Prejudice: Social Dominance Orientation (Dispositional)

Question 1

Define ‘social dominance orientation’.

Answer 1

A person’s ideological attitude towards hierarchy whereby higher scores indicate agreement with the system and lower scores rejection.

Question 2

What does someone with a high SDO believe in?

Answer 2

• Inequality
• Social hierarchy
• The dominance of their own group

Question 3

What 5 factors affect the development of SDO?

Answer 3

1) Group status in heirarchy
2) Social context affecting tendency for dominant groups to exhibit SDO
3) Having traits such as coldness, aggression, and vindictiveness
4) Being a male, rejecting policies that advocate change
5) Socialisation

Question 4

How can SDO be measured?

Answer 4

• Using a 7 point Likert scale
• Involving 14-16 items
• SDO-6 has reversed scoring for items 9 and 16 to reduce acquiescence bias

Question 5

How does having a high SDO change if a person identifies with subordinate groups?

Answer 5

It translates to an acceptance of subordination in a social hierarchy.

Question 6

Give 3 examples of social institutions.

Answer 6

1) Companies
2) Education
3) Religion

Question 7

Give an example of how someone with a high SDO would function in a social institution.

Answer 7

A headteacher of a school distributing lower pay to their colleagues who are teachers that are seen as beneath them to maintain the divide.

Question 8

How does having a high SDO link to prejudice?

Answer 8

They believe in stratification that leads to an inequality that may cause people to see others as inferior to them.

Question 9

Using the acronym ‘EACH’, evaluate 2 supporting ‘evidence’ points.

Answer 9

P - Heaven’s (1999) research supports SDO leading to prejudice
E - They found that SDO was a strong predictor of negative attitudes towards women’s rights
E - This demonstrates how males who are in socially dominant positions prejudice women
P - Guimond and Damburn (2003) research supports SDO causing prejudice globally
E - They found that the maintenance of hierarchy is one of the most important goals for individuals in all societies and that SDO mediates the relationship between ingroup position and prejudice
E - Therefore demonstrating that a high SDO causes prejudice

Question 10

Using the acronym ‘EACH’, evaluate a rejecting ‘evidence’ point.

Answer 10

P - Rubin and Hewstone’s (2004) reject SDO as an explanation for prejudice
E - They argue that social dominance theory has changed its definition along with how it is measured in changing the items many times to stay as one theory
E - Therefore suggest that the amount the theory has to changes reduces its credibility

Question 11

Using the acronym ‘EACH’, evaluate a ‘how’ point.

Answer 11

P - Guimond and Damburn (2003) has low generalisability
E - Carried out their study in France with 90 psychology students from Blaise Pascal University
E - Using psychology students is a bias sample due to having shared interests and the sample is also ethnocentric as cannot generalise to non-European cultures and their attitudes towards hierarchy

Question 12

Are there any applications?

Answer 12

P - Yes
E - It states that people with a high SDO score favour hierarchy and inequality in social institutions
E - Therefore from this we can understand the different processes involved in how this ideology rises to implement ways of reducing it to reduce prejudice

Question 13

Using the acronym ‘EACH’, evaluate 2 ‘credibility’ points.

Answer 13

P - SDO-6 has low validity
E - They are a self-report 7-point Likert scale with only 2 reverse scored items
E - This may therefore be open to DCs
P - High reliability of data
E - They use a 7-point Likert scale with 14-16 closed questions providing quantitative data
E - This can be compared for consistency easily and is easy to replicate