Social dominance theory: Its agenda and method

European Review of Social Psychology, 2006

This chapter reviews the last 15 years of research inspired by social dominance theory, a general theory of societal group-based inequality. In doing so, we sketch the broad outlines of the theory and discuss some of the controversies surrounding it, such as the ''invariance hypothesis'' regarding gender differences in social dominance orientation (SDO) and the effect of social context on the expression of SDO. We also discuss the central role of gender in the construction and maintenance of group-based inequality, and review some of the new research inspired by the social dominance perspective. Finally, we identify and discuss some of the most important theoretical questions posed by social dominance theory that are yet to be researched.

Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 2007

This study examines the relation between social dominance orientation (SDO) and three hierarchy-attenuating beliefs (attitude toward and openness to personally engaging in interracial dating and attitude toward transracial adoption) and two hierarchy-enhancing beliefs (stereotyping of interracial relationships and racial identity concerns in transracial adoption). Participants were 77 Black and 142 White Canadians from the Toronto area. SDO was significantly negatively related to the three hierarchy-attenuating beliefs and positively to the two hierarchy-enhancing beliefs for Whites, whereas no significant relationships were found for Blacks. The relation between SDO and the outcome variables for Blacks and Whites differed significantly with the exception of openness to interracial dating. Interracial dating experience moderated the relation between race, SDO, and openness to become personally involved in interracial dating. Results support and extend previous research by Fang, Sidanius, and Pratto. Their social implications are discussed.

Journal of Social Issues, 2014

We present an intervention to reduce gender prejudice in future professionals of social sciences in three samples from Argentina (N = 28), Spain (N = 83) and El Salvador (N = 67), with slight differences across countries. The program was based on scientific research on sexism and gender-based power aimed at: a) increasing awareness of gender inequalities; b) reducing sexism in men and women; c) providing participants with resources to implement social interventions. First the intervention is described, and then empirical evidence of its efficacy is provided. Results showed a reduction of benevolent sexism (BS), hostile sexism (HS), and essentialist views, and higher support for collective actions in Argentina (Study 1).

Systemic Practice and Action Research, 2013

Social Dominance Theory, as forwarded by Sidanius and Pratto (Social dominance: an intergroup theory of social hierarchy and oppression, 1999) and as elaborated upon in continuing research by themselves and others, claims to offer a way of exploring the structuring of social systems along the lines of group-based hierarchies. In this article I endeavour to highlight the manner in which this mode of theorizing and of approaching the study of social ''realities'' might have deleterious social effects, via its potentially selffulfilling claims. I present an alternative way of approaching (co)-inquiries into the social worlds of which we are part--based on an examination of some qualities of retroductive thinking/imagining, which I interpret and extend in order to take more fully into account the impact of our knowing processes on the social worlds being addressed.

Journal of Business Ethics, 2012

This article uses social dominance theory (SDT) to explore the dynamic and systemic nature of the initiation and maintenance of organizational corruption. Rooted in the definition of organizational corruption as misuse of power or position for personal or organizational gain, this work suggests that organizational corruption is driven by the individual and institutional tendency to structure societies as group-based social hierarchies. SDT describes a series of factors and processes across multiple levels of analysis that systemically contribute to the initiation and maintenance of social hierarchies and associated power inequalities, favoritism, and discrimination. I posit that the same factors and processes also contribute to individuals' lower awareness of the misuse of power and position within the social hierarchies, leading to the initiation and maintenance of organizational corruption. Specifically, individuals high in social dominance orientation, believing that they belong to superior groups, are likely to be less aware of corruption because of their feeling of entitlement to greater power and their desire to maintain dominance even if that requires exploiting others. Members of subordinate groups are also likely to have lower awareness of corruption if they show more favoritism toward dominant group members to enhance their sense of worth and preserve social order. Institutions contribute to lower awareness of corruption by developing and enforcing structures, norms, and practices that promote informational ambiguity and maximize focus on dominance and promotion. Dynamic coordination among individuals and institutions is ensured through the processes of person-environment fit and legitimizing beliefs, ideologies, or rationalizations. Keywords Awareness Á Hierarchy Á Inequality Á Institutions Á Legitimizing myth Á Organizational corruption Á Outgroup favoritism Á Person-environment fit Á Power Á Social dominance orientation It certainly wasn't because I thought about it carefully ahead of time. I think I was arrogant enough at the time to believe that I could cut corners, not care about details that were going on and not think about consequences… I didn't think I was going to get caught at all… I refused to deal with the everyday details-…these details were meant for other people, not for me. Sam Waksal, former CEO of ImClone, convicted for insider trading (Leung 2004).

Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 2005

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. antiegalitarianism) 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.

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

It is widely believed that power activates the behavioral approach system (BAS; Guinote, 2017; Keltner, Gruenfeld & Anderson, 2003), however, findings are inconsistent. Here we discuss evidence suggesting that perceived threats to control in the power domain are key determinants of the association between power and approach motivation. We propose that objective or subjective threats to the exercise of power trigger behavioral inhibition, conflicts between approach and behavioral inhibition, and reactive, negatively valenced approach motivation. Furthermore, threatened power holders reassert powerin particular by using coercionas defense against threat. We discuss literature in support of these hypotheses involving external threats (e.g., instability, illegitimacy; uncertainty) and subjective states (anxiety, motivation to maintain power, perceived incompetence, submissiveness and perceptions of low power) that trigger the perception of lack of control in the power domain, and undermine the positive tone of power holders' approach motivation.

Journal of Criminal Psychology, 2011

This study using a prison sample to explore Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), socially dominant inmate behaviour, index offence, age and length of time served in secure environments. A sample of 397 adult male prisoners completed the Direct and Indirect Prisoner Behaviour Checklist-Scaled (prisoner behaviour towards other inmates and staff) and the Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) Scale. It was predicted that prisoners would report higher SDO than non-incarcerated populations and that among inmates those with approach orientated index offences would be higher in SDO than those whose offenses were more remote. It was also predicted that SDO would be related to younger age, higher lifetime rates of incarceration, more negative behaviour towards other inmates and staff, and more resource focused behaviour. The results broadly supported predictions, and possible implications for practice and directions for future research are discussed.

International Review of Social Psychology

Despite the abundance of research on disadvantaged minority group members, the research field on the ramifications of low group status is largely split between more material and psychological lines of explanation. There is also a lack of research on how subjectively perceived socioeconomic status and discrimination cumulatively affect the sense of national belonging of ethnic minority group members. This survey study was conducted among Russian-speaking immigrants in Finland (N = 316) and Estonia (N = 501). The results in Estonia showed that for national identification to be high, both indicators of subjective group status had to be perceived as relatively high. In Finland, there was no interaction between the two indicators of subjectively perceived low group status. The study shows how perceptions of cumulative disadvantage may provoke a backlash in the form of immigrants' psychological distancing from the national ingroup. The findings are discussed in relation to the pervasiveness of low status in different intergroup contexts and minority group members' perceived investments to society.

New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 2012

This chapter outlines Erik Erikson' s theory of identity, empirical operationalizations of this theory, and key assumptions that have characterized the study of identity in adolescence and emerging adulthood. It discusses the origins of psychosocial identity theories in North American cultural contexts and crosscultural issues involved in using neo-Eriksonian identity models in other contexts. In particular, the chapter examines the individualist assumptions that underlie the neo-Eriksonian approach. The chapter concludes with a review of the other six chapters in this volume and of the countries on which these other chapters focus.

PLoS ONE, 2017

Employment discrimination causes problems at the labor market, and is hard to combat. Can increasing the degree of structure when selecting applicants increase fairness? Students were asked to perform a computerized selection task and were either provided with tools for systematizing information about the applicants (structured selection) or no such tools (unstructured selection). We hypothesized and found that a structured process, where employing recruitment tools rather than the recruiter’s impressionistic judgment is key, improves the ability to identify job-relevant criteria and hence selecting more qualified applicants, even when in-group favoritism is tempting (e.g. when the outgroup applicants are more competent). Increasing structure helped recruiters select more competent applicants and reduced ethnic discrimination. Increasing the motivation to carefully follow the structured procedure strengthened these effects further. We conclude that structure pays off, and that motiv...

2020

The objective of this research is to analyze the psychometric properties of the Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) Scale, in a community sample of the city of Arica, Chile, implementing psychometric techniques according to the state of disciplinary art. The sampling was non-probabilistic, for convenience and the availability of 812 participants, between the ages of 18 to 89 years. Reliability estimates, confirmatory factorial analyses, and exploratory structural equation models were performed. The results provided evidence of validity based on the internal structure of the test, presenting good adjustment of the structure of SDO (RMSEA = .073; CFI = .971; TLI = .959), and estimated adequate levels of reliability (Opposition to the Equality: α = .85 and ω = .84, Group dominance: α = .67 and ω = .66). Finally, it is concluded that the scores of the SDO scale have sufficient evidence to support its use and interpretation, in general population equivalent to that of the present study.

European Journal of Social Psychology, 2013

We tested how perceived threat to group position affects the relationship between beliefs about the acceptability of social inequality-as measured by social dominance orientation (SDO)-and discrimination. We hypothesized that high-SDO heterosexuals would respond with increased discrimination when they perceived status gains for gays. In a pilot study, we found that SDO correlated with gay prejudice and with perceiving gays to be gaining status. In an experiment, we manipulated the perceived status of gays and measured SDO, traditional values and money donated to anti-gay causes. SDO was correlated with more anti-gay donations, except when gays were perceived to be low in status; then people high in SDO discriminated less, making fewer anti-gay donations in the Low compared to the Gain and Control status conditions. By contrast, traditional values were correlated with more anti-gay donations in all conditions, and the correlation was especially strong in the Low status condition.

Frontiers in Psychology

While significant organizational research evaluates effective leadership traits and decades of psychological research have investigated emotion, there is a lack of consensus in organizational behavior research related to whether emotion expressed by a leader elicits positive or negative outcomes. We seek to augment existing research by exploring the effect of three dimensions, namely, the intensity of anger expressed, the gender of the leader, and the gender of the observer on perceptions of leadership effectiveness and future status conferral. In Study 1, we recruited 40 participants from a well-known U.S. university to select appropriate terms attributable to intense, moderate, and neutral levels of anger expression. In Study 2, we recruited a diverse pool of 296 participants and employed a quasi-experimental method by randomly assigning participants into one of the six conditions created by three levels of anger expression intensity and the leader gender. Participants were asked to read a vignette in which a male or a female leader responds to an anger-provoking situation with different levels of anger expression and evaluate the leader on perceived leadership effectiveness and future status conferral. Our study findings demonstrated that a leader demonstrating no anger was perceived higher in leadership effectiveness than a leader showing either moderate or intense anger. Juxtaposed to these results, for future status conferral, a leader expressing no anger was perceived as higher in future status than a leader expressing moderate anger without significant difference found between no anger and intense anger. We also found a significant main effect of observer gender with female participants giving lower ratings for leadership effectiveness and status conferral than male participants. Possible explanations and practical implications regarding gender-specific findings are discussed.

International Studies Quarterly, 2017

Why do states intentionally and publicly violate international norms, even when they anticipate (social or material) costs for doing so? Unfortunately, constructivist scholarship on norm-dynamics lacks a well-developed account of deliberate and open norm transgressions. This gap in the literature has led to a limited understanding of resistance to international norms. Constructivist scholarship on norm-dynamics often treats compliance as an inherent "good" that all states move toward. However, I argue that public acts of norm noncompliance can serve important social functions and are strategically performed by states in pursuit of specific (social or material) ends. I demonstrate that states will overtly and self-consciously violate international norms to either assert their identity as insiders or outsiders in international society or to contest those categories altogether. Drawing on work in sociology and the social psychology of deviance, I develop the concept of norm transgressions to capture intentional and purposeful violations of international norms. I present a typology of norm transgressions (rejective, adaptive, inclusionary, and exclusionary) to provide the groundwork for future scholarship on overt resistance to international norms. The concept of norm transgression bears important implications for our understanding of deviancy, institutional compliance, and normative change in international politics.

Exploring Gender at Work, 2021

We present a classification-based approach to identify quasi-stellar radio sources (quasars) in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and evaluate its performance on a manually labeled training set. While reasonable results can already be obtained via approaches working only on photometric data, our experiments indicate that simple but problem-specific features extracted from spectroscopic data can significantly improve the classification performance. Since our approach works orthogonal to existing classification schemes used for building the spectroscopic catalogs, our classification results are well suited for a mutual assessment of the approaches' accuracies.

PLoS ONE, 2021

The naive social Darwinism, also called the Competitive Jungle Belief (CJB), according to the theory of the Dual-Process Motivational (DPM) model, is recognized as an expanded perceptual scheme acting as a cognitive mediator between deep individual characteristics and the area of socio-political attitudes and ideologies. This article aims to show the individual differences that can be dispositional characteristics to believe in the Competitive Jungle scheme’s principles. The presented studies’ main theoretical question is to find out whether the CJB bases on positive "individual resources" or rather some psychological deficits. In an extensive survey study, including four random-representative samples of adults Poles (with N ranging from 624 to 853 respondents), we tested the predictive power of the five categories of variables: 1) attachment styles; 2) Big Five personality traits; 3) Dark Triad of personality; 4) basic human values and 5) moral judgments. The results show...

Journal of Social Issues, 2015

A prevailing view in psychology is that inter-group disadvantage poses a serious threat to psychological well-being. Lower self-esteem and out-group favoritism are two of the most examined forms of psychological damage thought to follow from inter-group disadvantage. We review theory and research on lower self-esteem and out-group favoritism with close attention to the nature of the evidence suggesting that inter-group disadvantage is detrimental psychologically. We argue that this evidence is not as strong or unambiguous as is widely believed. This has likely led to an underestimation of psychological resistance to disadvantagethat middle ground between the extremes of surviving at subsistence levels of psychological well-being and confronting disadvantage. We propose that greater attention to the psychological meaning that the disadvantaged give their position enables a more accurate assessment of the diverse forms of psychological resistance to group disadvantage.

Psico-USF, 2017

Resumo As crenças no mundo justo (CMJ) têm permitido a compreensão de uma série de fenômenos sociais, o que tem levado ao desenvolvimento de medidas para sua mensuração. O presente artigo tem como objetivo apresentar evidências de validade de uma versão adaptada da Escala Pessoal de CMJ (CMJ-P). 146 participantes, em sua maioria mulheres (69%), com idades variando de 17 a 66 anos (M = 27,79, DP = 13,67) responderam ao instrumento de CMJ-P, a quatro escalas (CMJ-global, autoestima, bem-estar, religiosidade) para o teste de validade convergente e informaram dados sociodemográficos. Assim como no estudo original, foi encontrada uma solução unifatorial e consistência interna satisfatória (α = 0,83). Adicionalmente, como esperado, foram encontrados relacionamentos positivos da CMJ-P com CMJ-G, autoestima e bem-estar, mas apenas marginalmente significativo com a religiosidade. Verificou-se ainda relação positiva da CMJ-P com a renda e nível de escolaridade. Esta versão adaptada demonstra-...

Small Business Economics, 2018

People have started to question mainstream, supposedly gender-neutral, entrepreneurship definitions and perceptions with the confrontations of feminist perspective. Considering entrepreneurship as a gendered concept, in this study we handled gender as a lens in entrepreneurship. The purpose of this study is to portray gender specific characteristics and perceptions of entrepreneurship in Turkey. With this objective, we analyzed interviews with entrepreneurs in two Turkish entrepreneurship-focused business magazines and one popular business blog consisting of valuable startup and women entrepreneurs' stories and interviews. We performed qualitative analysis on the content of these interviews to understand the perspectives of female and male entrepreneurs, and the differences between them as to their statements. We analyzed the choice of words and interviewees' discourses. As to the findings, the most referred element of gendered entrepreneurship is family embeddedness based on stereotypical beliefs and norm systems. In addition, this finding shows how culturally embedded beliefs deeply effect women's expectations/projections, barriers and needs concerning entrepreneurship. In Turkey, there is only a handful of studies concerning women entrepreneurship from the perspective of gender as a lens. Therefore, in this article, gender specific perceptions of entrepreneurship in Turkey as a developing and a masculine country were revealed.

Journal of Theoretical Social Psychology, 2021

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Social Sciences

This study aims to provide evidence that managers’ commitment towards preventing gender violence against women is affected by implicit resistance from the patriarchal culture. A structured questionnaire was given to 673 managers of 243 small, medium, and large private companies in Metropolitan Lima, Peru. We design and test a conceptual model using covariance-based structural equation modeling. Even though 90.3% of managers report being committed to and in favor of preventing gender violence in companies, 48.6% have intense implicit resistance against it. In general, 3 out of 4 managers do not believe in violence against women because they consider it “biased”, and think that policies should only talk about family or partner violence. In addition, 2 out of 4 believe that equality policies have “hidden interests” that generate mistrust. The structural equations show that implicit resistance, directly and indirectly, decreases managers’ commitment and actions towards preventing gender...

Psicologia: Teoria e Pesquisa, 2018

RESUMO O Modelo da Discriminação Justificada postula que o uso de justificativas exerce um importante papel na compreensão da discriminação. No presente estudo, testamos o MDJ no contexto da discriminação a estudantes que ingressaram na universidade por cotas raciais. Participaram do estudo 182 estudantes universitários, em sua maioria mulheres, que ingressaram na universidade pela ampla concorrência. Os participantes responderam a medidas de preconceito, de discriminação, de percepção de ameaça real e foram alocados em uma de três condições experimentais: valorização das cotas, ameaça real e controle. Verificou-se que a percepção de ameaça real exerceu um papel de mediação na relação entre preconceito e discriminação, independente da condição experimental, indicando o potencial explicativo do MDJ para compreensão da discriminação a cotistas.

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications

Two cross-sectional studies were carried out in order to identify predictors of antisemitism, measured using the Generalised Antisemitism or GeAs scale. In the first, which used a self-selecting sample of UK-resident adults (n = 809), age, gender, ethnicity, and educational level as well as a wide range of ideological predictors were analysed as bivariate predictors of antisemitism. In the second, which used a representative sample of UK-resident adults (n = 1853), the same demographic predictors plus the non-demographic predictors found to have the strongest bivariate relationships with Generalised Antisemitism in the previous study were used to construct a linear model with multiple predictors. Ethnicity, support for totalitarian government, belief in malevolent global conspiracies, and anti-hierarchical aggression were identified as the strongest predictors of Generalised Antisemitism. However, support for totalitarian government was only found to predict ‘old’ antisemitic attitu...

Scandinavian Political Studies

In this study, we explore individual differences in suspicion of welfare overuse in Sweden. Focusing on previously underdeveloped areas, we find that the hitherto observed negative relationship between political interest and suspicion of welfare overuse is only valid for those who sympathize with political parties to the left (and to a lesser extent the Green Party). Conversely, individuals who sympathize with centre-right parties or right-wing populists differ little internally depending on their level of political interest. We also find a strong positive correlation between anti-immigrant attitudes and suspicion about welfare overuse. Finally, we find that women are less suspicious of welfare overuse than men are, and that this cannot be attributed to gender differences in material risks or resources, education, experiences of welfare services, general trustfulness, anti-immigrant sentiment or political orientation. Neither do gender differences vary according to strength of gender identification. Thus, being suspicious about welfare overuse is not likely to be perceived as a typically masculine or feminine posture. Based on our findings, we argue that future studies exploring partisan or ideological differences in perceptions of welfare overuse need to consider these in conjunction with political interest and political context; that rising anti-immigrant sentiments pose a particularly serious threat to the legitimacy of welfare states, given their strong connectedness to suspicion of welfare overuse; and that gender differences in perceptions of welfare overuse are more fruitfully addressed through a lens of gender relations, rather than gender role stereotypes.

Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2017

We studied whether high-social dominant employees sustain hierarchies in different hierarchyenhancing and hierarchy-attenuating organizations endorsing harsh and soft power tactics. We found that social dominance orientation was positively associated with harsh power tactics, and negatively associated with soft power tactics. Employees higher in social dominance orientation endorsed harsh and opposed to soft power tactics as respectively hierarchy-enhancing and hierarchy-attenuating legitimizing myths that promote a dominant-submissive form of intergroup relationships. We also found that supervisors higher in social dominance, due to their dominant position, strongly opposed soft power tactics more than subordinates did. Amongst high-social dominant employees in the hierarchy-attenuating (vs. hierarchy-enhancing) organization, we observed the strongest opposition to soft power tactics, which are the tactics most shared in an organization which tends to attenuate hierarchies. 1 | I NTR OD U CTI ON Asymmetrical relationships can be observed almost everywhere in societies. Members of dominants groups hold a disproportionate share of positive social values, monopolizing social, politics, and economical resources over subordinate groups (e.g., Pratto, Sidanius, & Levin, 2006). According to social dominance theory, social hierarchies between groups are maintained in part through consensually shared social ideologies, attitudes, beliefs, and stereotypes called legitimizing myths that help sustain social inequality and hierarchies (Pratto et al., 2006; Sidanius, Pratto, Van Laar, & Levin, 2004). Social dominance theory argues that dominant groups have a greater endorsement of myths defined as "hierarchy-enhancing legitimizing myths," while subordinate groups show a greater endorsement of "hierarchy-attenuating legitimizing myths." When there is an ideological consensus rather than dissension in how much dominant and subordinate group members endorse legitimizing myths, they tend to concur in preserving hierarchies and inequalities for maintaining stability in social systems across groups. In particular, subordinates groups can: (a) overtly endorse "outgroup favoritism" in favor of dominant groups; (b) use "self-debilitating behaviors" (e.g., in-group direct violence) that contribute to their own subordination, and (c) overtly endorse "ideological asymmetry," according to which all main psychological processes, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors facilitate the interplay of group based dominance (Pratto

Frontiers in Psychology, 2020

International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 2020

Vigorous debates have unfolded challenging public recognition of individuals whose names and images are emblazoned on public displays of recognition, including professional awards. Efforts to diversify higher education institutions in the U.S. have largely been focused at recruitment and retention efforts with less attention directed to racial and gender disparities of public recognition and recipients of professional awards. This study considered the role of professional awards by disciplinary educational organizations. Specifically, we ask how are named professional awards reflective and productive of discursive structures within professional higher education associations? While considering the historical and social structures of higher education and the professional associations, our findings reveal a markedly differed discourse from awards named after women and racially minoritized individuals to that of white men. We suggest ways in which professional associations can reconsider their practices to attract a broader and more inclusive pool of deserving recipients of prestigious awards.

Journal of Pacific Rim Psychology, 2016

Based on Pettigrew and Meertens’ Blatant and Subtle Prejudice Scale (1995), a new scale for assessing the expression of prejudice is proposed in this article. The original scale has been changed in three ways: (a) items were rewritten to avoid double assertions, (b) three new items were considered to adequately measure the ‘denial of positive emotions’ component, and (c) biased wording of the ‘cultural differences’ domain items measuring perceived cultural differences rather than prejudices was removed. We used a representative sample of 500 participants living in Antofagasta, in Chile. Confirmatory factor and a hierarchical regression analyses support the proposed new scale. This instrument provides two measures: one general measure related to the intensity of prejudice expression and a second measure indicating the presence or absence of prejudice for each component type (Rejection, Intimacy, Values, Emotions, and Culture). The scale was confirmed for both genders; 45.2% of the pa...

Frontiers in Psychology

The prevalence of teams in contemporary organizations and the trend toward diversity in a workforce composed of members from multiple countries have drawn the attention of researchers on the consequences of diversity in workplaces. While there are potential benefits to diversity, relationship conflicts among team members may also result and affect team functioning. The aim of the present study was to explore how supervisors’ social dominance orientation, a tendency to support the arbitrary dominance of specific social groups over others, may relate to relationship conflicts and reduced team commitment within teams. A two-wave study in a sample of 931 individuals from 108 workgroups was conducted to examine the relationship between supervisors’ social dominance orientation and team functioning. Analyses indicated that supervisor social dominance orientation was associated with increased within-team differentiation of leader-member exchange (LMX) relationships based on team members’ n...

Peace Psychology Book Series, 2016

Social identity theory proposes that the need for self-esteem motivates group members to protect and enhance the positivity of their group. In this chapter, we explain this self-esteem hypothesis in detail and discuss its caveats and limitations. We also discuss recent work that proposes a dynamic relation between collective self-esteem and group-related outcomes. Based on this discussion, we present a reformulated version of the self-esteem hypothesis that makes more specific predictions than the original. We also broaden the scope of the selfesteem hypothesis by taking into account identity management strategies other than intergroup discrimination. Hence, this chapter moves beyond the blunt question of whether self-esteem motivates intergroup discrimination and instead provides a more nuanced explanation of the various issues that need to be considered when investigating the relation between the need for self-esteem and group behaviour.