Social dominance orientation is the extent to which a person believes that there should be social hierarchies in society, i.e. that one group of people should be given more power than another group of people. It is negatively correlated with beliefs in egalitarianism, and is one of the strongest predictors of generalised prejudice in society.
When someone is high on the Social Dominance Orientation personality construct, they are more likely “to classify social groups along a superiority–inferiority dimension and to favor policies that maintain social inequality”, as described by Alain Van Hiel and Ivan Mervielde in their 2005 paper on Authoritarianism and Social Dominance Orientation.
They are also more likely to view social inequality as desirable and morally just; to demonstrate greater willingness to do harm to disenfranchised groups, and to discourage social programmes that benefit those same groups. Social dominance orientation can even predict people’s attitudes towards environmentalism: those high on SDO believe in humans’ right to strive for dominance over nature.
If we are ever to achieve widespread equality in society, levels of social dominance orientation within the national psyche is a phenomenon we will need to understand and address — especially if SDO levels are high amongst those who shape our institutions and our systems. We may even need to identify root-cause solutions to high levels of Social Dominance Orientation from developing in the first place, if we are ever to have a chance of achieving racial or cultural equality.
There is actually some hope of doing this, as we know a little of what predicts high levels of SDO, which means we may have some promising intervention targets. Research has shown that those high on SDO also score high on feeling alienated in society, and score poorly on empathy for others — root cause issues that can be tackled. Social science researchers have already found that people who spend time with immigrants come away from the experience with reduced levels of dominance-orientation and prejudice; while those who are exposed to compassionate moral behaviour by others (referred to as “acts of moral excellence’ by Jonathan Haidt), demonstrate fewer social dominance tendencies that before having witnessed those moral acts.
