Social Dominance Orientation

Li Bennich-Björkman

Social dominance orientation (SDO) is a concept developed in social dominance theory (SDT) to describe an individual-level value structure that prefers inequality and stratified categorization among social groups. Individuals with high SDO desire a society marked by stratification and are thus inclined to accept such social structures as warranted. They differentiate between groups on the basis of superiority and subordination, which, in political practice, often leads to attitudes and behavior that entail discrimination and segregation. Insight into the existence of SDO emerged from growing interest in the group-based aspects of human life. SDT, of which orientation forms an integral and crucial part, was first developed by Felicia Pratto and Jim Sidanius in the early 1990s and since then has been frequently used in psychology and social psychology research, mostly in journals focusing on personality or experimental psychology. As issues of multiculturalism, integration, and assimilation due to increasing migration and societal ...

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