Paternalistic domination uses conditional love, not force, to secure subordinate compliance.

Evidence

In long-term expropriative relations structured with frequent one-onone contact across group lines (as in contemporary gender relations, and in race relations in America in the antebellum South and Jim Crow South), social distance mechanisms prevail and dominant group members exploit their close access to subordinates’ daily lives to establish a paternalistic regime ( Jackman, 1994). Dominants define the needs and interests of subordinates in relation to their position in the status hierarchy and division of labor, and then claim to supply those needs. Subordinates are praised and rewarded for manifesting the attributes that have been categorically assigned to them, and punished for lapsing into behaviors deemed inappropriate. The rewards and punishments are primarily social: compliant subordinates are rewarded with social inclusion, admiration, friendship, affection, or even love, while subordinates who flaunt the rules face social exclusion, ridicule, humiliation, or stigmatization. Human self-interest, sociability, and rationality ensure that most subordinates comply readily with expectations. The costs of noncompliance are bitter, while compliance offers individuals their best prospects for social success. Under these crushing constraints, the vast majority of subordinates take it upon themselves to meet or exceed the demands made by dominants, even competing with each other to excel in their designated duties and attributes. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 671

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A dense mechanism account of how intimacy and affection can be the most effective instruments of group domination — the compliance is self-enforced by subordinates competing to please. Paradigm-level insight into how warm relations sustain hierarchy.
• XREF: Echoes Jackman’s ‘Velvet Glove’ thesis and connects to the Milgrom material in my library — the social-control book is about impersonal trust regimes, while here warmth itself is the coercive instrument. Also resonates with ‘The Social Control of Impersonal Trust’ entries. — connects to: The ideal of involuntary love serves society’s domination as its alibi.; Freedom from domination rests on normative respect, not fear of sanctions.