Social dominance orientation is shaped by group status, socialization, and temperament alike

Evidence

SDO is significantly affected by at least four factors. First, SDO will be driven by one’s membership in and identification with arbitrary, highly salient, and hierarchically organized arbitrary-set groups. In general and everything else being equal, one should expect that dominants and/or those who identify with dominants, will have higher levels of social dominance orientation than subordinates and/or those who identify with subordinates. Second, one’s level of SDO is affected also by a series of background and socialization factors such as one’s level of education, one’s religious faith, traumatic life experiences, and a whole set of other socialization experiences (e.g., war, depression, natural disasters). Third, there is reason to believe that people are born with different “temperamental predispositions” and personalities (Bouchard, 1994; Loehlin, 1993). One such temperamental predisposition is empathy. There is reason to believe that the greater one’s empathy, the lower one’s level of SDO. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3233

Categorization

• DEFINE: Lays out the four determinant factors of SDO, clarifying the construct’s multi-causal structure.