Prejudice 1.1.6 Social Dominance (Pratto 1999)

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

EACH-Evidence

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

EACH-Application

Answer 10

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 11

EACH-Criticisms/Cred

Answer 11

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

Question 12

EACH-How?

Answer 12

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