Social dominators internalize competitive cultural messages and sports training from pushy fathers

Evidence

To focus on the “nurture” side of the issue, we have identified many experiences that make people more or less right-wing authoritarian as they go through life. Accordingly, I asked the students who served in my last November 1996 survey, at the end of the booklet, “Why do you think you are as competitive, personally ambitious, and ‘determined to beat the other fellow’ as you are? How did you get that way? Can you name two or three experiences you had that were particularly important in getting you to want power over others in life? Do you have a model like this that you want to be like? Or does none of this apply to you?” … Comparing the answers of the High SDOs with the other students, social dominators more often said such things as “This is the way the world works; people want to get ahead of others”; “Everyone is taught that you have to be competitive to be in control of your future in today’s society”; and “This is the only way you will ever achieve in this world.” So social dominators certainly picked up these cultural messages clearly. They also seemed to have engaged in competitive sports more often than most people, where they described the thrill of victory and (especially) the agony of defeat: “It’s because of the rush I get every time I win”; and “I really get off when my team wins”; “I like the feeling of winning and maybe more importantly I hate losing”; “I hate losing”; “I detest losing”; “I will do anything to not lose”; and “I absolutely hate losing.” High SDOs often said both parents had encouraged their drives to be Number One; but fathers were mentioned more often as their “pushers,” and as the role models they followed. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1069