Social dominance orientation: Cause or 'mere effect'? Evidence for SDO as a causal predictor of prejudice and discrimination against ethnic and racial outgroups

By Nour S. Kteily, J. Sidanius, Shana Levin. 2011

162 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract The question of whether SDO is a cause or mere effect of intergroup attitudes and behaviors has been the subject of heated debate. Much of the research brought to bear on the question, however, has used cross-sectional data that is not best-suited for making causal inferences. Using data from a panel study that tracked UCLA undergraduates over several years, we find support for the notion that SDO is a cause, rather than ‘mere reflection’ of prejudice and discrimination against outgroups. Specifically, using cross-lagged analyses among White students, we show that SDO measured in 1996 has significant marginal utility for predicting prejudice against a series of ethnic outgroups, as well as self-reported ingroup friendship preference, four years later, controlling for their 1996 levels. Conversely, outgroup affect and ingroup friendship preference measured in 1996 fail to predict SDO levels in 2000 once 1996 SDO levels are taken into account. Implications of these analyses for the debate on the interpretation of SDO as a relatively stable orientation towards group-based hierarchy in society are discussed.

Subfields: Gender Studies, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4d8b45b5d01881298e35cb45d15c81579c4b806e

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In Gender Studies

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Citations in the corpus

Changing the ideological roots of prejudice: Longitudinal effects of ethnic intergroup contact on social dominance orientation (2014, background): “…testing the reverse causal direction also obtained evidence that attitudes and feelings towards a particular group can longitudinally predict SDO (Kteily et al., 2011; Matthews, Levin, & Sidanius, 2009; Sibley & Liu, 2010), which complements research showing that SDO is sensitive to situational…”
Social Dominance Theory: Explorations in the Psychology of Oppression (2016, unknown): “…& Sidanius, 2010 Gutiérrez & Unzueta, 2013 Hodson, Rush, & MacInnis, 2010 Hodson, MacInnis, & Rush, 2010 Kteily et al., 2014 Kteily et al., 2012 Kteily et al., 2011 Leong, 2008 Levin et al., 2012 Levin, Pratto, Matthews, Sidanius, & Kteily, 2013 Malkin & Ben Ari, 2013 McFarland, 2010 Newman,…”
Hierarchy in the mind: The predictive power of social dominance orientation across social contexts and domains (2012, background): “Kteily et al. / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48 (2012) 543–549”