Asymmetric intergroup bullying: the enactment and maintenance of societal inequality at work

What does inequality mean for dysfunctional organizational behaviours, such as workplace bullying? This article argues that workplace bullying can be understood as a manifestation of intergroup dynamics originating beyond the organization. We introduce the construct of asymmetric intergroup bullying: the disproportionate mistreatment of members of low status groups, with the intended effect of enhancing the subordination of that group in society at large. Analysis of data from 38 interviews with public and private sector workers in Turkey depicts a pattern of asymmetric intergroup bullying, undertaken to achieve organizational and broader sociopolitical goals. Respondents reported bullying acts used to get rid of unwanted personnel, with the goal of avoiding severance pay, or of removing supporters of the former government from positions of political and economic influence. Bullying was also described as working towards the dominance of the sociocultural worldview of one political group over another. We discuss asymmetric intergroup bullying as one mechanism through which acute intergroup hierarchy in the broader society corrupts management practice and employee interactions, in turn exacerbating economic inequality along group lines

Projected climate change impacts on upland heaths in Ireland

Heathland habitats in Ireland occur primarily in an oceanic setting which is strongly influenced by changes in the climate. As a consequence of the oceanic environment, Ireland has a high proportion of the northern Atlantic wet and alpine and boreal heaths of high conservation value within Europe. Future climate change is widely expected to place additional pressure on these systems. Seven bioclimatic envelope modelling techniques implemented in the BIOMOD modelling framework were used to model Wet and Alpine and Boreal heath distributions in Ireland. The 1961 to 1990 baseline models closely matched the observed distribution, and emphasise the strong dependency on climate. Mean winter precipitation, mean winter temperature and elevation were found to be important model components. The fitted models discrimination ability was assessed using the area under the curve (range 0.874 to 0.929, Wet heath; 0.858 to 0.936, Alpine and Boreal heath) of a receiver operating characteristic plot; the true skill statistic (range 0.648 to 0.713, Wet heath; 0.666 to 0.737, Alpine and Boreal heath); and Cohen’s kappa (range 0.652 to 0.714, Wet heath; 0.641 to 0.738, Alpine and Boreal heath). A BIOMOD ensemble prediction from all the models was used to project changes based on a climate change scenario for 2031 to 2060 dynamically downscaled from the Hadley Centre HadCM3-Q16 global climate model. The climate change projections for the individual models change markedly from the consistent baseline predictions. Projected climate space losses (gains) from the BIOMOD consensus model are -40.84% (limited expansion) and -10.38% (full expansion) for Wet heath; and -18.31% (limited expansion) and +28.17% (full expansion) for Alpine and Boreal heath. Although the consensus models project gains in climate space for both habitats in other parts of the country, new habitat formation in these areas is unlikely as current (and hence near future) land use and other conditions are not likely to favour expansion

The nature of social dominance orientation: theorizing and measuring preferences for intergroup inequality using the new SDO₇ scale

A new conceptualization and measurement of social dominance orientation-individual differences in the preference for group based hierarchy and inequality-is introduced. In contrast to previous measures of social dominance orientation that were designed to be unidimensional, the new measure (SDO7) embeds theoretically grounded subdimensions of SDO-SDO-Dominance (SDO-D) and SDO-Egalitarianism (SDO-E). SDO-D constitutes a preference for systems of group-based dominance in which high status groups forcefully oppress lower status groups. SDO-E constitutes a preference for systems of group-based inequality that are maintained by an interrelated network of subtle hierarchy-enhancing ideologies and social policies. Confirmatory factor and criterion validity analyses confirmed that SDO-D and SDO-E are theoretically distinct and dissociate in terms of the intergroup outcomes they best predict. For the first time, distinct personality and individual difference bases of SDO-D and SDO-E are outlined. We clarify the construct validity of SDO by strictly assessing a preference for dominance hierarchies in general, removing a possible confound relating to support for hierarchy benefitting the ingroup. Consistent with this, results show that among members of a disadvantaged ethnic minority group (African Americans), endorsement of SDO7 is inversely related to ingroup identity. We further demonstrate these effects using nationally representative samples of U.S. Blacks and Whites, documenting the generalizability of these findings. Finally, we introduce and validate a brief 4-item measure of each dimension. This article importantly extends our theoretical understanding of one of the most generative constructs in social psychology, and introduces powerful new tools for its measurement

Social Dominance Orientation: Revisiting the Structure and Function of a Variable Predicting Social and Political Attitudes

Social dominance orientation (SDO) is one of the most powerful predictors of intergroup attitudes and behavior. Although SDO works well as a unitary construct, some analyses suggest it might consist of two complementary dimensions—SDO-Dominance (SDO-D), or the preference for some groups to dominate others, and SDO-Egalitarianism (SDO-E), a preference for nonegalitarian intergroup relations. Using seven samples from the United States and Israel, the authors confirm factor-analytic evidence and show predictive validity for both dimensions. In the United States, SDO-D was theorized and found to be more related to old-fashioned racism, zero-sum competition, and aggressive intergroup phenomena than SDO-E; SDO-E better predicted more subtle legitimizing ideologies, conservatism, and opposition to redistributive social policies. In a contentious hierarchical intergroup context (the Israeli–Palestinian context), SDO-D better predicted both conservatism and aggressive intergroup attitudes. Fundamentally, these analyses begin to establish the existence of complementary psychological orientations underlying the preference for group-based dominance and inequality.Psycholog

Shaping the Development of Prejudice: Latent Growth Modeling of the Influence of Social Dominance Orientation on Outgroup Affect in Youth

Social dominance orientation (SDO) has been theorized as a stable, early-emerging trait influencing outgroup evaluations, a view supported by evidence from cross-sectional and two-wave longitudinal research. Yet, the limitations of identifying causal paths with cross-sectional and two-wave designs are increasingly being acknowledged. This article presents the first use of multi-wave data to test the over-time relationship between SDO and outgroup affect among young people. We use cross-lagged and latent growth modeling (LGM) of a three-wave data set employing Norwegian adolescents (over 2 years, N = 453) and a five-wave data set with American university students (over 4 years, N = 748). Overall, SDO exhibits high temporal rank-order stability and predicts changes in outgroup affect. This research represents the strongest test to date of SDO’s role as a stable trait that influences the development of prejudice, while highlighting LGM as a valuable tool for social and political psychology

The long and short of it: the temporal significance of wealth and income

In the literatures on the lived experience of poverty and richness temporal dimensions are underappreciated. Comparing qualitative interviews with those at opposite ends of the income and wealth distributions in the UK, we examine a temporal contrast: while “poor” participants experience money as flows of income which focus orientation to the present and constrain orientation to the future, “rich” participants experience money not only as flows of income, but also in the form of a stock of wealth which facilitates long-term orientations. Highlighting the enduring nature of wealth and the comparative short-termism of income, we argue that the way in which capital and income relates to individuals' orientations to the future is important for understanding how economic inequality is experienced. Put differently, the form which economic resources take matters for one's ability to plan and control the future. This insight contributes to our understanding of the experience of being economically advantaged or disadvantaged, with implications for (social) policy

Developing a predictive modelling capacity for a climate change-vulnerable blanket bog habitat: Assessing 1961-1990 baseline relationships

Aim: Understanding the spatial distribution of high priority habitats and developing predictive models using climate and environmental variables to replicate these distributions are desirable conservation goals. The aim of this study was to model and elucidate the contributions of climate and topography to the distribution of a priority blanket bog habitat in Ireland, and to examine how this might inform the development of a climate change predictive capacity for peat-lands in Ireland. Methods: Ten climatic and two topographic variables were recorded for grid cells with a spatial resolution of 1010 km, covering 87% of the mainland land surface of Ireland. Presence-absence data were matched to these variables and generalised linear models (GLMs) fitted to identify the main climatic and terrain predictor variables for occurrence of the habitat. Candidate predictor variables were screened for collinearity, and the accuracy of the final fitted GLM was evaluated using fourfold cross-validation based on the area under the curve (AUC) derived from a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) plot. The GLM predicted habitat occurrence probability maps were mapped against the actual distributions using GIS techniques. Results: Despite the apparent parsimony of the initial GLM using only climatic variables, further testing indicated collinearity among temperature and precipitation variables for example. Subsequent elimination of the collinear variables and inclusion of elevation data produced an excellent performance based on the AUC scores of the final GLM. Mean annual temperature and total mean annual precipitation in combination with elevation range were the most powerful explanatory variable group among those explored for the presence of blanket bog habitat. Main conclusions: The results confirm that this habitat distribution in general can be modelled well using the non-collinear climatic and terrain variables tested at the grid resolution used. Mapping the GLM-predicted distribution to the observed distribution produced useful results in replicating the projected occurrence of the habitat distribution over an extensive area. The methods developed will usefully inform future climate change predictive modelling for Irelan

Projected Range Contractions of European Protected Oceanic Montane Plant Communities: Focus on Climate Change Impacts Is Essential for Their Future Conservation

Global climate is rapidly changing and while many studies have investigated the potential impacts of this on the distribution of montane plant species and communities, few have focused on those with oceanic montane affinities. In Europe, highly sensitive bryophyte species reach their optimum occurrence, highest diversity and abundance in the northwest hyperoceanic regions, while a number of montane vascular plant species occur here at the edge of their range. This study evaluates the potential impact of climate change on the distribution of these species and assesses the implications for EU Habitats Directive-protected oceanic montane plant communities. We applied an ensemble of species distribution modelling techniques, using atlas data of 30 vascular plant and bryophyte species, to calculate range changes under projected future climate change. The future effectiveness of the protected area network to conserve these species was evaluated using gap analysis. We found that the majority of these montane species are projected to lose suitable climate space, primarily at lower altitudes, or that areas of suitable climate will principally shift northwards. In particular, rare oceanic montane bryophytes have poor dispersal capacity and are likely to be especially vulnerable to contractions in their current climate space. Significantly different projected range change responses were found between 1) oceanic montane bryophytes and vascular plants; 2) species belonging to different montane plant communities; 3) species categorised according to different biomes and eastern limit classifications. The inclusion of topographical variables in addition to climate, significantly improved the statistical and spatial performance of models. The current protected area network is projected to become less effective, especially for specialised arctic-montane species, posing a challenge to conserving oceanic montane plant communities. Conservation management plans need significantly greater focus on potential climate change impacts, including models with higher-resolution species distribution and environmental data, to aid these communities’ long-term survival