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.
BainP. G.MilfontT. L.KashimaY.BilewiczM.DoronG.GarðarsdóttirR. B.…SaviolidisN. M. (2016). Co-benefits of addressing climate change can motivate action around the world. Nature Climate Change, 6, 154–157.
4.
ClaytonS. (Ed.). (2012). Handbook of environmental and conservation psychology. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
5.
DhontK.HodsonG.CostelloK.MacInnisC. (2014). Social dominance orientation connects prejudicial human-human and human-animal relations. Personality and Individual Differences, 61-62, 105–108.
FischerR.HankeK.SibleyC. (2012). Cultural and institutional determinants of social dominance orientation: A cross-cultural meta-analysis of 27 societies. Political Psychology, 33, 437–467.
8.
FischerR.MilfontT. L.GouveiaV. V. (2011). Does social context affect value structures? Testing the intra-cultural stability of value structures with a functional theory of values. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 42, 253–270.
9.
FrazinA.VoglD. (2013). Two decades of measuring environmental attitudes: A comparative analysis of 33 countries. Global Environmental Change, 23, 1001–1008.
HäkkinenK.AkramiN. (2014). Ideology and climate change denial. Personality and Individual Differences, 70, 62–65.
12.
JacksonL. M.BitacolaL. M.JanesL. M.EssesV. M. (2013). Intergroup ideology and environmental inequality. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 13, 327–346.
13.
JylhäK. M.CantalC.AkramiN.MilfontT. L. (2016). Denial of anthropogenic climate change: Social dominance orientation helps explain the conservative male effect in Brazil and Sweden. Personality and Individual Differences, 98, 184–187.
14.
KteilyN.HoA. K.SidaniusJ. (2012). Hierarchy in the mind: The predictive power of social dominance orientation across social contexts and domains. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 543–549.
15.
KunstJ. R.FischerR.SidaniusJ.ThomsenL. (2017). Preferences for group dominance track and mediate the effects of macro-level social inequality and violence across societies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 114, 5407–5412.
16.
LeeI. C.PrattoF.JohnsonB. T. (2011). Intergroup consensus/disagreement in support of group-based hierarchy: An examination of socio-structural and psycho-cultural factors. Psychological Bulletin, 137, 1029–1064.
17.
LiuJ. H.SibleyC. G. (2012). Hope for the future? Understanding self-sacrifice in the face of global warming among young citizens of the world. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 12, 190–203.
18.
MilfontT. L.DuckittJ. (2010). The environmental attitudes inventory: A valid and reliable measure to assess the structure of environmental attitudes. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 30, 80–94.
19.
MilfontT. L.MarkowitzE. (2016). Sustainable consumer behavior: A multilevel perspective. Current Opinion in Psychology, 10, 112–117.
20.
MilfontT. L.RichterI.SibleyC. G.WilsonM. S.FischerR. (2013). Environmental consequences of the desire to dominate and be superior. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39, 1127–1138.
21.
MilfontT. L.SchultzP. W. (2016). Culture and the natural environment. Current Opinion in Psychology, 8, 194–199.
22.
MilfontT. L.SibleyC. G. (2012). The big five personality traits and environmental engagement: Associations at the individual and societal level. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 32, 187–195.
23.
MilfontT. L.SibleyC. G. (2014). The hierarchy enforcement hypothesis of environmental exploitation: A social dominance perspective. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 55, 188–193.
24.
PiragesD. C.EhrlichP. R. (1974). Ark II: Social response to environmental imperatives. New York, NY: Viking.
25.
PrattoF.ÇidamA.StewartA. L.Bou ZeineddineF.ArandaM.AielloA.…HenkelK. E. (2013). Social dominance in context and in individuals: Contextual moderation of robust effects of social dominance orientation in 15 languages and 20 countries. Social Psychological & Personality Science, 4, 587–599.
26.
PrattoF.SidaniusJ.StallworthL. M.MalleB. F. (1994). Social dominance orientation: A personality variable predicting social and political attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 741–763.
SchultzP. W.BatorR.TabanicoJ.BruniC.LargeL. B. (2013). Littering in context: Personal and environmental predictors of littering behavior. Environment and Behavior, 45, 35–59.
29.
SidaniusJ.PrattoF. (1999). Social dominance: An intergroup theory of social hierarchy and oppression. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
30.
Son HingL. S.BobocelD. R.ZannaM. P.McBrideM. V. (2007). Authoritarian dynamics and unethical decision making: High social dominance orientation leaders and high right-wing authoritarianism followers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 67–81.
31.
SternP. C. (2000). Toward a coherent theory of environmentally significant behavior. Journal of Social Issues, 56, 407–424.
32.
SternP. C.DietzT.AbelT.GuagnanoG. A.KalofL. (1999). A value-belief-norm theory of support for social movements: The case of environmentalism. Human Ecology Review, 6, 81–97.
van de VijverF. J. R.LeungK. (1997). Methods and data analysis for cross-cultural research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
35.
WhiteL. (1967). The historical roots of our ecological crisis. Science, 5, 1203–1207.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
