see
Table
7).
Communality was
also negatively correlated with
SDO in
Samples
8 and 9 (see
Table 7).
In
addition, Katz
and
Hass' (1988) 10-item Humani-
tarian-Egalitarian Scale correlated negatively with
SDO (a =
.80,
r = —
.34,
p<
.01)
in
Sample
9;
this
scale
includes altruistic,
inclusive, and egalitarian items.
The constellation
of
qualities including communality,
emo-
tional empathy,
and
altruism has been termed "linking" and
is
stereotypically associated with
the
female
sex
(e.g., Eisler
&
Loye, 1983). However,
it
is
important to note that SDO's corre-
lations with communality, altruism,
and
concern
for
others
were significant even after controlling
for sex.
Thus, gender
differences alone
are not
responsible
for the
correlations
be-
tween SDO and communality, altruism, and concern for others.
Table 7
Coefficient Alphas
of
Empathy,
Altruism,
and
PAQ Subscales
and
Correlations With Social Dominance Orientation
Sample
Measure
Empathy
Concern
Distress
Perspective-taking
Fantasy
Altruism
PAQ Communality
PAQ Agency
Empathy
Concern
Distress
Perspective-taking
Fantasy
Altruism
PAQ Communality
PAQ Agency
No.
of
items
28
7
7
7
7
5
23
28
Sample
2
(n
= 403)
.76
.73
.71
.64
.71
-.40**
-.45**
-.03
-.30**
-.23**
Sample
3b
(n
=
57)
Coefficient
a
.72
.77
.70
.78
.79
Correlations
-.21
-.51**
-.11
.05
.01
Sample
5
(n
= 144)
.77
.66
.67
.74
.70
.87
-.26**
-.47**
.10
-.20*
-.06
-.32**
Sample
6
(n
= 56)
.75
.75
.74
.84
.72
.87
-.36*
-.41**
-.16
-.16
-.25*
-.24*
Sample
8
(«=115)
.75
.69
.61
.71
.70
.76
.80
-.38**
-.53**
.22**
-.39**
-.21*
-.42**
—.10
Sample
9
(n
= 95)
.73
.68
.52
.58
.64
.78
.80
-.24*
-.40**
.21*
-.15
-.23*
-.24*
no
— .(Jo
Note.
PAQ =
Persona) Attributes Questionnaire.
*p<.05.
**p<.0l.
SOCIAL DOMINANCE ORIENTATION753
Lest high levels of dominance orientation be confused with
agency, it is important to emphasize that there was no correla-
tion between SDO and the
PAQ
Agency scale in Samples
8
and
9 (see Table 7).
Tolerance
SDO was negatively related to the JPI Tolerance subscale (rs
= -.27, -.36, and -.27, all ps < .01 in Samples 1, 8, and 9,
respectively), despite the low reliabilities of
the
Tolerance sub-
scale,
which
has a
true-false response format (.53,5.59, and.
18,
respectively). When corrected for attenuation, the correlations
were -.40, -.52, and
-.71,
respectively (ps < .001), but these
may be considered "overcorrected" because of the low reliabil-
ity coefficients of the Tolerance scale. The average correlation
between SDO and Tolerance was —.30.
SDO as
an
Orientation:
Predicting
New Attitudes
According to social dominance theory, one of SDO's most
significant functions is orienting people toward or away from
new social attitudes. Therefore, we tested whether SDO pre-
dicted beliefs in new legitimizing myths and support for new
policies. Unfolding public events provided three opportunities
to test attitudes toward "new" policies, some of which had
rather novel legitimizations provided for them.
Iraq
War
War making is an extreme act of discrimination against an
out-group; enemy out-group members are routinely starved,
raped, killed, maimed, or made ill during war. Given that, we
expect that arguments given in support of war would serve as
legitimizing myths and thus should relate to SDO. We tested
this hypothesis looking at U.S. policy in the aftermath of the
Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Pundits seemed to feel the
White House
gave
several different reasons for
U.S.
policy at the
time,
so this was an opportune occasion to examine the opera-
tion of
new
legitimizing
myths.
National random-sample opin-
ion polls showed significant fluidity of attitudes about appropri-
ate policy up until the United States began bombing Iraq on
January 16, 1991. For example, the Los Angeles Times poll
showed that merely 38% of the public favored going to war
against Iraq on November 14, 1990, but that once U.S. troops
had begun bombing,
81 %
of the public on January 17-18,1991,
and on February 15-17, 1991, approved of the war. Even just
before and after the bombing began, there were dramatic shifts
in opinion; from January 8-12, 1991, 39% felt that economic
sanctions against Iraq should be used without resorting to war,
but on January 17-18, 1991, 72% of
the
public believed Presi-
dent Bush had given enough time for economic sanctions to
work. The outcome of the present study
was,
then, by no means
certain.
During the third week of January,
1991,
subjects in Sample 4
completed an Iraq
War
Attitudes
survey.
We
asked subjects how
willing they would be to make sacrifices for war (as opposed to
making sacrifices to prevent wars), whether they favored sus-
pending certain civil liberties and invoking
the
draft during
war,
and whether they favored military action against Iraq. We also
measured a new "legitimizing myth," namely, that Iraq should
be stopped because of the environmental damage that it was
inflicting on the
Gulf.
This idea was brought up because the
Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, had threatened to burn all of Ku-
wait's oil iflraq was bombed, and the recent 20th anniversary
of Earth Day had put environmental concerns on the public's
mind.
SDO was
positively and significantly correlated with each
of these attitude dimensions (see Table 8). Higher SDO levels
were associated with favoring military action against Iraq, fa-
voring suspension of
civil
liberties for the war, a willingness to
make sacrifices for the war effort, and a nationalistic view of
environmental problems associated with the war.
Clarence
Thomas'
Nomination
to
the
Supreme
Court
Political appointments can also be considered policies that
have
implications for intergroup relations, and
also
can
be
legit-
imized; therefore, their relationship to SDO is of theoretical
concern. The second new attitude that we assessed was support
for Clarence Thomas' appointment to the Supreme Court. This
appointment was related to a number of long-standing legiti-
mizing myths, including conservatism, meritocracy, racism,
and sexism, shown
above
to relate to
SDO.
Thomas, widely con-
sidered a Black conservative, was nominated to replace Thur-
good Marshall, a Black former civil rights lawyer, who an-
nounced his intention to retire. President Bush nominated
Thomas to the Supreme Court in the spring of 1991, and the
Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings on this nomination
in the spring and fall. Just before the vote to confirm Thomas
was scheduled, a news story broke that two of
Thomas'
former
subordinates had accused him of sexual harassment. One of
these persons, Anita Hill, was called to testify before the Judi-
ciary Committee, and the proceedings received much publicity
including gavel-to-gavel television and radio coverage. After an
entire weekend of testimony solely about the sexual harassment
charge, the Judiciary Committee voted to confirm Thomas on
October 15,
1991.6
We telephoned 149 of the 173 (86%) subjects in Sample 7
(who had completed the SDO scale in late September) on that
day or on the following 2 days and asked them four attitudinal
questions about Thomas and Hill. They responded to state-
ments on 7-point scales where
1
meant
strongly disagree
and 7
meant
strongly
agree.
The statements were (a) "after Thurgood
Marshall's retirement from the Supreme Court, it
was
good that
George Bush appointed a Black person to the Court," (b) "after
Thurgood Marshall's retirement from the Supreme Court, it
was good that George Bush appointed a conservative to the
Court," (c) "If I were in the Senate, I would have voted in favor
of Clarence Thomas' confirmation to the Supreme Court," and
(d) "Anita Hill was telling the truth in claiming that Clarence
Thomas sexually harassed her." We found that SDO signifi-
cantly predicted opposition to nominating a Black to the Su-
preme Court, support for nominating a conservative to the
court, support for Clarence Thomas, and disbelief of Anita
Hill's testimony (see correlations in Table 8).
5 By accident, only the
10
false-coded items in the scale were admin-
istered to Sample 1.
6 Because of the time delay between Washington,
DC,
and California,
Californians heard this
news as
they awoke.
754PRATTO, SIDANIUS, STALLWORTH, AND MALLE
Table 8
Coefficient Alphas
and
Correlations
of
Social Dominance Orientation With
New Attitudes
Scale or item
Favors military action by U.S.
Willing to make sacrifices for war
Favors suspending liberties for war
Concerned about environment in war
Favors appointing a Black person
Favors appointing a conservative
Favored Clarence Thomas' confirmation
Believed Anita Hill's testimony
Specific deterrence
Favored executing Harris
Painful executions
Belief in retribution
No.
of
items
Sample 4
5
4
4
4
Sample 7
Sample 10
3
2
8
5
Coefficient
a
.78
.56
.51
.57
.70
.96
.86
.74
Correlation with
social dominance
orientation
.48**
.45**
.45**
.28**
-.20*
.32***
.22**
-.26***
.35**
.36**
.42**
.51**
"p<.05.
**p<.01.
"/x.001.
Death Penalty
Elsewhere, we have argued that SDO should also be related
to support of legal institutions that are discriminatory or in-
egalitarian in their effects (Sidanius, 1993; Sidanius, Liu,
Pratto,
&
Shaw, 1994). Mitchell (1993) showed that SDO is re-
lated to ideologies that legitimize the use of the death penalty,
such as the belief in legal retribution or the belief that the death
penalty has a deterrent effect on crime. We assessed SDO in
March, 1992, in Sample 10; 2 weeks later, we administered an
extensive survey about death penalty ideologies and about the
execution of Robert Alton Harris, who was executed by the
state of California the day before the subjects were surveyed.
Belief that executions have a specific deterrent effect, support
for Harris' execution, support of painful executions, and belief
in retribution were positively correlated with SDO (see
Table 8).
Summary
To
provide a summary of the correlations with
SDO, we
used
Fisher's
z-to-r
formula to average the correlations across sam-
ples
(e.g.,
Rosenthal, 1986, p. 27).
To
test the average statistical
significance of the correlation coefficients, we computed stan-
dard normal (Z) scores corresponding to each correlation co-
efficient using the large-sample formula Z= rX
(N)*.
The total
of the Z
scores
across samples divided by the square root of the
number of samples can be compared with the standard normal
distribution to test the null hypothesis that the pattern of corre-
lations obtained over samples occurred because of chance asso-
ciations between SDO and the variable in question.7
On average, subject sex correlated .26 with SDO (Z =
9.92,
p
<
.001).
Thus, the data
were
consistent with our prediction that
men will be higher on SDO than women.
In terms of discriminant validity, over
five
samples, the aver-
age correlation between SDO and CPI Dominance was .03 and
the average correlation between SDO and JPRF Dominance
was
—.01.
Over nine samples, the average correlation between
SDO and RSE
was -.08.
Averaged over four
samples,
SDO cor-
related —.03 with Extraversion and .10 with Neuroticism.
Clearly SDO is independent of all of these constructs. As ex-
pected, SDO had moderate negative correlations with concern
for others, communality, tolerance, and altruism (see average
correlations in Table 9). The averaged correlations were clearly
different from zero, but they were not high enough that they
indicate redundancy between these measures and SDO either,
given that they ranged from —.28 for altruism to —.46 for con-
cern for others.
SDO strongly and consistently related to belief in a number
of hierarchy-legitimizing myths, most strongly to anti-Black
racism and nationalism. SDO also was strongly negatively re-
lated to a hierarchy-attenuating ideology, noblesse oblige. SDO
correlated consistently positively with beliefs in sexism, equal
opportunities, patriotism, cultural elitism, conservatism, and a
Just World. The Protestant Work Ethic was the only legitimiz-
ing ideology that
we
did not find to relate to SDO reliably over
samples (see Table 9).
Finally, SDO showed strong consistent correlations with
scales assessing opposition to social programs, racial policies,
and women's rights, and with support for military programs.
SDO was
also
consistently correlated with opposition to
gay
and
lesbian rights, environmental programs, and miscegeny and
was consistently correlated with support for U.S. chauvinism,
law-and-order
policies,
and Republican party identification (see
Table 9). SDO also predicted attitudes toward new political
7
A
Z statistic with smaller variance could also have been computed
by using the sample variance to weight the Z from each sample, which
would cause all
the
p values given below to be smaller.
SOCIAL DOMINANCE ORIENTATION755
Table 9
Average Correlations and Significance Tests Across
Samples
Between Social Dominance Orientation
and Personality
Variables,
Ideologies,
and Policy Attitudes
MeasureMeanr
Personality variables
Concern for others
Communality
Tolerance
Altruism
Anti-Black racism
Noblesse oblige
Nationalism
Sexism
Equal opportunities
Patriotism
Cultural elitism
-.46
-.33
-.30
-.28
Ideologies
.55
-.57
.54
.47
.46
.45
.40
Political-economic conservatism .38
Just World
Protestant Work Ethic
Social programs
Racial policy
Women's rights
Military programs
Gay
&
lesbian rights
Environmental program!
Chauvinism
Miscegeny
.27
.11
Policy attitudes
-.47
-.44
-.40
.44
-.37
s -.38
.34
-.25
Republican party preference .28
Law and order.28
n
6
2
3
2
6
10
8
12
3
3
3
8
2
3
6
6
6
5
5
3
3
6
6
6
Z
-8.92
-4.84
-5.31
-3.98
15.05
20.30
15.96
14.91
7.51
6.84
6.94
10.26
3.58
1.25
-12.74
-11.74
-11.52
-10.12
-8.79
-6.16
5.34
-7.36
7.08
6.38
Note. All Zs were significant at p < .0001 except for Just World
(j>
=
.0002) and Protestant Work Ethic
{p
=
.
10).
The mean r
was
computed
using Fisher's
z;
n
denotes number of samples.
events, including the 1991 war against Iraq, Clarence Thomas
as
a Supreme Court Justice, and a state execution. Those aspir-
ing to hierarchy-enhancing careers had higher SDO
scores
than
those aspiring to hierarchy-attenuating careers. Thus, we have
provided substantial evidence that SDO (a) can be measured
reliably, (b) is stable over time, (c) is higher among men than
among women, (d) is higher among those who support hierar-
chy-enhancing
ideologies
and
is lower among those who
support
hierarchy-attenuating
ideologies,
(e) is higher among those who
support hierarchy-enhancing policies and lower among those
who support hierarchy-attenuating
policies,
(f)
is
higher among
those who choose hierarchy-enhancing social roles and lower
among those who
choose hierarchy-attenuating
social
roles,
and
(g)
serves to orient new social and political attitudes.
DISCUSSION
On the basis of
social
dominance theory, we postulated that
there
is
an important individual difference in general preference
for group domination, which
we
call
social dominance
orienta-
tion.
As its definition and name implies, SDO may best be con-
sidered a general social-attitudinal orientation or implicit value
relevant to intergroup relations. Some of our data inform us
that there may be a significant relationship between one's ori-
entation toward other persons in general and one's orientation
toward other groups. People who are highly empathic (specifi-
cally, concerned with others' well-being) and to a lesser extent,
those who
feel interdependent
or
communal
with
others,
tend to
prefer egalitarian relationships among
groups.
Given that SDO
predisposes people to believe in legitimizing myths and dis-
criminatory policies, this would seem to make them less likely
to believe in ideologies that relegate certain persons to "infe-
rior" categories and to policies that disadvantage certain groups
systematically. The recent work being done on interdependence
(e.g., Depret & Fiske, 1993; Markus & Kitayama, 1991) may
end up being quite informative about how to mitigate in-
tergroup discrimination.
We might note that we came to postulate the existence of
SDO not by thinking about "personality" in the traditional, in-
dividualistic
sense,
but by thinking about how group-based hu-
man social life is and the considerable data generated by re-
searchers of political attitudes. We consider individual differ-
ences on SDO to be important not for showing the uniqueness
of each person, nor for enabling us to classify persons into tax-
onomies. Rather, our
finding
of individual variation on SDO is
central to our postulation of a dynamic model of human op-
pression in which different kinds of people (e.g., with high or
low SDO) play different roles (e.g., enhance or attenuate in-
equality) and have different effects on each other (e.g., in how
much they discriminate in the allocation of resources).
Despite significant variations in the degree of oppression
from one society to another, it seems to us that many societies
share the basic social-psychological elements that contribute to
inequality: socially shared myths that define "superior group"
and "inferior
group"
and that attempt to justify this distinction
and the policies that "should" follow from it. As such, we pos-
tulate that individual variation on SDO could be reliably mea-
sured in many other societies and would show the same pattern
of relationships to ideologies, policy attitudes, and hierarchy
role
as
those shown
here.
Some of our
previous
research showed
that group-dominance orientation significantly correlated with
support for military programs, capitalism (Sidanius & Pratto,
1993b), racism, and sexism (Sidanius, Devereux, & Pratto,
1992;
Sidanius
&
Pratto, 1993a) in Sweden, a much more egal-
itarian country than the United States, and showed the same
gender difference in Australia, Sweden, Russia, and the United
States (see Sidanius, Pratto, &
Brief,
1993). In the future, we
hope to examine whether SDO relates to rather different kinds
of legitimizing myths that exist in very different cultural
contexts, such as anti-Semitism in Poland, xenophobia in Ja-
pan, or fatalism in China.
Another kind of research endeavor that could further show
the dynamic link between SDO and societal oppression would
use SDO to predict attitudes toward new ideologies or policies.
We
expect that even when societies undergo substantial change,
as with mass migration, technological innovation, or dramatic
changes in borders or political leadership, such changes will be
accepted only to the extent that they are satisfactorily legiti-
mized and meet
the
public's
level
of desire for
social
dominance.
Hence, the operation of
SDO
in the invention of
new
legitimi-
zations and processes that assort persons into hierarchy roles
may inform studies of political and social change.
756PRATTO, SIDANIUS, STALLWORTH, AND MALLE
SDO and Social Class
Several political psychologists and sociologists have postu-
lated or investigated the relationship between social class and
conservatism, racism, or authoritarianism, with Lipset (1960)
postulating that the working class is more authoritarian, and
Stacey and Green (1968, 1971) and many others presenting ev-
idence to
the
contrary.
We have
made no predictions concerning
whether SDO should be correlated with social class in either
direction; instead we suspect that SDO's relationship to these
variables may vary as a function of hierarchy-group member-
ship,
which in some societies would be designated by class and
in others by racial group, caste, and so forth.
We
tested for cor-
relations between SDO and class in the present
samples,
and we
found no statistically significant relationships between SDO
and respondents' social class or family income category. Al-
though there was substantial heterogeneity in these samples on
these variables for the respondents' families of
origin,
the edu-
cation level in these samples is clearly restricted. In contrast, in
a random survey of the Los Angeles area, Sidanius et al. (in
press) found statistically significant and monotonic decreases in
scores from an abbreviated SDO scale with increasing family
income level and increasing respondent's education level. With
the data
now
in hand,
we
cannot
say
whether social
classes
differ
on SDO.
Authoritarianism Reconsidered
In the sample in which we assessed SDO and authoritarian-
ism,
the correlations between
two
measures of authoritarianism
and SDO were weak. However, because SDO predicts many of
the social attitudes conceptually associated with authoritarian-
ism (e.g., ethnocentrism, punitiveness, and conservatism), a
more thorough comparison of these constructs
is
warranted. To
begin with, there is little theoretical consensus on the construct
of authoritarianism. The original and some contemporary re-
searchers have described authoritarianism as a multifaceted
construct; for example, Heaven (1985) suggested that authori-
tarianism
is
part achievement motivation, part dominance, part
conventionalism, part militarism, part punitiveness, and part
ethnocentrism. Although we think that the tendency for these
constructs to covary is extremely important, calling this com-
pendium authoritarianism is conceptually unsatisfying. It is
neither a clear definition of a unitary construct nor a theory of
why the separate constructs covary. In our view, punitiveness,
ethnocentrism, conservatism, and sometimes conventionalism
can function as legitimizing
myths.
Because legitimizing myths
tend to be correlated with SDO, they are often spuriously cor-
related with one another. Thus, it is entirely possible that SDO
underlies
these
correlations.
By
separately defining the presum-
ably causative value orientation (SDO) and ideological stances
(legitimizing myths and policy attitudes) and using distinct
measures of the constructs, we have avoided the conceptual
problem of describing an individual tendency as a set of corre-
lations (see also Duckitt, 1989).
Other definitions of
authoritarianism
have avoided the com-
pendium problem by radically restricting the meaning of the
term. Ray (1976) postulated that part of authoritarianism is
leadership desire or directiveness. That SDO did not signifi-
cantly correlate with two robust measures of interpersonal
dominance or with CPI Capacity for Status or
PAQ
Agency sug-
gests that SDO cannot be interpreted as leadership desire. On
this dimension, SDO and authoritarianism are distinct.
There is a new view of authoritarianism that we see as com-
plementary to SDO, namely, Duckitt's (1989) description of
authoritarianism as the desire for individuals to submit to au-
thority figures within the in-group. The three classical dimen-
sions of authoritarianism that covary empirically—submitting
to in-group conventions, submitting to in-group authorities,
and desiring to punish members
who do
not submit to in-group
norms and authorities (Altemeyer, 1981)—all concern the rela-
tion of the individual to the group. Thus, in Duckitt's view, au-
thoritarianism is primarily an intragroup phenomenon con-
cerning individuals' or groups' attitudes about what the rela-
tionship between individuals and their in-groups should
be.
By
comparison, SDO concerns individuals' attitudes about what
kind of relationship should exist between in-groups and out-
groups, which
is
an intergroup phenomenon.
SDO Versus Political-Economic Conservatism
The other well-known individual predictor of
social
and po-
litical attitudes is political-economic conservatism. The power
of political-economic conservatism to predict social and politi-
cal attitudes and candidate preference
is
far
too
robust to refute.
In fact, we postulate that political-economic conservatism is a
prototypic legitimizing myth: an ideology that separates people
into groups and suggests that some groups should be accorded
more positive social value (e.g., tax breaks, funds for schools,
and access to health care), whereas other groups should be allo-
cated more negative social value
(e.g.,
prison terms, censorship,
and layoffs).
Our analysis of conservatism as a legitimizing myth can ex-
plain why, in many previous studies, conservatism was corre-
lated with racism (e.g., Dator, 1969; Levinson, 1950; Sidanius
&Ekehammar,
1979;
Stone
&Russ,
1976).
We believe
political-
economic conservatism and racism are spuriously correlated
and that both are "driven" by SDO. In fact, recent studies have
shown that there was no significant residual correlation be-
tween political-economic conservatism and racism once SDO
was controlled (see Sidanius & Pratto, 1993a, 1993b; Sidanius
etal., 1992).
We believe SDO has significant power to predict policy atti-
tudes over and above political-economic conservatism. In the
present study, virtually all partial correlations between policy
attitudes and
SDO,
controlling for political-economic conserva-
tism, were reliable. Part of
the
advantage SDO may have over
political-economic conservatism is that SDO is an attitudinal
orientation rather than a policy doctrine and therefore does not
require expertise
or
deliberate application. That
is,
to formulate
a policy attitude consistent with one's political ideology, one
must have a thorough understanding of that ideology and think
through or know how it "should" apply to the acceptance of
new policy initiatives. In contrast, one's SDO level will provide
a gut reaction to new policy initiatives that imply changes in
intergroup relations, essentially "I like it" or "I don't like it." In
other words, we expect SDO to be a better predictor of
group-
relevant social and political attitudes than political-economic
conservatism among nonideologues, whenever thoughtful ideo-
logical reasoning
is
not engaged, and for new social attitudes.
SOCIAL DOMINANCE ORIENTATION757
The present results can be compared with Wilson's (e.g.,
1973)
extensive work on conservatism as an attitudinal orienta-
tion, rather than
as an
ideology.
Wilson found that conservatism
was a convenient label for describing the dimension underlying
a similar constellation of ideological beliefs and policy attitudes
to those we have shown to relate to SDO: racism, nationalism,
ethnocentrism, militarism, law and order, and proestablish-
ment
politics.
Conceptually, our definition of
SDO
differs from
Wilson's conservatism in that
we
have not included fundamen-
talist religiosity, antihedonism, or strict morality as part of
SDO.
Our supposition
is
that
those
beliefs are particularly West-
ern legitimizing myths that happen to be held by people who
make distinctions between superior and inferior or deserving
and undeserving people in a Calvinist
vein,
but that they would
not necessarily be related to SDO in all cultural contexts. Like-
wise,
it seems that forms of ethnic prejudice other than anti-
Black racism would be more powerfully related to SDO in cer-
tain other cultural
contexts.
The comparison between SDO and
attitudinal conservatism highlights that our measure of SDO is
relatively independent of particular cultural beliefs or policies.
That is, our items do not specify which groups of people are
referred to (with the exception of
nations)
because we felt that
a general orientation toward groups could predict attitudes to-
ward specific groups or specific group-relevant policies.
We modified our SDO scale so that it related to our concep-
tual definition more strongly by making each item refer only to
the generic concept
group.
We compared the 14-item scale in
Appendix A with this new scale in a sample of 199 Stanford
students.
We
administered the 14-item SDO scale (a =
.88)
and
a brief policy attitude survey with a
1 (very negative)
to 7 (very
positive)
response format. Four
weeks
later,
we
administered the
balanced 16-item SDO scale shown in Appendix C (a = .91).
The two scales correlated .75 with one another
(p
< .01), com-
parable with the cross-time reliability correlation of the 14-item
SDO scale. Both SDO scales correlated significantly with the
policy attitudes in the directions expected and to very similar
degrees. The 14- and 16-item SDO scales correlated, respec-
tively,
with attitudes toward affirmative action (rs = -.34, -.44),
civil rights
(-.51,
-.59), gay rights (-.36, -.32), the military
(.40, .39), decreased immigration (.37, .41), equal pay for
women (-.38, -.29), and the death penalty (.40, .34), all
p%
<
.01.
We
also tested an abbreviated scale consisting of Items 1,3,
4,
7, 10, 12,
13,
and 14 in Appendix C (a = .86), which corre-
lated in nearly the same magnitudes with the policy items
above.
We
administered the 16-item SDO scale to another sam-
ple
of
245
Stanford
students along with
the Rombough and Ven-
timiglia (1981) sexism
scale.
In this second
sample,
the 16-item
scale was internally reliable (a = .91) and correlated .51 (p <
.01) with the sexism scale and .26 with subject sex (p < .01).
The abbreviated (8-item) version of this scale
was
internally re-
liable (a
=
.86) and correlated .47 with sexism
(p < .01)
and .26
with subject sex (p < .01). The 16-item scale (and its
8-item
abbreviated form) has slightly more face validity than the 14-
item SDO
scale,
and it seems to have similar properties.
SDO and the Dynamics of Oppression
Our present focus on SDO
is
not meant to imply that all phe-
nomena related to prejudice and group conflict can be solely
understood or reduced to individual differences. In fact, social
dominance theory implies that SDO and other individual vari-
ables must be considered within their social context, because
individual variables and social-structural variables have a dy-
namic relationship.
For example, our data suggest that empathy with other per-
sons may be a significant attenuator of
SDO.
However, concern
for others (particularly out-group members) is not just a fixed
individual propensity, but instead seems likely to be influenced
by social structures and policies. Social structures and policies
that prevent the formation of
close
relationships and empathy
between high- and low-status persons (e.g., economically or le-
gally enforced segregation, language barriers, publishing bi-
ases),
would seem to discourage empathy .between groups and
the formation of
a
common identity. These factors, along with
the desire for group-based status and the presumption of status
or
privilege,
may
also give rise
to
SDO.
An important enterprise
for future research
is
to investigate the social contextual factors
that contribute to SDO and to inequality in general.
As a causal variable, we believe SDO is pertinent to the dy-
namics of group conflict and institutional discrimination.
In the remainder of our discussion, we focus on these
ramifications.
SDO and Group Discrimination
Social dominance theory
states
that
SDO
should predict
prej-
udice and discrimination against out-groups; social identity
theory (e.g., Tajfel & Turner, 1986) implies that emotional
affiliation or identification with one's in-group should do the
same. Social identity theory posits out-group denigration as a
device for maintaining positive social identity; social domi-
nance theory posits it as a device to maintain superior group
status.
In a minimal groups experiment, SDO and in-group
identification each predicted degree of out-group discrimina-
tion (Sidanius, Pratto,
&
Mitchell, 1994). However, these effects
were not independent—those who were high on SDO and on
in-group identification were even more discriminatory against
a minimal out-group. Crocker and Luhtanen (1990) found a
parallel interaction in another
experiment:
People who strongly
affiliated with their in-groups and whose group status was
threatened especially denigrated out-groups. We consider their
results to be consistent with both theories in that both group
identification and group status needs motivated greater dis-
crimination. Levin and
Sidanius (1993)
found
a
similar interac-
tion between SDO and group status; high-SDO subjects who
belonged to artificially high-status groups especially denigrated
out-group members. High group status and group-status threat
may work similarly in these studies because high-status groups,
having the most status to lose, may experience the most threat
when confronted by possible loss of
status.
Understanding the
circumstances under which people have high levels of in-group
identification, high group status, and high SDO, then, appears
to
be
important for understanding
when
discrimination
is
likely
to be especially severe. Some of our other research has ad-
dressed the question of when these three predictors of discrimi-
nation will co-occur.
Because SDO
is the desire
for
one's
group to dominate others,
SDO should have a differential relationship to in-group identi-
fication depending
on
the group's
level
of social
status.
Sidanius,
Pratto, and Rabinowitz (1994) documented that SDO and in-
758PRATTO, SIDANIUS, STALLWORTH, AND MALLE
group identification were more positively correlated in higher
status than in lower status groups. Using various ethnic identi-
fication measures, we showed that the covariance between eth-
nic identification and SDO was statistically significant and pos-
itive within a high-status group
(i.e.,
Euro-Americans), whereas
this relationship
was
statistically significant and negative within
a low-status group (Hispanics and African-Americans).
These experimental and correlational findings suggest that
high-status groups will be the most discriminatory against out-
groups because their members are most likely to have both high
SDO levels and high levels of in-group identification. It is im-
portant to remember that these two variables, in experimental
studies, interact to ca.use extremely severe out-group discrimi-
nation. In total, these results support social dominance theory's
contention that higher status groups will tend to be more in-
group serving than lower status groups. That is, higher status
groups are more discriminatory against out-groups than lower
status
groups,
and the aggregate affect of this asymmetry is not
equal groups in conflict, but the maintenance of hierarchical
group relations (see Sidanius
&
Pratto, 1993a).
SDO and Social Role
By performing organizational roles, individuals greatly ex-
pand their capacity for group discrimination because collective
institutions can often allocate resources or costs on a far larger
scale than individuals can. Therefore, institutional discrimina-
tion is one of the major contributors to the creation and main-
tenance of social inequalities and social hierarchy (e.g., Feagin
& Feagin, 1978). The individual organizational member, how-
ever, is not insignificant. An organization's members help an
institution perform its hierarchy role by endorsing legitimizing
myths and adapting their SDO
levels
to the institution's norms.
Several processes may contribute to a match between individu-
als and institutions. There is mounting evidence that people
seek roles in an institution compatible with their SDO levels
and ideological beliefs. The present research showed two repli-
cations of this relationship between SDO and aspired hierarchy
role.
A previous study showed the same relationship between
aspired hierarchy role and belief in legitimizing myths (Sida-
nius,
Pratto, Martin,
&
Stallworth, 1991). In another
study,
po-
lice recruits were found to have significantly higher SDO levels
and related attitudes than public defenders (Sidanius, Liu,
Pratto,
&
Shaw,
1994). Self-selection into roles based on hierar-
chy-relevant ideologies may be a contributing factor to institu-
tional discrimination.
An institution also reinforces and contributes to the match
between individuals' attitudes and institutional hierarchy role.
For example, White police academy recruits became increas-
ingly more negative toward Blacks during their first 18 months
as police (Teahan, 1975). Also, the initial racial attitudes of in-
tended hierarchy enhancers resisted the usual liberalizing in-
fluence of college the longer they stayed in college (Sidanius,
Pratto, Martin, & Stallworth, 1991). Any number of socializa-
tion or social influence processes may have caused such effects.
Hierarchy-enhancing behaviors or attitudes may even be re-
warded by hierarchy-enhancing institutions. One study of cam-
pus police officers showed that those who were most successful
in their
careers,
as evidenced by several measures such as supe-
rior's evaluations and salary increases, tended to score higher
on measures of racism and ethnocentrism (Leitner
&
Sedlacek,
1976).
More recently, in a study of
the
Los Angeles Police De-
partment, the Christopher Commission (1991) found that those
police officers with the highest number of civilian complaints
for brutality and excessive force received unusually positive per-
formance evaluations from their supervising officers. In addi-
tion, these supervisor evaluations "were uniformly optimistic
about the officers' progress and prospects on the force" (Chris-
topher etal.,
1991,
p. 41).
Apparently, individuals and institutions reinforce each oth-
er's hierarchy-enhancing tendencies, which we believe makes
their discriminatory behaviors powerful and difficult to change.
More research on the detailed processes by which individuals
and institutions reinforce one another's prejudices may be use-
ful to those seeking to reduce institutional discrimination.
To summarize, the present research indicates that SDO, the
desire for group dominance, is a significant predictor of
social
and political attitudes pertaining to intergroup relations and
also of hierarchy roles. Social dominance theory suggests that
the confluence of this individual-difference variable and a num-
ber of social factors including lack of common identity, high in-
group status, and social role, contributes to the oppression of
social groups.
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Appendix A
Items on the Social Dominance Orientation Scale
1.
Some groups of people are simply not the equals of others.
2.
Some people are just more worthy than others.
3.
This country would be better off if we cared less about how equal
all people were.
4.
Some people are just more deserving than others.
5.
It
is
not a problem if
some people have
more of
a
chance in life than
others.
6. Some people are just inferior to others.
7.
To get
ahead in life, it
is
sometimes necessary to step on others.
8. Increased economic equality.
9. Increased social equality.
10.
Equality.
11.
If people were treated more equally
we
would have fewer problems
in this country.
12.
In an ideal world, all nations would be equal.
13.
We should try to treat one another as equals as much as possible.
(All humans should be treated equally.)
14.
It
is
important that
we
treat other countries
as
equals.
All items were measured on a
very negative
(1) to
very positive
(7)
scale. Items 8-14 were reverse-coded. The version of Item
13
in paren-
theses
was
used in Samples 5-12. The order of items differed from above
and across samples.
SOCIAL DOMINANCE ORIENTATION
Appendix B
Items Used on Scales
761
Samples
2,
3b, 4, 5,6, 8, 9: Items Comprising the Original
Legitimizing Myths Scales
Anti-Black
Racism Scale
A Black president."
Racial integration."
White superiority.
Blacks are inherently inferior.
Civil rights activists."
Anti-Arab
Racism Scale
Most of the terrorists in the world today are Arabs.
Historically, Arabs have made important contributions to world
culture."
Iraqis have little appreciation for democratic values.
People of the Muslim religion tend to be fanatical.
Muslims value peace and love."
Cultural Elitism
Scale
The poor cannot appreciate
fine
art and music.
No amount of education can make up for the wrong breeding.
Qualifications and not personality should determine whether a can-
didate
gets
votes.
The ideal world
is
run by those who are most capable.
Western civilization has brought more progress than all other cultural
traditions.
Someone who treats other people poorly but is very good at
his
job
should be promoted.
Great art is not meant for the common folk.
Equal Opportunity Scale
In America, every person has an equal chance to rise up and prosper.
Lower wages for women and ethnic minorities simply reflect lower
skill and education levels.
America
is the
"land of opportunity."
Salaries are usually reflective of education, which in turn is reflective
of intelligence and ambition.
Affirmative Action prevents the more-qualified from attaining
positions.
Potential to do
well
should not be sufficient for admission to any pro-
gram. Only those with proven competence in that field should be
allowed.
Patriotism Scale
Flag burning should be illegal.
In American public schools, every day should begin with the
Pledge
of Allegiance.
I supported the United States' actions in Iraq.
Patriotism
is
the most important qualification for a politician.
I believe in mandatory military service by all citizens of
the
United
States in the armed forces.
It was disloyal for people to question the President during the Iraq
war.
With few exceptions, the American government does a good and
honest
job.
Other countries should be happy to have American intervention and
influence.
I am proud to be an American.
Congressman who voted against the war should be removed from
office.
The United States suffers when patriotism wanes.
Patriots are the ones
who
have made this country great.
Nationalism
Scale
In view of America's moral and material superiority, it is only right
that
we
should
have
the biggest say in deciding United Nations policy.
This country must continue to lead the "Free World."
We
should do anything necessary to increase the power of our coun-
try, even if it means war.
Sometimes it
is
necessary for our country
to make
war
on
other coun-
tries for their own good.
The important thing for the U.S. foreign aid program is to see to it
that the
U.S.
gains a political advantage.
Generally, the more influence America has on other nations, the bet-
ter ofF they are.
Noblesse Oblige Scale—Form
A
As a
country's wealth
increases,
more of
its
resources should be chan-
neled to the poor.
The more money one makes, the greater proportion of that money
should be paid in taxes.
Those with more resources
have
more obligations toward their fellow
human beings.
Giving to others usually benefits the
givers as
well.
The man with
two
coats in
his
closet should
give
one
away.
Extra food on the table belongs to those
who
are hungry.
Noblesse Oblige Scale—Form
B
As a
country's wealth increases, more of
its
resources should be chan-
neled to the poor.
Giving
to
others usually benefits the
givers as
well.
Those with more resources
have
more obligations toward their fellow
human beings.
It is beneficial to all to spend money on the public sector such as
education, housing, and health care.
Those who
are
well
off can't
be
expected to
take care
of everyone
else."
Social charities just create dependency."
Samples
2,
3b, 5,6, 8, 9: Items on the Policy Scales
Law and
Order Policies
Death penalty for drug kingpins.
Death penalty.
Prisoner's rights.*-"0
Longer prison sentences.11
Gay Rights
Gay or lesbian marriage.
Gay and lesbian rights.
(Appendixes continue on next page)
762PRATTO, SIDANIUS, STALLWORTH,
AND
MALLE
Women's
Rights
Guaranteed job security after maternity leave.
Stiffer penalties
for
wife beating.0
Equal pay for women.
More women judges.
Social Programs
Government sponsored health care.
Better support for
the
homeless.
More support
for
early education.04
Free school lunches.c'd
Low income housing.04
Arresting the homeless."-0
Guaranteed jobs for
all.
Reduced benefits for
the
unemployed.8
Greater aid to poor kids.
Increased taxation of the rich.
Racial Policy
Racial quotas.
Affirmative action.
School busing.0
Civil rights.
Helping minorities get
a
better education.
Government helping minorities
get
better housing.
Government
has no
business helping any particular ethnic group
in
the job market."
Military Programs
Decreased defense spending."
Strategic Defense Initiative.
B-2 (Stealth) bomber.
Going to war.e
Environmental Policies
Drilling
for
oil off the California coast."
Government-mandated recycling programs.
Taxing
environmental polluters to pay
for
superfund clean ups.
More government involvement on clean air and water.
Drilling for
oil
under
the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."
Chauvinism
Scale
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
English
as
the official language.
Decreased immigration to the U.S.
National security.
American
way
of
life.
No welfare
for
new immigrants.
America first.
America
as
world's policeman.
Sample 4: Iraq War Scales (January,
1991)
Favors
Military
Action
by
U.S.
The
U.S.
really had no choice but to use military force against Iraq.
The
U.S.
should not be using military force against Iraq."
Saddam Hussein must be stopped by
any
means necessary—includ-
ing nuclear weapons.
The U.N. coalition should
not
participate in any military action that
will kill civilians no matter how few."
The
U.N.
coalition should
cease
bombing Iraq and offer
to
negotiate."
Willing to
Make Sacrifices for
War
It would
be
worth
our
country's having
a
lower standard of living
to
maintain world peace."
I
would
be
willing to
pay
double
the
current
prices
of gasoline
to
avoid
similar conflicts over oil
in
the future."
I
am
willing
to
risk my life
to
help with
the
war effort
in the
Persian
Gulf.
I'd be willing to pay higher taxes to
finance
the war in the
Gulf.
Favors Suspending
Liberties for
War
President Bush should be given whatever power he needs
to
conduct
war.
Sometimes political leaders must
be
unencumbered
by
legislatures so
that they can govern effectively.
It
is
appropriate to reinstitute the military draft
to
help with the con-
flict with Iraq.
Military censorship of the press
is
appropriate
in
times of war.
Concerned About
Environment
in War
Iraq should
be
held entirely responsible
for
cleaning
up
the
oil
spills
in the Persian
Gulf.
The
U.S.
is
partly to blame
for
the environmental damage to the Per-
sian Gulf region."
Potential environmental damage should have been considered
in the
decision to
go
to war."
Sample 8: Post-War Pro-Iraq War Items (February,
1992)
The U.S.
had no
choice
but to
begin bombing Iraq
on
January
16,
1991.
The
U.S.
should have tried political
and
economic pressure
for a
longer time before bombing Iraq."
Bombing the cities of Iraq was justified.
The President went to war
to
increase his popularity."
The
U.S.
could have prevented more civilian casualties in Iraq."
The Gulf
War
wasn't worth the human cost."
The U.N. Coalition really taught Hussein a lesson.
We
should spend
as
much money and effort
on
solving domestic
prob-
lems
as we
did on the Iraq war."
Once there
was
250,000
U.S.
troops
in the
Persian Gulf region,
it
would have been embarrassing not
to
"use" them
in
war.
President Bush should
not
have
set a
date
for
Iraqi withdrawal from
Kuwait."
Strict control of the press coverage of the Iraq war
was
necessary.
If we understood
the
Iraqis better, we might have been able
to
avoid
the
war."
In
all, the
press reports
we
received about
the war
were fair
and
impartial.
The military response
to
Iraq's invasion of Kuwait will probably dis-
courage others from invading countries.
The Gulf
War
wasn't worth the environmental cost."
Wars
of Dominance
To
insure our influence is felt in that nation.
To
protect our economic interests.
To
protect our citizens being held hostage.
For
U.S.
national security purposes.
SOCIAL DOMINANCE ORIENTATION763
To
restore a freely elected government which had been overthrown by
a military coup.
To
keep an enemy from acquiring chemical or nuclear weapons.
If
we
started disarming, it would only lead to more war.
A
U.S.
Military presence helps maintain peace.
Humanitarian
Wars
To
ensure that human rights
were
respected in that country.
To
ensure that emergency food supplies could reach civilians.
To
protect unarmed civilians from battles.
Ultimatums usually lead to
war,
rather than diplomatic solutions.
By
selling arms to other
countries,
we
increase the likelihood of war.
War should
always
be considered a last resort.
Sample
10:
Items on Death Penalty Survey
Favored Executing
Harris
I felt that Robert Alton Harris' death sentence should
have
been com-
muted to life in prison without possibility of parole.3
I felt that Robert Alton Harris should
have
been executed.
Believes
in
Specific Deterrence
If not executed, murderers
will
commit more crimes in the future.
We
don't need the death penalty to insure that a murderer never re-
peats
his
crime."
If not executed, a murderer
will
be on the street in a few years.
Support for
Painful Executions
Murderers should suffer when they are executed.
I might support
the
use of burning
alive
to execute
those who
commit
the most heinous crimes.
If people have to be executed, they should be executed in the most
painless
way
possible."
The electric chair should be quick and painless."
Executions should be
as
bloodless
as
possible."
The crime problem has gotten so bad that maybe we should bring
back public hangings.
We should use more graphic forms of executions (such as a firing
squad).
When using the electric chair for executions, the voltage should be
applied slowly so the criminal suffers before dying.
Belief in
Retribution
Society does not have the right to get revenge for murder."
For a terrible crime, there should be a terrible punishment.
Even the worst criminal should be considered for mercy."
Those
who
hurt others deserve to be hurt in return.
Punishment should
fit
the crime.
Note. Response scale for
all
items
was strongly
disagree (1) to
strongly
agree
(1)
except for the nationalism, anti-Black racism, and chauvinism
items,
which were
very negative (1)
to very positive
(7).
The instructions
for the Wars scales were to indicate how much the subject agreed or
disagreed that his or her country would be justified in using military
force (for the items beginning with "to" or "for") or agreement or dis-
agreement with support for military use of force in general (for items
that are complete sentences).
" Item was reverse-coded. b Item was omitted in Sample 6. c Item
was omitted in Sample 8. d Item was omitted in Sample 9.
*
Item
was
omitted in Sample 2.
Appendix C
Items on the 16-Item Social Dominance Orientation Scale
1.
Some groups of people are simply inferior
to
other groups.
2.
In getting what you want, it is sometimes necessary to use force
against other groups.
3.
It's OK if
some
groups have more of a chance in life than others.
4.
To get ahead in life, it is sometimes necessary to step on other
groups.
5.
If certain groups stayed in their place, we would have fewer
problems.
6. It's probably a good thing that certain groups are at the top and
other groups are at the bottom.
7.
Inferior groups should stay in their place.
8. Sometimes other groups must be kept in their place.
9. It would
be
good if groups could be equal.
10.
Group equality should be our ideal.
11.
All groups should be given an equal chance in life.
12.
We should do what we can to equalize conditions for different
groups.
13.
Increased social equality.
14.
We
would have fewer problems if
we
treated people more equally.
15.
We
should strive to make incomes
as
equal
as
possible.
16.
No one group should dominate in society.
Items 9-16 should be reverse-coded. The response scale was
very
nega-
tive (1)
to very
positive
(7).
Received July
8,
1993
Revision received May 10, 1994
Accepted May
11,
1994 •
