Abstract

Social dominance orientation/theory (SDO) explains the extent to which individuals accept or reject ideologies that legitimize hierarchies and discrimination or equality and social justice. Numerous studies have shown that SDO predicts a wide range of political, ideological, and intergroup phenomena, particularly in relation to negativity towards minorities and outgroups. The aims of the present study were to apply the SDO scale in a Mexican context, examine differences in SDO according to sex, age group, and social class, and investigate whether an orientation towards social dominance would be detectable not only on an abstract level but a concrete level, that of approving inter-class discrimination. We predicted that (1)SDO would be higher in men than women, older than younger participants, and upper rather than lower social classes, (2)that approval of discrimination would be determined by SDO and social class, and (3) that SDO would correlate with approval of discrimination. Participants were N=150 members of the public in Mexico City, with a mean age of 35.3 years (range: 18-74) and from areas of different social classes. Participants completed paper-and-pencil questionnaires on the street. We measured demographics (sex, age, place of residence), a 16-item SDO scale (e.g., “Some people are just more deserving than others”) with a Cronbach’s alpha of .83, and three instances of discriminatory behavior on the part of upper-class members towards lower-class members, alpha=.90, e.g.: “The behavior of the ‘Ladies of Polanco’ insulting a police officer is justified”. All items were measured on 5-point Likert-type scales, from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree. Results were generally in line with the hypotheses. A three-way ANOVA on social dominance showed significant effects of sex and place of residence, but not age group nor significant interactions. Men scored significantly higher than women on social dominance, providing evidence for the “invariance hypothesis”. Unexpectedly, lower-class participants showed highest levels of SDO, followed by middle-class and upper-class participants. A two-way ANOVA on approval of discrimination showed significant effects of place of residence and SDO and a significant interaction. Middle-class participants showed significantly higher levels of approval of discrimination than the other two classes. SDO correlated with approval of discrimination. Unexpected effects might be due to differential levels of education among social classes and/or to social mobility. The present study is the first investigation of SDO in Mexico and shows the link between an abstract orientation towards social hierarchies and approval of class-based discrimination in everyday life.

Abstract

Worldviews are cognitive schemas available for individuals through the socialization process that generates stable social worldviews. The dangerous worldview (DW) and the competitive jungle worldview (CW) have been widely studied. Both are related to different social attitudes: DW relates to the right wing authoritarianism (RWA) and CW relates with social dominance orientation (SDO). Meanwhile, RWA and SDO are two social attitudes that predict different forms of prejudice. The main objective of this study was to adapt and validate the worldviews scale (WV) to the local context, and then to test two paths analysis with relationships between variables proposed in the background. Participants were 376 university students with an age range between 18 and 42 years (M = 24.29, SD = 3.3). Main results indicate adequate psychometric properties for the bi-dimensional worldviews model. Furthermore, it was also noted that the path analysis between DW-RWA-Prejudice was adequate, while the other including CW-SDO-Prejudice has metric problems.