On the Relation Between Social Dominance Orientation and Environmentalism: A 25-Nation Study

• Approval of hierarchy and inequality in society indexed by social dominance orientation (SDO) extends to support for human dominance over the natural world. We tested this negative association between SDO and environmentalism and the validity of the new Short Social Dominance Orientation Scale in two cross-cultural samples of students (N = 4,163, k = 25) and the general population (N = 1,237, k = 10). As expected, the higher people were on SDO, the less likely they were to engage in environmental citizenship actions, pro-environmental behaviors and to donate to an environmental organization. Multilevel moderation results showed that the SDO-environmentalism relation was stronger in societies with marked societal inequality, lack of societal development, and environmental standards. The results highlight the interplay between individual psychological orientations and social context, as well as the view of nature subscribed to by those high in SDO.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Psykologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Psychology (hsv//eng)

Keyword

social dominance orientation

environmentalism

social context

cross-cultural research

hierarchy

behavior

metaanalysis

perspective

inequality

societies

ideology

values

Psychology

atto f

1994

journal of personality and social psychology

v67

p741

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)