Social Dominance Orientation

Social dominance orientation (SDO) is a general psychological orientation capturing individual desires to establish and maintain group-based dominance and inequality. SDO is positively associated with beliefs that enhance hierarchical group relations, including sexism, racism, and homophobia, and negatively associated with hierarchy-attenuating constructs, including egalitarianism and universalism. Original conceptualization and measurement of SDO occurred during development of social dominance theory (SDT), an intergroup theory of social hierarchy and oppression promulgated by social psychologists Jim Sidanius and Felicia Pratto. SDT proposes a reciprocal relationship between SDO and social hierarchy: SDO is affected by hierarchy (e.g., members of dominant and subordinate groups show larger group differences in SDO in more hierarchically structured societies) and SDO reinforces hierarchy (e.g., individuals higher in SDO show greater support for the hierarchical ...