Orientation towards Social Dominance in Society - Essay Example

?   SOCIAL DOMINANCE ORIENTATION (Your teacher’s due 1 Introduction Social dominance orientation is the extent in which people hold ideologies and myths in order to maintain hierarchy in the society. Most people try to join such groups that have dominance power and authority over other people. For instance, people want to hold such policies that restrict migration but reject to take any action. Perception of individuals and groups are measured on the basis of a scale. It is mainly related to sexism and racism. It was also viewed that white people perform better than black people in the society. This indicates that dominant group tries to strengthen their position and subordinate group follows the orders given by the authority (Guimond 2000, p. 350). It is dependent on the experiences of the society, for instance education, imposing doctrines and life experiences. 1.2 Social dominance orientation It is a personality characteristic which helps to identify political and social attitudes. It measures differences among individuals in relation to group based domination or discrimination. In short it measures hierarchy of individual preferences within a particular system. SDO is mainly the product of social dominance theory. Those individuals whose scores are high on the scale have higher authority and power i.e. this creates social differences among people. These people are uncaring, dominant and tough. People who have high score in social dominance orientation belief in the world of dog eat dog. Social dominance orientation mainly involves the desire to create inequality and hierarchy among dominant groups. If an individual wants to join in a subordinate group, then social dominance orientation transfers him in that group. This shows that there is a hierarchy among individuals in the society. There exist differences among people. It also concentrates on the issues of men and women. 1.3 Measures A scale is used to measure social dominance orientation. It includes 14 to 16 items. These items can include: All groups should be given equal chances Groups of people are better than one individual Income of all individuals should be made equal Lower groups should stay at their place No group should be allowed to govern the society. Some groups should be allowed to stay at their own place in order to avoid problems. Some groups should be provided more authority than others. Participations give their view on these points, either they agree or disagree with the statements, on the basis of the scale of one to seven. Consistency of the scale is quite significant. For instance, medium level of consistence can be having the scores of 16 samples, 2150 participants among four nations (Guimond & Duarte 2003, p. 700). 1.4 Dimensions of social dominance orientation Social dominance orientation includes two facts i.e. firstly, dominance in relation to groups. It mainly represents their control and aggression. This factor helps one group to dominate on the other. It includes eight items such as inferior group is dominated by superior group. Secondly, it is opposed to equality. It helps to identify to what extent individuals can tolerate inequality. This factor mainly focuses on inequality in the hierarchy, regardless of the position of an individual in the particular group. This shows that both of these factors represent different consequences. For instance, moral attitude is the experience of individual after an unexpected act such as donations etc (Duckitt 2002, p. 80). 1.5 Cultural perspective Social dominance orientation has a group based hierarchy which promotes inequality in the culture of a society. It is mainly based on three factors i.e. There exist gender biasness i.e. men have more power as compared to women There is an age system that adult have more power over children There is an arbitrary system i.e. all groups are constructed on the basis of arbitrary. This means it is not based on human life-cycle. They give quite different value to positive and negative aspects of life. Many researchers have criticized this hierarchy system in the society which promotes unethical and inequality among people. Groups are divided in relation to race, power, class and religion. Groups are also divided on the bases of sex and age rather than competencies or skills. Such organizations can only help primitive societies to transfer their knowledge and skills by transferring their powers. Hierarchy based on these three different concepts can be varying depending on the nature of a society. There also exist differences in the age class of individuals such as the term used childhood is not clear either it involves labor, marriage, sex or freedom of children’s. There is no clear understanding in relation to the rule on children’s, what benefit is associated with it. There can also be differences in the inequality of genders. But there exist no difference in this statement that women’s are dominated by men. For instance women’s under Sharia law are given death in case of adultery on the other hand in Sweden women are given a right to participate in all political and social issues, which are equal to men. Though this phenomena was not present in the past culture of 1920s. This indicates that present cultural trend is changing towards the rights of women. In past decades groups were usually made on the basis of arbitrary, this is in practice till today. It creates boundaries among various societies. For instance US hierarchy is based on the discrimination of Black and White. White people are considered to be more efficient as compared to Black. But in Dominican Republic there are six classes. This creates differences among people living in one country. The main focus on masculine has created many conflicts in the society. These authorities to men have crated much violence on other individuals. However, they also helped to control the society by managing and dealing with collective violence arising from gangs and military campaigns. But they are considered as lethal targets. For example: in US 69% of Black were killed in 1882 by White men and 80% of homosexual in US hate crimes such as Federal Bureau of investigation. These things were mostly done by men due to their dominance in the group. Children’s and women’s also suffer in these arbitrary conflicts. Therefore, it is imperative that violence in relation to age and gender should be stopped mainly in arbitrary conflicts (Brown 2010, p. 870). Institutional discrimination Institutions are also classified on the basis of hierarchy attenuating or hierarchy enhancing. Institution in hierarchy evaluation promotes inequality by providing more positive attitude towards dominant group as compared to subordinate group. This indicates that rights are allocated on the basis of groups rather than performance of individual, which is quite unethical. Institutions that are included in hierarchy enhancing are financial institutions, security agencies criminal justice systems and transitional corporations. Criminal justice systems are the main institutions that have more control and dominance over subordinates (prisoners). They are tortured in prison cells and this rule is adopted in various countries. For instance, African-Americans are locked up for six months by European Americans and African-American men have one-third probability of getting locked up. However, this has negatively affected people in terms of low expectations from life, lost wages and lack of trust on public institutions. However, one can conclude that hierarchy enhancing is appropriate just in criminal justice system not in other businesses. This will harm the culture and performance of the organization. This hierarchy enhancing have been developed due to various reasons: It will enable institutions to use and allocate all resources efficiently which would have been difficult on the basis of individual operations. Big corporations such as international institutions and government organizations get more opportunity to enhance their market segment by working in groups. Institutions have to defend themselves on their acts. While working in a group all parties will work mutually and will defend each other in case of any discrimination. Corporations have their own norms and principles, which helps to increase coordination and controls differences among individuals. Many individuals in an organization are exempted from their personal capabilities in relation to their actions in the institution. This hierarchy has helped to monitor and control this situation in many organizations (Amiot & Bourhis 2005, p. 585) References Amiot, C. E., & Bourhis, R. Y. (2005). Ideological beliefs as determinants of discrimination in positive and negative outcome distributions. European Journal of Social Psychology, 35, pp. 581-598 Brown, M. A. (2011). Learning from service: The effect of helping on helpers' social dominance orientation. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 41, pp. 850-871. Duckitt, J. (2002). The psychological bases of ideology and prejudice: Testing a dual-process model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, pp. 75-93. Guimond, S. (2000). Group socialization and prejudice: The social transmission of intergroup attitudes and beliefs. European Journal of Social Psychology, 30, pp. 335-354. Guimond, S. & Duarte, S. (2003). Does social dominance generate prejudice? Integrating individual and contextual determinants of intergroup cognitions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, pp. 697-721 Read More