The Positive and Negative Framing of Affirmative Action: A Group Dominance Perspective

Using a sample of 328 While, Latino, and Black Los Angeles County adults, the authors examined the tendency to employ various affirmative action 'frames" (e.g., affirmative action as a "tie-breaking" device or as a quota-based policy). All three groups agreed about which frames cast affirmative action in a positive light and which cast it in a negative light. Although minorities had a tendency to frame affirmative action in terms that most people find morally acceptable, Whites had a tendency to frame affirmative action in terms most people find unacceptable. In addition, compared to minorities, Whites were less supportive of affirmative action regardless of how it was framed. LISREL modeling also was employed to test two competing models regarding predictors of the tendency to use frames that one personally finds to be relatively negative versus positive. Consistent with the expectations of social dominance theory and a motivated cognition perspective, the authors found that social dominance orientation (SDO) had significant net direct and indirect effects on one's framing of affirmative action.African and African American StudiesPsycholog

Person-Organization Congruence and the Maintenance of Group-Based Social Hierarchy: A Social Dominance Perspective

Using vocational choice theory and social dominance theory as guiding frameworks, this paper examines the interrelationships between the types of social institutions that a person occupies, on the one hand, and the sociopolitical attitudes and behavioral predispositions that a person displays, on the other. Beginning with Holland (1959, 1966), numerous researchers have documented the fact that people’s work-related values tend to match the values of their work environments. Researchers have also found, as we might expect, that this value match yields superior job performance and greater employee satisfaction. Social dominance theory has proposed an important expansion of this research: people’s sociopolitical attitudes (e.g. anti-egalitarianism) should also be compatible, or congruent, with their institutional environments (e.g. schools, workplaces). A growing body of research supports this claim. Specifically, recent research has shown that hierarchy-enhancing (HE) organizations (e.g. police forces) tend to be occupied by those with anti-egalitarian beliefs, while hierarchy-attenuating (HA) organizations (e.g. civil liberties organizations) tend to be occupied by those with relatively democratic beliefs. This research has also provided evidence for five (non-mutually exclusive) processes underlying this institutional assortment: self-selection, institutional selection, institutional socialization, differential reward, and differential attrition. This paper reviews the literature bearing on each of these processes, and suggests key paths for future research

Sophistication and the Antecedents of Whites' Racial Policy Attitudes - Racism, Ideology, and Affirmative Action in America

A number of researchers have argued that the effects of prejudice on the racial policy attitudes and general political beliefs of white Americans may be restricted to the poorly educated and politically unsophisticated. In contrast, rather than being motivated by prejudice, the racial policy attitudes and ideological values of the politically sophisticated white Americans should be more firmly informed and motivated by the tolerant values at the heart of American political culture. These values include such things as individualism, notions of fair play, and devotion to the principle of equality of opportunity. We tested this hypothesis using white respondents from the 1986 and 1992 National Election Studies. Our evidence generally indicated that racial policy attitudes and political ideology were more powerfully associated with ideologies of racial dominance and superiority among politically sophisticated white Americans than among political unsophisticated white Americans. Moreover, even among the sophisticated, we found that various forms of egalitarianism predicted support for-rather than opposition to-affirmative action and that support for equal opportunity is not uniformly distributed across the political spectrum.African and African American StudiesPsycholog

Social Dominance Orientation Connects Prejudicial Human-Human and Human-Animal Relations

Recent theorizing suggests that biases toward human outgroups may be related to biases toward (non-human) animals, and that individual differences in desire for group dominance and inequality may underlie associations between these biases. The present investigation directly tests these assumptions. As expected, the results of the current study (N = 191) demonstrate that endorsing speciesist attitudes is significantly and positively associated with negative attitudes toward ethnic outgroups. Importantly, individual differences in social dominance orientation accounted for the association between speciesist and ethnic outgroup attitudes; that is, these variables are associated due to their common association with social dominance orientation that underpins these biases. We conclude that social dominance orientation represents a critical individual difference variable underlying ideological belief systems and attitudes pertaining to both human-human intergroup and human-animal relations

Racism, Ideology, and Affirmative Action Revisited: The Antecedents and Consequences of “Principled Objections” to Affirmative Action

In 2 studies, the antecedents and consequences of "principled objections" to affirmative action (specific, "race-neutral" reasons for opposing the policy) among Whites were examined. In Study 1, data from a probability sample of Los Angeles adults indicated the following: (a) that principled-objection endorsement was driven not merely by race-neutral values but also by dominance-related concerns like racism; (b) that principled objections mediated the effects of group dominance; and (c) that education strengthened-rather than attenuated-the relationship between dominance-related concerns and principled objections, whereas it left the relationship between race-neutral values and the latter essentially unchanged. In Study 2, the education findings were conceptually replicated in a panel study of undergraduates: The completion of additional years of college boosted the correlation between racism and principled objections, whereas it had no effect on the predictive power of conservatism. These results provide support for a general group-dominance approach. which suggests that factors like racism continue to shape White opposition to race-targeted policies.African and African American StudiesPsycholog

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

Ethnic and National Attachment in the Rainbow Nation: The Case of the Republic of South Africa

Previous work concerning the interface between racial and national identification within multiracial states has suggested that dominant racial groups tend to express a firmer grip on ownership of and identification with the nation than is the case for racial minorities. This can occur despite inclusionary political rhetoric to the contrary and within nations regarded as civic rather than ethnic states. In this article, we explored the degree to which there were asymmetries in the interface between racial and national identities within the nation of South Africa, a state whose current political dispensation was founded on the principles of racial pluralism. We examined a large sample of South African citizens from the four officially recognized racial categories: Africans, Whites, Coloreds, and Indian/Asians. The results showed mixed support for the idea of South Africa as a “Rainbow Nation.”Psycholog

We will hunt them down: how social dominance orientation and right-wing authoritarianism fuel ethnic persecution of immigrants in fundamentally different ways

"Despite the fact that SDO and RWA are correlated with one another and both predict support for ethnic persecution of immigrants, it is argued that this aggression is provoked for very different reasons. For authoritarians, outgroup aggression against immigrants should primarily be provoked by immigrant refusal to assimilate into the dominant culture because this violates ingroup conformity. In contrast, SDO should be associated with aggression against immigrants who do assimilate into the dominant culture because this blurs existing status boundaries between groups. Using samples of American and Swiss college students, the data were consistent with this status boundary enforcement hypothesis regarding social dominators and largely consistent with the ingroup conformity hypothesis regarding authoritarians. National and ethnic identification did not account for these results. The results further support the argument that outgroup prejudice and discrimination is most fruitfully seen as an interactive function of individual differences and situational constraints." [author's abstract

Vladimir's Choice and the Distribution of Social Resources

`Vladimir's choice' refers to the tendency for people to favor the ingroup relative to the outgroup—even when doing so requires that people sacrifice ingroup profits in absolute terms. We investigated correlates of this tendency by asking a sample of White undergraduates to complete an allocation task using a resource allocation matrix. While there was a slight tendency for Vladimir's choice to increase with increasing levels of ethnic identification, this tendency disappeared when other factors were considered. Consistent with realistic group conflict theory and social dominance theory, the tendency to make Vladimir's choice increased with increasing levels of perceived intergroup competition and social dominance orientation

Ethnic Enclaves and the Dynamics of Social Identity on the College Campus: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The effects of membership in ethnic organizations and fraternities and sororities on intergroup attitudes were examined using a 5-wave panel study at a major, multiethnic university. The results showed that these effects were similar for both minority and White students. Membership in ethnic student organizations for minorities and Greek organizations for Whites was anteceded by the degree of one's ethnic identity, and the effects of membership in these groups were similar, although not identical, for both White and minority students. These effects included an increased sense of ethnic victimization and a decreased sense of common identity and social inclusiveness. Consistent with social identity theory, at least a portion of these effects were mediated by social identity among both White and minority students.African and African American StudiesPsycholog