Hierarchy in the mind: The predictive power of social dominance orientation across social contexts and domains

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48 (2012) 543–549

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Hierarchy in the mind: The predictive power of social dominance orientation across social contexts and domains Nour Kteily ⁎, Arnold K. Ho, Jim Sidanius Harvard University, USA

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 27 May 2011 Revised 3 November 2011 Available online 12 November 2011 Keywords: Social dominance orientation Individual differences Intergroup relations Prejudice

a b s t r a c t The question of whether social dominance orientation represents a generalized orientation towards group-based hierarchies continues to arouse heated debate. Some researchers maintain that rather than indexing support for hierarchy across a variety of situations and social contexts, social dominance orientation scores simply reflect individuals' attitudes towards whatever specific context individuals had in mind while completing the scale. We systematically examine the generality of SDO by investigating its pattern of relationships with a very wide range of variables across a variety of disparate contexts, exploring inequality both as an ideal and as manifested in specific policies towards particular groups. We also experimentally test an important question raised by Sibley and Liu (2010) about whether administration of modified instructions to think only of “groups in general” is required to ensure SDO's generality. Evidence that SDO functions as a generalized orientation only when administered with instructions to think of groups in general would be a cause for much concern among the many researchers who have used the unmodified scale to index such an orientation. As expected, our results are clear in suggesting (a) that SDO represents a generalized orientation towards group-based hierarchy, and (b) that this property is not dependent on specific instructions to participants to think only of groups in general. Theoretical and practical implications for the status of SDO are discussed. © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Introduction As one of the most widely used variables in social and personality psychology, it is not surprising that there has been much debate about the nature of social dominance orientation (SDO; Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994). SDO has been defined as “a generalized orientation towards and desire for unequal and dominant/subordinate relations among salient social groups, regardless of whether this implies ingroup domination or subordination” (Pratto, Sidanius, & Levin, 2006, p. 282). SDO has been shown to relate – across a variety of samples, countries, and contexts – to a vast array of variables, including, for example, racism, sexism, support for wars of aggression, generalized prejudice, career choice, physiological arousal to outgroup faces, discriminatory behavior in minimal group experiments, anti-miscegenation attitudes, empathy, and activation within brain regions associated with the ability to share and feel concern for other's pain (Altemeyer, 1998; Chiao, Mathur, & Harada, 2009; Green, Thomsen, Sidanius, Staerklé, & Potanina, 2009; Ho et al., in press; McFarland, 2010; McFarland & Adelson, 1996; Navarrete et al., 2009; Pratto et al., 1994, 2006; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Despite its widespread application and usefulness in understanding intergroup relations, SDO has been the subject of substantial criticism ⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. E-mail address: [email protected] (N. Kteily). 0022-1031/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2011.11.007

from some researchers (e.g., Schmitt, Branscombe, & Kappen, 2003; Lehmiller & Schmitt, 2007; Kreindler, 2005; Turner & Reynolds, 2003). In particular, these authors have disputed the notion that SDO represents an enduring, generalized preference towards hierarchy and inequality, and instead, propose that it simply reflects attitudes towards whatever specific group categorizations people have in mind while completing the scale. This view, appropriately labeled a “contextualist” critique of SDO, takes issue with the idea that individuals “carry around” – across social contexts – a generalized attitude or predis position towards group-based hierarchy. The contextualist critique of SDO has centered around two related points. First, these authors argue that SDO behaves differently as a function of the social context in which it is measured. It has been shown that correlations between SDO and outcome measures can in fact differ as a function of salient features of the social context (e.g., Lehmiller & Schmitt, 2007; Dru, 2007; Duckitt & Sibley, 2010; but see Cohrs & Asbrock, 2009, and Heaven & St. Quintin, 2003, who fail to find evidence for moderating effects of context on SDO). For example, Lehmiller and Schmitt (2007) primed individuals to think of the increased equality that would be enjoyed by same-sex couples if they were to receive legal recognition, and found that SDO predicted heterosexism. However, SDO did not predict heterosexism when people were primed to think about increased equality in a different domain: the implementation of fairer regulations that would improve the odds of religious organizations receiving federal funding. Similarly, Duckitt and Sibley (2010) observed that SDO predicted prejudice against a fictitious immigrant

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group when people were primed to see that group as competitive, but not when it was described as morally deviant. An implication of this work is that priming participants with particular contexts can make specific examples of relationships between groups more salient in the minds of participants and increase the extent to which these exemplars drive responses to the SDO scale (and, by extension, its pattern of relationships with other variables). Importantly, however, the fact that features of the salient social context can moderate the effects of SDO does not invalidate the notion that it measures a generalized preference for hierarchy. Indeed, Sidanius and Pratto (1999) explicitly state that “the groups most likely to be the targets of social dominance drives will be those groups which are both the most salient and define the sharpest power differential within any given society at any given time (p.61, emphasis in original)”. Thus, social dominance theorists expect that, under certain circumstances, specific, highly accessible exemplars can exert increased influence on participants' SDO. However, as long as SDO continues to relate to a wide variety of intergroup attitudes and behaviors, the fact that the strength of its relationship with particular variables can be stronger or weaker as a function of salient aspects of the context in which it is measured is not inconsistent with its overall generality. A related criticism of SDO goes further still. According to this view, not only does SDO behave differently as a function of different salient contexts, but its meaning is fully determined by context-specific attitudes (e.g., Schmitt et al., 2003, studies 1 and 2). These authors argue that, as people complete the SDO6 scale, they have certain group relationships in mind, and SDO scores simply reflect those preexisting attitudes towards these specific groups. As such, rather than SDO predicting attitudes towards racism, for example, it simply measures them: where scale items refer to “some groups”, individuals are said to mentally replace the word “some” with the word “racial”, leading SDO to be nothing more than a redundant index of racism. Sibley and Liu (2010) investigated whether SDO measures a generalized orientation towards group-based hierarchy. While acknowledging the insights into SDO generated by the contextualist critique, they state, Although it is possible to shape the measurement of SDO so that the scale assesses little more than a proxy measure of attitudes toward a given form of group-based inequality, it is also possible to assess global individual differences in the tendency to prefer hierarchically structured, dominance-based, intergroup relations across a range of social categories. Just because the interpretation and meaning that respondents give to items can be altered under certain conditions does not mean that the construct it was designed to assess does not exist (p. 9, emphasis added). These authors reasoned that if SDO is little more than a reflection of pre-existing attitudes towards specific, highly accessible examples of intergroup relations, it should not be predicted by attitudes toward hierarchy specific to several different social categories. In a stringent test of the generality of SDO, they modified items of the SDO6 scale to assess attitudes towards group-based hierarchy specific to each of ethnic, gender, and age stratification. Thus, for example, the SDO6 item “If certain groups stayed in their place, we would have fewer problems” was reworded to state “If certain ethnic groups stayed in their place, we would have fewer problems”. The authors measured individuals' SDO levels using the original SDO6 scale, and subsequently measured ethnic-specific SDO, gender-specific SDO, and age-specific SDO. Critically, they found that although these three category-specific measures were highly intercorrelated, they each predicted unique variance in the overall SDO6 score, suggesting that SDO is not merely the reflection of attitudes towards inequality in any one context. Moreover, using hierarchical linear modeling, they found that a substantial proportion of the total shared variance in the group-specific SDO measures reflected between-person variation, indicative of systematic individual

differences. Importantly, the overall measure of SDO (i.e., noncategory-specific) predicted a substantial proportion of this betweenperson variation, indicating that this overall measure of support for group-based hierarchy was largely responsible for person-level consistencies in attitudes toward several group-specific measures. In sum, the authors concluded that, contrary to the strong version of the contextualist critique, SDO was not a mere reflection of prior attitudes but rather reflected a generalized, abstracted support for group-based hierarchy (see also Kteily, Sidanius, & Levin, 2011). An important caveat is that prior to assessing ‘overall-SDO’ using the unmodified SDO6 scale, Sibley and Liu (2010) gave the following novel instruction: The following statements examine general/overall opinions about different major social groups in society. Major social groups include groups based on relatively fixed characteristics. Please try to answer these questions with regards to major social groups in general, rather than thinking about just one group in particular (p. 15, emphasis in original). These instructions were included in order to “clarify the intended measurement of SDO as a measure of global or generalized attitudes (p.15).” SDO's standard instructions simply ask participants to rate their level of agreement with the scale items without any further specifications. As such, the authors were only able to conclude that when assessed with the ‘general instructions’, SDO reflects a generalized and abstracted orientation to group-based hierarchy. This leaves open the important question of whether SDO continues to measure a generalized orientation in the absence of such an instruction. Indeed, although Sibley and Liu (2010) prescribe the addition of this instruction prior to the measurement of SDO, they note that research is needed to compare the effects of SDO when measured with the modified vs. standard instructions. Given SDO's widespread use in research, evidence that it does not function as intended without inclusion of a general instruction would be major cause for concern. Moreover, from a practical perspective, empirical evidence that SDO behaves more like a generalized orientation when participants are explicitly told to think of groups in general would be strong evidence in favor of modifying the standard instructions of SDO along those lines. Our study systematically investigates the question of SDO's generality, contributing to an important ongoing theoretical debate regarding the appropriate interpretation of one of the most widely-used variables in psychology. Importantly, we assess SDO's generality as traditionally used, and compare it to SDO's generality when assessed with Sibley and Liu's (2010) modified instructions. Moreover, whereas Sibley and Liu (2010) investigated the pattern of relationships between SDO and attitudes towards three specific contexts, we examine the generality of SDO as it applies to a wide range of consequential variables, specifically chosen to span a variety of intergroup contexts. The criterion variables we choose also allow us to explore attitudes towards inequality both as a principle, and as manifested in specific policies towards particular groups. Hypotheses The research that has found a contextual influence on SDO has explicitly attempted to prime participants to think of one particular context. For example, Schmitt et al. (2003, study 2) found that racism but not sexism was a unique predictor of SDO when participants were specifically made to think about racial groups prior to completing the SDO6 scale. Indeed, it is specifically in these unique cases – where the experimenter has purposely attempted to modify the meaning of SDO – that its effects have sometimes been found to be moderated. When participants are not forced to think about any specific context, however, SDO has been observed to relate to a multitude of quite different constructs, all measured in one experimental sitting (e.g., Ho et al., in press; Pratto

N. Kteily et al. / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48 (2012) 543–549

et al., 1994; Sidanius, Levin, & Pratto, 1996a). The contextualist critics of SDO have – helpfully – shown that the scale can be made to measure something different than it was intended to. On the other hand, someone who, after being made to smell a particularly strong perfume in a department store, cannot properly smell the next, would not go so far as to claim that the human nose is not a generalized scent detector. Perhaps the general instructions suggested by Sibley and Liu (2010) could serve the role of the coffee beans sometimes provided at perfumeries: washing out previous ‘scents’ and ‘restoring’ the SDO scale (the metaphorical nose) to ‘normal function’. However, to the extent that participants have not been purposely exposed to a specific prime to the contrary (or one's nose to a salesman's assertive spray), we see no compelling reason to expect that the SDO scale will require any recalibration (or a whiff of those coffee beans!). As such, we hypothesized that – in the absence of any specific prime to think of one particular context – (H1a) SDO would reflect a generalized orientation towards groupbased hierarchy, and (H1b) that it would correlate with a very wide range of intergroup constructs. Moreover, we further expected (H2) that SDO measured with the standard instruction would exhibit the same pattern of relationships with other variables as SDO measured with the general instructions.

Method We recruited 363 participants (Mage = 32.5, 60% female) on Amazon's mTurk platform, a reliable and high-quality platform for the recruitment of diverse participant samples (Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling, 2011). All participants were residents of the U.S., with 77% of participants White Americans, 7.7% Asian Americans, 6.2% African Americans, 3.5% Latino Americans, 3.2% biracial/mixed race, .6% Arab Americans, .6% Native Americans, and 1.2% participants indicating ‘other’. We followed Sibley and Liu's (2010) method as closely as possible. Thus, we assessed our constructs in the following order: first, participants were asked to complete the traditional SDO6 scale (Pratto et al., 1994). Participants randomly received either (a) the standard instructions typically accompanying the SDO6 scale, or (b) Sibley and Liu's (2010) ‘general instructions’. Participants completed all 16 items of the SDO6 scale (see Table 1 for all scale means, intercorrelations and reliabilities). Subsequently, participants completed each of the three group-specific modifications of the SDO6 scale created by Sibley and Liu (2010): age-specific SDO, gender-specific SDO, and race-specific SDO. We then assessed a very wide range of relevant variables against which to test the generality of SDO: we measured hostile and benevolent sexism (Glick & Fiske, 1996), pro-war attitudes (Sidanius & Liu, 1992), support for the persecution of immigrants (POSSE; Altemeyer, 1996; adapted by Thomsen, Green, & Sidanius, 2008), support for the death penalty (Sidanius, Mitchell, Haley, & Navarrete, 2006), punitiveness (Sidanius et al., 2006), support for racial policy, support for affirmative action (Haley & Sidanius, 2006), support for welfare, support for hierarchy-enhancing jobs (e.g., FBI agent; Sidanius, Pratto, Sinclair, & Van Laar, 1996b), support for hierarchyattenuating jobs (e.g., civil rights lawyer; Sidanius et al., 1996b), support for the principle of legacy admissions at university, and political conservatism. We also included a scale developed for the purposes of this study, intended to measure support for unequal distribution of resources in a new institution (see Appendix A for previously unpublished measures). This item should provide a particularly good test of whether SDO measures general attitudes toward hierarchy, as respondents should not have pre-existing attitudes about groups that have not yet been formed. Moreover, given that the scale measures attitudes towards hierarchical distribution of resources at a fictional institution with no real-world implications relevant to the participant, this item should be a good measure of support for the principle (or ideal) of hierarchy. Finally, participants were asked to indicate demographic information, including their age, gender, ethnicity, and education level.

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Results Our first analysis of interest investigated whether SDO represents a generalized orientation toward group-based hierarchy or, alternatively, a simple reflection of more specific intergroup attitudes. We first conducted the same test used by Sibley and Liu (2010): that is, collapsing across experimental condition, we entered race-SDO, gender-SDO, and age-SDO into a simultaneous regression to see whether each of these three intergroup attitudes based on a specific stratification would predict unique variance in overall-SDO. Consistent with Hypothesis1a, the three variables together accounted for a significant proportion of the variance in overall SDO, R2 =.67, F(3, 337) =226.12, pb .001. Most importantly, although the three specific attitudes were highly intercorrelated (average r =.61), each of the three specific attitudes uniquely predicted significant variance in overall SDO: brace-SDO =.54, t(340) =10.80, pb .001; bage-SDO = .23, t(340)= 7.03, p b .001; bgender-SDO =.11, t(340) =2.15, p= .03. Thus, similarly to Sibley and Liu (2010), we observed that SDO could not be accounted for by attitudes based on any particular intergroup context. In order to further investigate the generality of SDO (H1b), we also examined the pattern of correlations between SDO and a wide variety of relevant outcome variables. As expected, collapsing across experimental conditions, we found that the SDO6 scale was significantly related to all 19 variables examined (see Table 1), inconsistent with the notion that SDO only captures beliefs about people's views in a specific intergroup context. One important question remains unaddressed, however. Given that the results presented above collapsed across experimental conditions, it remains possible that the findings were driven by participants in the ‘general instruction’ condition. Conversely, however, we expected (H2) that, in the absence of a context-specific prime, SDO would exhibit generality regardless of whether participants were asked to “think of groups in general”. To test whether the ‘general instructions’ made a difference to SDO's predictive validity, we first examined our finding that overall-SDO was uniquely predicted by each of the context-specific SDO measures. Specifically, we conducted a manifest-variables group analysis in LISREL 8.8, entering overallSDO as the endogenous variable, and each of race-SDO, gender-SDO, and age-SDO as exogenous variables, and assessing this model separately for participants in each of the experimental conditions. Evidence that overall-SDO is only uniquely predicted by the variety of the context-specific SDO measures when participants received the ‘general instructions’ would suggest that SDO requires such modified instructions in order to exhibit generality, thus shedding doubt on previous interpretations of SDO (as traditionally assessed). As can be seen in Fig. 1a, however, each of race-SDO, gender-SDO, and age-SDO was a significant contributor to overall SDO in the ‘standard instructions’ condition. On the other hand, as can be seen in Fig. 1b, only race-SDO and age-SDO were significant contributors in the ‘general instructions’ condition, whereas gender-SDO was not. Thus, SDO did not seem to exhibit greater generality in the “general instructions” condition. Indeed, we had expected to find that the “general instructions” made little difference to SDO's generality. In order to test whether these two models were statistically equivalent, we set parameter constraints between all analogous paths in each model (i.e., setting the Φ, Ψ, and Γ matrices to equality). We subsequently observed no significant deterioration in model fit, χ2 (10) = 13.7, p > .05, suggesting that, overall, these two models were statistically equivalent. To examine the possibility that specific paths of interest might significantly differ between the two models, we also considered more specific constraint analyses. First, we examined model deterioration when only the Γ matrices were constrained to equality. This test yielded no significant deterioration in model fit, χ2 (3) = 2.33, p > .05, suggesting that there was no significant difference in the overall pattern of relationships between each of the group-specific SDO measures and overall-SDO across experimental conditions. Secondly, seeing as gender-SDO predicted overall SDO in the ‘standard instructions’ condition but not in the “general

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Table 1 Descriptive statistics and correlations between variables (N = 363; Listwise N = 313). Variable

1

2

3

5

6

– .46⁎⁎⁎ .17⁎⁎⁎ .22⁎⁎⁎ .37⁎⁎⁎ .33⁎⁎⁎ .14⁎

– .44⁎⁎⁎ .19⁎⁎⁎ .37⁎⁎⁎ .37⁎⁎⁎ .19⁎⁎⁎

– .26⁎⁎⁎ .27⁎⁎⁎ .34⁎⁎⁎ .23⁎⁎⁎

2.75 1.30 .89 6

1.84 1.11 .85 6

3.15 1.49 .87 5

13 .15⁎⁎ −.07 .04 −.03 −.01 −.01 −.18⁎⁎⁎ −.43⁎⁎⁎

14 .54⁎⁎⁎ .47⁎⁎⁎ .37⁎⁎⁎ .34⁎⁎⁎ .35⁎⁎⁎ .16⁎⁎ .34⁎⁎⁎ .49⁎⁎⁎ .33⁎⁎⁎ .26⁎⁎⁎

15 .24⁎⁎⁎ .25⁎⁎⁎ .21⁎⁎⁎ .27⁎⁎⁎ .23⁎⁎⁎ .15⁎⁎ .15⁎⁎ .13⁎ .25⁎⁎⁎

1. Overall SDO 2. Race-SDO 3. Gender-SDO 4. Age-SDO 5. Hostile sexism 6. Benevolent sexism 7. Pro-war attitudes 8. Symbolic racism 9. Anti-immigrant Posse scale 10. Death penalty support M SD α Number of items

– .78⁎⁎⁎ .67⁎⁎⁎ .62⁎⁎⁎ .49⁎⁎⁎ .23⁎⁎⁎ .40⁎⁎⁎ .58⁎⁎⁎ .53⁎⁎⁎ .30⁎⁎⁎

– .77⁎⁎⁎ .54⁎⁎⁎ .46⁎⁎⁎ .26⁎⁎⁎ .33⁎⁎⁎ .49⁎⁎⁎ .53⁎⁎⁎ .22⁎⁎⁎

– .52⁎⁎⁎ .48⁎⁎⁎ .23⁎⁎⁎ .23⁎⁎⁎ .36⁎⁎⁎ .42⁎⁎⁎ .15⁎⁎

2.50 1.10 .93 16

2.00 1.13 .86 6

Variable 1. Overall SDO 2. Race-SDO 3. Gender-SDO 4. Age-SDO 5. Hostile sexism 6. Benevolent sexism 7. Pro-war attitudes 8. Symbolic racism 9. Anti-immigrant Posse scale 10. Death penalty support 11. Punitiveness 12. Racial policy 13. Affirmative action opposition 14. Welfare opposition 15. Legacy admissions support 16. New hierarchy 17. Hierarchy enhancing jobs 18. Hierarchy attenuating jobs 19. RWA 20. Political conservatism M SD α Number of items

11 .38⁎⁎⁎ .30⁎⁎⁎ .21⁎⁎⁎ .24⁎⁎⁎ .29⁎⁎⁎ .26⁎⁎⁎ .44⁎⁎⁎ .43⁎⁎⁎ .43⁎⁎⁎ .50⁎⁎⁎

12 .48⁎⁎⁎ .44⁎⁎⁎ .31⁎⁎⁎ .26⁎⁎⁎ .25⁎⁎⁎

†

– .22⁎⁎⁎ −.17⁎⁎⁎ .38⁎⁎⁎ .15⁎⁎ .14⁎ .33⁎⁎⁎ −.17⁎⁎ .58⁎⁎⁎ .44⁎⁎⁎ 3.22 1.55 .82 3

.09† .28⁎⁎⁎ .56⁎⁎⁎ .26⁎⁎⁎ .25⁎⁎⁎ – – −.54⁎⁎⁎ .54⁎⁎⁎ −.02 .37⁎⁎⁎ .10† −.35⁎⁎⁎ .16⁎⁎ .42⁎⁎⁎ 3.35 1.34 .82 6

.05 −.28⁎⁎⁎ – – – −.30⁎⁎⁎ .19⁎⁎⁎ −.12⁎

4

7

8

9

10

3.62 1.43 .80 5

– .38⁎⁎⁎ .38⁎⁎⁎ .38⁎⁎⁎ 2.94 1.29 .84 6

– .46⁎⁎⁎ .44⁎⁎⁎ 2.30 .61 .82 7

– .29⁎⁎⁎ 2.06 1.33 .91 6

– 4.22 1.89 .91 4

16 .35⁎⁎⁎ .35⁎⁎⁎ .28⁎⁎⁎ .24⁎⁎⁎ .27⁎⁎⁎ .13⁎ .17⁎⁎⁎ .26⁎⁎⁎ .15⁎⁎ .14⁎⁎

17 .10† .09† .07 .03 .14⁎⁎ .22⁎⁎⁎ .21⁎⁎⁎ .12⁎ .19⁎⁎⁎ .16⁎⁎

18 −.29⁎⁎⁎ −.21⁎⁎⁎ −.12⁎ −.20⁎⁎⁎ −.10† .06 −.16⁎⁎ −.33⁎⁎⁎ −.11⁎ −.24⁎⁎⁎

19 .36⁎⁎⁎ .30⁎⁎⁎ .25⁎⁎⁎ .25⁎⁎⁎ .43⁎⁎⁎ .45⁎⁎⁎ .47⁎⁎⁎ .44⁎⁎⁎ .38⁎⁎⁎ .44⁎⁎⁎

20 .38⁎⁎⁎ .31⁎⁎⁎ .21⁎⁎⁎ .20⁎⁎⁎ .31⁎⁎⁎ .23⁎⁎⁎ .51⁎⁎⁎ .48⁎⁎⁎ .29⁎⁎⁎ .40⁎⁎⁎

– – – – – – – – – .53⁎⁎⁎ 3.80 1.10 .84 12

– – – – – – – – – – 3.45 1.62 .87 3

−.03 .25⁎⁎⁎ −.17⁎⁎⁎ −.30⁎⁎⁎

– – – – .16⁎⁎ .42⁎⁎⁎ .15⁎⁎ −.38⁎⁎⁎ .28⁎⁎⁎ .43⁎⁎⁎

.04 – – – – – .10† .01 −.12⁎ .19⁎⁎⁎ .15⁎⁎

– – – – – – .10† −.17⁎⁎ .18⁎⁎⁎ .22⁎⁎⁎

– – – – – – – .37⁎⁎⁎ .24⁎⁎⁎ .14⁎

– – – – – – – – −.13⁎ −.26⁎⁎⁎

3.36 1.32 .84 6

2.82 1.39 .78 3

3.12 1.57 .91 5

3.52 1.43 .80 4

3.72 1.70 .89 4

4.36 1.63 .89 5

⁎⁎⁎ p b .001. ⁎⁎ p b .01. ⁎ p b .05. p b .10.

instructions” condition, we investigated the possibility of a significant difference between this path across models. However, constraining the paths from gender-SDO to overall-SDO in each model to equality did not significantly deteriorate model fit, χ2 (1) = 1.98, p > .05. As such, we were able to conclude not only that SDO was, on average, predicted by a variety of context-specific intergroup attitudes, but that this pattern of relationships supporting the generalized nature of SDO was statistically equivalent across both experimental conditions.

We further extended this investigation to the relationships we observed between SDO and the variety of dependent variables we examined (see Table 1). Once again, we wanted to assess whether the generality we observed in SDO (i.e., its significant pattern of relationships with a wide variety of relevant variables) depended on the “general instructions”. We used Hayes and Matthes' (2009) MODPROBE macro to assess whether the relationship between SDO and relevant outcome variables was moderated by experimental condition. If Sibley and Liu's

Fig. 1a. Manifest-variables structural equation model of the relationship between Race-SDO, Age-SDO, and Gender-SDO and Overall-SDO in the “standard instructions condition”. Overall model fit is not included as this model is fully saturated. All parameters represent standardized coefficients, and are statistically significant.

Fig. 1b. Manifest-variables structural equation model of the relationship between Race-SDO, Age-SDO, and Gender-SDO and Overall-SDO in the “general instructions condition”. Overall model fit is not included as this model is fully saturated. All parameters represent standardized coefficients. Dashed lines indicate nonsignificant paths.

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(2010) intuition that SDO behaves more like a generalized orientation when the instruction to think about groups in general is provided is accurate, one would expect SDO to relate strongly to a wider variety of intergroup variables than when it is assessed without such instructions. We examined nineteen potential interaction effects between SDO and experimental condition, predicting each of the variables listed in Table 1. A significant interaction between SDO and experimental condition would indicate that the relationship between SDO and the outcome measure differed as a function of the instructions provided. As seen in Table 2, across all outcome variables assessed, the relationship between SDO and the relevant variable was never significantly stronger in the ‘general instructions’ condition. In fact, in the only case where the relationship between SDO and a relevant outcome variable differed as a function of condition, the relationship between SDO and the variable was stronger in the ‘standard instructions’ condition. Critically, the nonsignificance of the interaction effects between condition and SDO was not due to SDO being unrelated to the constructs examined, given that SDO was significantly related to all nineteen variables we measured: it was simply that this pattern of relationships was not influenced by whether the ‘general instructions’ or the standard instructions were provided prior to completion of the scale.

Discussion Our results are clear in suggesting that SDO is best conceptualized as a general measure of individual differences in the preference for group based dominance and inequality. In the context of our study, SDO (a) related to a very wide variety of intergroup attitudes and ideologies, (b) could not be predicted by attitudes towards any one specific context, and, importantly, (c) maintained these properties regardless of whether participants were asked to “think of groups in general” before its completion. Thus, we observed significant correlations between SDO and attitudes towards age-based discrimination (age-SDO), gender-based discrimination (gender-SDO; hostile sexism; benevolent sexism), race-based discrimination (race-SDO; symbolic racism; affirmative action opposition; opposition to racial policy), attitudes towards immigrants, right-wing authoritarianism, political conservatism, and support for war. Moreover, SDO also related to hierarchy-enhancing constructs seemingly less rooted in experience with specific groups or intergroup contexts and closer to personal ideals or principles: SDO related to general punitiveness, support for the death penalty, support for

Table 2 Regression coefficients for the interaction effect between SDO and experimental condition (general vs. standard instructions) predicting each outcome variable. Dependent variable Race-SDO Gender-SDO Age-SDO Hostile sexism Benevolent sexism Pro-war attitudes Symbolic racism Anti-immigrant posse scale Death penalty support Punitiveness support Racial policy Affirmative action opposition Welfare opposition Legacy admissions support New hierarchy Hierarchy enhancing jobs Hierarchy attenuating jobs RWA Political conservatism

B

SE B

β

.03 −.00 .15 .02 .03 .00 −.03 −.25 .07 −.04 .05 −.13 .05 −.19 .20 .21 .10 −.06 .11

.07 .08 .10 .13 .13 .11 .05 .11 .18 .14 .12 .13 .12 .15 .13 .17 .15 .10 .15

.04 −.01 .17 .02 .03 .00 −.07 −.28⁎ .06 −.04 .06 −.14 .05 −.18 .20 .18 .09 −.09 .10

Note. For the purposes of this analysis, the “standard instructions” condition was coded as ‘0’ and the “general instructions” condition was coded as ‘1’. ⁎ p b .05.

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the principle of legacy admissions at universities, support for hierarchyenhancing jobs and opposition to hierarchy-attenuating ones, and support for inegalitarian distribution of resources in the administration of a fictional new university campus. That SDO relates to such an impressively diverse array of variables makes it difficult to sustain the view that SDO is a mere reflection of attitudes towards specific group relationships held in mind while completing the scale. Although Schmitt et al. (2003, study 1) have shown some evidence that individuals can think of several different groups while completing the SDO scale, we consider it quite unlikely that participants will be simultaneously thinking of gender relations, their attitudes toward war, the desirability of being an FBI agent, and the desirability of legacy admission systems at universities as they complete the SDO6 scale, for example. Rather, we think this evidence is much more consistent with the view that the SDO scale taps into an abstracted, generalized, orientation towards hierarchy, representing individual consistency in support for hierarchy-enhancing attitudes and ideologies across contexts. Importantly, this does not preclude the possibility that people access certain exemplars when answering some items of the SDO scale. It is likely that – as with other scales assessing abstract concepts – when individuals consider attitudes towards social hierarchy and intergroup relations, certain highly accessible exemplars come to mind and influence responses to some degree. Indeed, this is consistent with Sidanius and Pratto's (1999) stipulation that especially salient groups in society are likely to be the strongest targets of social dominance drives. However, this does not mean that, over and above the influence of particular context-specific attitudes, SDO cannot continue to reflect a general orientation towards hierarchy. Indeed, that SDO was uniquely predicted by each of race-SDO, genderSDO, and age-SDO among American participants– for whom race is likely to have been a particularly salient social categorization – is further evidence in support of this assertion. Thus, although further analyses found overall-SDO was significantly more closely related to race-SDO than gender-SDO or age-SDO, each of the latter two variables continued to make important contributions to overall-SDO, suggesting that even in the presence of a highly accessible exemplar, SDO continues to exhibit the generality suggestive of a generalized orientation. In fact, our test, which replicated the observations of Sibley and Liu (2010) in another society and using a non-student sample, is a particularly conservative one. That SDO should be uniquely predicted by more specific attitudes across social stratifications all based on precisely the same item word-stem suggests that SDO cannot be reduced to attitudes towards any one group, within any one context. Not only did the context-specific SDO measures each uniquely predict overall SDO, but they were also highly intercorrelated with one another, and exhibited a pattern of associations with the set of dependent variables examined that was similar to that found with overall-SDO (see Table 1). Thus, individuals who were high in SDO in one specific context (e.g., age-SDO) also tended to be high in SDO in the other contexts assessed (gender-SDO and race-SDO). This finding is consistent with the work of Levin (1996; as cited in Sidanius & Pratto, 1999), who found that although the absolute level of SDO was influenced by contextual primes, individual SDO levels exhibited relative stability across contexts (r = .50). This work converges to suggest that individuals have a generalized orientation towards group-based inequality that they ‘carry’ with them from one context to another and informs their attitudes towards specific instances of inequality. 1

1 Indeed, the high intercorrelation between the three context-specific forms of SDO suggests that attitudes in each specific context may be informed by a higher-order abstracted orientation towards group-based dominance. We tested this using confirmatory factor analysis in LISREL, examining the extent to which each of race-SDO, gender-SDO, and age-SDO could be predicted by a higher-order factor. Indeed, in both experimental conditions, each of the three context-specific forms of SDO was predicted very strongly by a higher-order factor. Moreover, parameter constraint analyses showed that this was equally the case in both conditions.

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Crucially, we found that SDO behaved as a generalized orientation regardless of whether or not it was administered with specific instructions to answer with regard to groups in general. Thus, among those participants receiving only the standard instruction, overall SDO was still uniquely predicted by each of age-SDO, gender-SDO, and race-SDO. Indeed, although the difference in the models was nonsignificant, genderSDO was not a unique predictor of overall SDO for those in the ‘general instructions’ condition. Moreover, SDO correlated significantly with all nineteen assessed constructs, and its pattern of relationships differed only once between experimental conditions, with the relationship actually stronger in the ‘standard instructions’ condition.2 The remarkable similarity between the findings in the two experimental conditions was not for lack of statistical power: we specifically collected data from a sample more than large enough to detect statistical significance, and ran – without any alpha-correction – over nineteen tests in which such a difference could have emerged. 3 Our findings are important for a number of reasons. Firstly, they speak to an important and ongoing debate about the nature of SDO, a variable that has been used very widely across psychology, ranging from research on generalized prejudice and discrimination (e.g., McFarland, 2010), to research on workplace aggression (e.g., Parkins, Fishbein, & Ritchey, 2006), to work on career development among urban youth (Diemer & Blustein, 2006). The large majority of this research has conceptualized SDO as it was originally developed: as a generalized orientation towards hierarchy and group-based inequality. On the other hand, an alternative theoretical position (see Schmitt et al., 2003; Turner & Reynolds, 2003) has challenged this view, instead arguing that these investigators have been redundantly assessing preexisting attitudes specific to particular contexts participants may have held in mind at the time. Our work stringently tests the assumption that SDO represents a generalized orientation and, in its pattern of results, provides clear evidence in the affirmative. Rather than invalidate the general nature of the SDO scale, the contextualist critique of SDO has shown, importantly, that the scale can be ‘manipulated’ to behave in ways it was not intended to (e.g., Dru, 2007; Lehmiller & Schmitt, 2007; Schmitt et al., 2003). When participants are explicitly made to think of one particular social context, SDO correlates more strongly to variables related to that stratification and less strongly to unrelated variables. While this implies that care need be taken to avoid inadvertently priming participants strongly with specific contexts before completing the SDO6 scale, the conclusion that SDO does not typically measure a generalized orientation is inconsistent with our data. Moreover, our systematic comparison of SDO's generality when assessed with its typical instructions and modified instructions to “think of groups in general” has important implications, both theoretical and practical. That SDO equally relates to a wide range of variables whether or not participants are asked to think of groups in general implies that, in the absence of specific primes forcing individuals' attention to particular contexts, they independently access an abstracted orientation towards dominance. This suggests that although individuals may sometimes bring to mind particular accessible exemplars when answering SDO scale items, these are not typically apt to “wash out” SDO's generality. As it is, Sibley and Liu's (2010) practical recommendation that the scale “be administered with instructions that clarify measurement of a global or generalized construct (p. 31)” seems not quite as pressing as it might have been. This should be a cause for some relief among the many researchers who have long been using SDO as an index of individual differences in their research without any such instruction. Had we observed that SDO – in the absence of ‘general instructions’ – simply reflected pre-existing attitudes towards one group, in one context,

previous findings using the construct would have had to contend with the claim that SDO's use reflects near-tautology (e.g., Lehmiller & Schmitt, 2007). Nevertheless, we concur with Sibley and Liu's (2010) recommendation that care be taken not to systematically prime cognitions about specific groups prior to administration of the SDO6 scale. As such, it would probably also be wise to heed their advice that SDO6 scale be administered before measures of other intergroup attitudes. Conclusion Converging evidence suggests that SDO represents a generalized, abstracted orientation toward group-based inequality and hierarchy that cannot be reduced to attitudes within any one specific context. While SDO is most certainly sensitive to social context, it also most certainly relates to the support for hierarchy across social stratifications. Appendix A Previously unpublished scales are shown in their entirety here. Unless otherwise noted, all measures used a 1 (strongly disagree/disapprove) to 7 (strongly agree/favor) scale. Support for racial policy 1. Government should see to it that minorities get fair treatment in jobs. 2. Government should not pass laws concerning the hiring of ethnic minorities. 3. Government should ensure that Whites and minorities go to the same school. 4. Government has no business trying to ensure racial integration in schools. 5. Government should do what it can to improve the economic condition of poor ethnic minorities. 6. Government has no business trying to improve the economic condition of poor ethnic minorities. Support for welfare 1. Greater assistance to the poor 2. Reduced public support for the homeless 3. Reduced benefits for the unemployed Support for legacy admissions The following statements concern “legacy” college admissions (that is, considering family relationships to alumni in college admissions decisions). Some universities favor applicants who have relatives that currently attend or previously attended the university, and give them an advantage in making admission decisions. Please indicate how you feel about such admissions policies. 1. I support legacy college admissions. 2. I oppose legacy college admissions. 3. The potential benefits of legacy admissions outweigh the potential harm. 4. Legacy college admissions are unjust — family connections to the university should not be considered. 5. It is sometimes OK to consider family connections to the university in making admission decisions. Support for unequal distribution of resources in a new institution

2

Given the number of tests conducted, this difference may be due to chance. The lack of a correction for multiple tests represents a conservative test in this context. Given the sample size and standard probability (.05) value we used to test for significance, we had more than sufficient power to detect any interactions. 3

Imagine the University of Massachusetts is building a new campus. It has to decide how to fund its various schools (e.g., the law school, the medical school, the engineering school etc.). Specifically, one option

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would be to adopt a model in which each school would be responsible for its own fundraising and expenses. While such a model may give schools more freedom, it is likely that the schools would be unevenly funded, resulting in some schools with large operating budgets and many resources, and other schools with minimal budgets and limited resources. Another model would entail fundraising at the level of the university, and distributing resources equally between schools. Please indicate which of these two models you would prefer by using the scale below for each of the following statements. 1. I would prefer schools to be responsible for their own funding. 2. I would prefer the university to distribute resources equally rather than have each school fund itself. 3. It would be unfair if schools had unequal budgets. 4. It would be fair for each school to get the budget it earns. References Altemeyer, B. (1996). The authoritarian specter. Cambridge, MA US: Harvard University Press. Altemeyer, B. (1998). The other “authoritarian personality”. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology, Vol. 30. (pp. 47–92)San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Buhrmester, M., Kwang, T., & Gosling, S. D. (2011). Amazon's Mechnical Turk: A new source of inexpensive, yet high-quality data? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6, 3–5. Chiao, J. Y., Mathur, V. A., & Harada, T. (2009). Values, empathy, and fairness across social barriers: Neural basis of preference for human social hierarcy versus egalitarianism. New York Academy of Sciences, 1167, 174–181, doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04508.x. Cohrs, J. C., & Asbrock, F. (2009). Right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation and prejudice against threatening and competitive ethnic groups. European Journal of Social Psychology, 39, 270–289. Diemer, M. A., & Blustein, D. L. (2006). Critical consciousness and career development among urban youth. Journal of vocational behavior, 68, 220–232. Dru, V. (2007). Authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and prejudice: Effects of various self-categorization conditions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43, 877–883. Duckitt, J., & Sibley, C. G. (2010). Intergroup and individual difference determinants of prejudice: Testing a differential moderation hypothesis. European Journal of Personality, 24, 583–601. Glick, P., & Fiske, S. T. (1996). The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory: Differentiating hostile and benevolent sexism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70(3), 491–512. Green, E., Thomsen, L., Sidanius, J., Staerklé, C., & Potanina, P. (2009). Reactions to crime as a hierarchy regulating strategy: The moderating role of social dominance orientation. Social Justice Research, 22(4), 416–436. Haley, H., & Sidanius, J. (2006). The Positive and Negative Framing of Affirmative Action: A Group Dominance Perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 656–668. Hayes, A. F., & Matthes, J. (2009). Computational procedures for probing interactions in OLS and logistic regression: SPSS and SAS implementations. Behavior Research Methods, 41, 924–936.

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