Jim Sidanius: UCLA Dept. of Psychology

Based upon ideas borrowed from classical elitism theory, social identity theory and evolutionary psychology, social dominance theory basically assumes that human social systems are predisposed to organize themselves as group-based social hierarchies. Given this assumption, social dominance theory then attempts to identity the multi-leveled processes that are responsible for the creation and maintenance of these hierarchies. Using social dominance theory as the guiding framework, in this talk I will discuss the manner in which the congruency between the hierarchical characteristics of social roles and the behavioral predispositions of people occupying those social roles are one set of processes contributing to the maintenance of group-based social hierarchy. Beginning with Holland (1959, 1966), numerous researchers have documented the fact that people’s work-related values tend to match the values of their work environments. Researchers have also found, as we might expect, that this value match yields superior job performance and greater employee satisfaction. Social dominance theory has proposed an important expansion of this research: people’s sociopolitical attitudes (e.g., anti-egalitarianism) should also be compatible, or congruent, with their institutional environments (e.g., schools, workplaces) and a growing body of research supports this claim. Specifically, recent research has shown that hierarchy-enhancing (HE) organizations (e.g., police forces) tend to be occupied by those with anti-egalitarian beliefs, while hierarchy-attenuating organizations (e.g., civil liberties organizations) tend to be occupied by those with relatively democratic beliefs. This research has also provided evidence for five (non-mutually exclusive) processes underlying this person/institution congruence: self-selection, institutional-selection, institutional socialization, differential reward, and differential attrition. Finally, targets of theoretical expansion will be discussed.