The Psychology of Bigotry 521asymmetry is that the behavioral repertoires of dominant and
subordinate group members differ and that these differences
contribute to the hierarchical relationships among these
groups. Four types of behavioral asymmetries are asymmetri-
cal in-group bias, systematic out-group favoritism or defer-
ence, self-debilitating behavior, and ideological asymmetry.
Regarding in-group bias (i.e., favoring one’s own group
over other groups), dominants show more than do subordi-
nates. This asymmetrical in-group bias reinforces the hege-
monic group’s dominance over the subordinate group. By
contrast, deference, or out-group favoritism, is more apt to be
shown by members of the subordinate group, again reinforc-
ing the dominant group’s hegemony. Self-debilitation occurs
when subordinate group members engage in more self-
defeating and self-destructive behavior, such as criminal ac-
tivity or drugs, than do dominant group members. Ideological
asymmetry refers to the idea the antiegalitarian values lead
one to endorse policies and ideologies promoting group-
based inequality, such as support for the death penalty in the
United States, which dominant group members endorse more
strongly than do subordinate group members.
The degree of group-based social inequality is also influ-
enced by support for various legitimizing myths (LMs).
These are ideologies that provide moral or intellectual justifi-
cations for group-based social hierarchies within all three hi-
erarchical systems (age, gender, or arbitrary set). SDT defines
two types of LMs based on whether they facilitate social in-
equality and are HE or facilitate social equality and are HA.
Racism, sexism, and ageism exemplify HE-LMs, while fem-
inism, socialism, and universalism are HA-LM examples.
The psychological aspect of SDT is the construct of social
dominance orientation (SDO) as assessed by an eponymous
scale. SDO is a personality dimension defined as an attitude
toward intergroup relations reflecting antiegalitarianism and
intolerance, at one end, to support for group-based hierarchy
and the domination of inferior groups by superior groups, at
the opposite end. A high score on the SDO scale reflects a
willingness to accept inequalities between and among groups
in society. Items in the SDO scale refer to groups in the ab-
stract and thus tap the respondent’s acceptance of intergroup
inequalities for whatever group distinctions are salient to the
respondent in a given sociopolitical or national context.
SDO scale scores have been shown to relate to many po-
litical attitudes (e.g., political conservatism, nationalism,
patriotism), legitimizing ideologies (e.g., racism, sexism, be-
lief in fate), social attributions (e.g., internal vs. external at-
tributions for the fate of the poor), HE/HA career choices
(e.g., police officers vs. teachers), and group evaluations (see
Sidanius et al., 1999; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). In Saucier’s
(2000, p. 378) study of the structure of social attitudes, SDO
loaded with Machiavellianism on a dimension defined as
“favoring whatever is immediately beneficial to me and
mine, disregarding wider concerns of fairness or morality,”
which was separate from the factor on which authoritarian-
ism loaded on.
Focusing on prejudice specifically, Whitley (1999) has
shown that (a) SDO predicted most forms of prejudice toward
Black Americans and homosexuals in a sample of White, het-
erosexual U.S. university students and (b) SDO also mediated
gender differences in those prejudices in that sample. Accord-
ing to Sidanius, Pratto, and their colleagues, SDO also shows
discriminant validity in being relatively independent of other
constructs such as conservatism, interpersonal dominance,
and right-wing authoritarianism, although Altemeyer (1996)
reported a moderate, positive correlation between RWA and
SDO. Consistent with the notion that attitudes toward group
hierarchy reflected in the SDO scale are culturally universal,
Pratto et al. (2000) showed that with proper translation and
back translation, SDO can be reliably measured cross-
culturally, and its scores related in theoretically predicted
ways to sexism, prejudice toward oppressed groups by major-
ity group members, and related attitudes (e.g., support for the
military) for samples of respondents in several countries out-
side North America, including Israel, Taiwan, and the People’s
Republic of China (Shanghai), as well as Canada.
Advocates of SDT have suggested that the SDO construct
can account for the relationships between conservatism and
racism and between conservatism and antimiscegenation (i.e.,
a disdain for interracial marriages) in terms of their mutual de-
pendence on SDO (see Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Advocates
of SDT also believe that individual differences in SDO are de-
termined by four factors: group status, gender, socialization,
and temperament. First, the greater the social status of one’s
in-group in a given society, the higher is one’s level of SDO.
In the United States, for example, White Americans outscore
Black Americans in SDO. In Israel, Ashkenazi (European an-
cestry) Jews have higher SDOs than Sephardic (North-
African or Middle Eastern ancestry) Jews. Second, the single
most reliable finding of SDT research is that with a few ex-
ceptions in cultures outside North America (see Pratto et al.,
2000), males outscore females on SDO. Socialization experi-
ences, such as education, are also assumed to affect SDO, with
higher educational levels relating inversely to SDO. Finally,
higher SDO scores correlate with lower empathy levels and
greater aggressivity—temperamental features that are pre-
sumably heritable and that promote out-group prejudice.
Advocates of SDT view it as a theoretical perspective
linking the individual and the social structure together in the
explanation of prejudice, and one that provides a comprehen-
sive explanation for the oppression of subordinate groups by