Radke Helena (Orcid ID: 0000-0003-2811-0976) Running Head: SOCIAL DOMINANCE ORIENTATION AND SEXISM Negotiating the hierarchy: Social dominance orientation among women is associated with the endorsement of benevolent sexism Helena R. M. Radke1, Matthew J. Hornsey2, Chris G. Sibley3, and Fiona Kate Barlow2 1 Institute for Psychology, University of Osnabrück 2 School of Psychology, University of Queensland 3 School of Psychology, University of Auckland Word Count: 6916 KEYWORDS: Gender, Political Psychology, Prejudice/Stereotyping, Sexism, Social Dominance Orientation, Status Authors’ Note: Please direct all correspondence to Helena R. M. Radke, Institute for Psychology, University of Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany, 49074, E-Mail: [email protected] This is the author manuscript accepted for publication and has undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which may lead to differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as doi: 10.1111/ajpy.12176 This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. Figure_1 (1).tiff This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. Radke Helena (Orcid ID: 0000-0003-2811-0976) Running Head: SOCIAL DOMINANCE ORIENTATION AND SEXISM Negotiating the hierarchy: Social dominance orientation among women is associated with the endorsement of benevolent sexism Word Count: 6916 This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. SOCIAL DOMINANCE ORIENTATION AND SEXISM 2 Abstract Objective: We examine how women high in social dominance orientation reconcile supporting a social system that seemingly disadvantages them. We propose that women high in social dominance orientation are more likely to adopt a benevolently sexist worldview. Method: This paper contains data from two survey studies. Study 1 used data from the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Survey (N = 10,485) which is a study of social attitudes, personality, and health outcomes among New Zealanders. Measures of Social Dominance Orientation, as well as Hostile and Benevolent Sexism were included in Study 1. Study 2 consisted of data from a smaller sample of American females (N = 269). In addition to the variables described above, we also measured the extent to which participants perceived the gender hierarchy to be legitimate and their perceived personal need for protection from men. Control variables included hostile sexism and demographic variables (participants’ age, race, and socio-economic status). Results: Results revealed that social dominance orientation was a stronger predictor of benevolent sexism among women compared to men. Serial mediation analysis was then conducted in Study 2. Study 2 confirmed the hypothesised mechanism: Higher social dominance orientation was associated with perceptions that women’s low status is legitimate which, in turn, was associated with higher perceived personal need for protection from men. This was then associated with the endorsement of a benevolently sexist worldview. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that social dominance orientation might help to explain why some women endorse benevolent sexism. KEYWORDS: Gender, Political Psychology, Prejudice/Stereotyping, Sexism, Social Dominance Orientation, Status This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. SOCIAL DOMINANCE ORIENTATION AND SEXISM 3 Key Points What is already known about this topic; • Social dominance orientation (SDO) is a “general attitudinal orientation toward intergroup relations, reflecting whether one generally prefers such relations to be equal, versus hierarchical” (Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994, p. 742). • SDO is often studied among advantaged group members but not disadvantaged group members • Some studies have found a link between SDO and sexism among men and women What this topic adds; • We contribute to the limited literature investigating SDO among disadvantaged group members • We find that SDO is a stronger predictor of benevolent sexism among women compared to men • We identify a novel process through which SDO is associated with benevolent sexism for women This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. SOCIAL DOMINANCE ORIENTATION AND SEXISM 4 Negotiating the hierarchy: Social dominance orientation among women is associated with the endorsement of benevolent sexism According to Glick and Fiske’s (1996) ambivalent sexism theory, sexism manifests in two complementary ways. Hostile sexism is an overt prejudice usually directed toward women who embody non-traditional gender roles. In contrast, those high in benevolent sexism hold seemingly “positive” views of women, but they do so as part of a broader worldview that obligates men to protect “traditional” women. Both hostile and benevolent sexism have been found to negatively impact women; for example, they are associated with discrimination in the workplace (Good & Rudman, 2010), and the promotion of sexual violence towards women (Abrams, Viki, Masser, & Bohner, 2003). It is not just men, however, who display sexism towards women. In their influential paper investigating cross-cultural differences in hostile and benevolent sexism, Glick and colleagues (2000) reported a perplexing finding – that some women (especially those from gender unequal nations) were just as likely to endorse benevolent sexism as men. Since the publication of these results, researchers have been trying to understand why some women internalise this form of prejudice towards their own group. In this paper we explore the possibility that women who adopt a benevolently sexist worldview do so because they orient towards the world in a socially dominant way. The Relationship between Social Dominance Orientation and Sexism Social dominance orientation (SDO) is a “general attitudinal orientation toward intergroup relations, reflecting whether one generally prefers such relations to be equal, versus hierarchical” (Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994, p. 742). As one might expect, those group members who are advantaged by the existing social system are more likely to endorse a socially dominant orientation compared to those who are disadvantaged by the social hierarchy. Men, for example, have consistently higher levels of SDO relative to women (Pratto, Sidanius, & Levin, 2006). The link between hostile sexism and SDO is theoretically intuitive and well-supported by the psychological literature. People high in SDO support hierarchies, and so one would expect them to support the (patriarchal) gender hierarchy. Given that hostile sexism is directed towards women who challenge the gender hierarchy (e.g., feminists and career women) it is not surprising that SDO is positively correlated with hostile sexism among both men and women (Christopher & Mull, 2006; Christopher & Wojda, 2008; Fraser, Osborne, & This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. SOCIAL DOMINANCE ORIENTATION AND SEXISM 5 Sibley, 2015; Kelly, Dubbs, & Barlow, 2013; Kteily, Ho, & Sidanius, 2012; Sibley & Overall, 2011). Some studies also suggest that SDO and benevolent sexism are positively related for both women and men (Christopher & Mull, 2006; Christopher & Wojda, 2008; Fraser et al., 2015; Kteily et al., 2012), although this relationship is smaller and less reliable than the link between SDO and hostile sexism. For example, in an article examining prejudice towards women in the workplace, Christopher and Wojda (2008) found that social dominance orientation (measured using the Pratto et al., [1994] 14-item scale) and benevolent sexism (measured using the Glick & Fiske [1996] 11-item scale) were positively and significantly correlated (.27) in a sample of 349 U.S residents. In another paper, Fraser et al. (2015) investigated whether benevolent sexism moderated the relationship between social dominance orientation and support for gender-based affirmative action in a nationally representative sample of over 5,000 New Zealanders. They measured SDO using the six items from the original SDO scale (Pratto et al., 1994) and five items from the benevolent sexism scale (Glick & Fiske, 1996), and found that SDO was positively and significantly associated with benevolent sexism for both men (.11) and women (.20). These results, however, are counter to other research which has found an inconsistent relationship between SDO and benevolent sexism for men and women. In a paper investigating gender differences in intimate partner preferences, a positive and significant correlation between SDO (measured using 4 items from the Sidanius & Pratto [1999] scale) and benevolent sexism (measured using 11 items from the Glick & Fiske [1996]) was found for women (.21) but not for men (.10) in a sample of 492 New Zealand undergraduate students (Sibley & Overall, 2011). Mosso and colleagues (2013) found no relationship between SDO (measured using the SDO6 scale; Pratto et al., [2006]) and benevolent sexism (measured using the 11-item Glick & Fiske [1996] scale) among women (-.03) and men (-.12) in a sample of 544 Italian students (with ages ranging from 14 to 20 years). They did, however, find a positive and significant relationship between SDO and benevolent sexism among women (.27) and men (.18) in a sample of 297 American students (with ages again ranging from 14 to 20 years). This article was investigating the role of legitimizing ideologies (i.e., SDO, system justification) when predicting ambivalent sexism across cultures. These conflicting results suggest the need for further