Social dominance orientation and right-wing authoritarianism

Zubielevitch, Osborne, Milojev & Sibley (2022) published “Social Dominance Orientation and Right-wing Authoritarianism Across the Adult Lifespan: An examination of aging and cohort effects” in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Social dominance orientation involves belief in a social hierarchy with an attendant belief that one should be at the top. Right-wing authoritarianism is defined by deference to one’s chosen authority, a willingness to aggressively defend that authority, and conformism in thought and behavior. While left-wing authoritarianism exists, it leans toward such left-wing values as anti-racism, anti-sexism, and wealth redistribution, but is otherwise similar. Right-wing authoritarianism has a much longer research history in psychology which allows study of differential effects of age and cohort. Here’s the abstract:

Social dominance orientation (SDO) and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) are foundational constructs in intergroup relations, yet their development across the lifespan is poorly understood. The few studies on the topic demonstrate that age positively correlates with both SDO and RWA. However, it is unclear whether this association is due to (a) normative aging, (b) generational differences associated with the period in which one was born and raised, or (c) a combination of these processes. This study estimates a series of cohort-sequential latent growth models to examine change due to both aging and cohort effects using 11 annual waves of longitudinal panel data collected from a nationwide random sample of adults (Ns = 61,858–61,862). Mean levels of SDO and RWA both trended upward across the adult lifespan, although this pattern was more marked for RWA. Cohort effects also emerged for both constructs and were again more pronounced for RWA. Contextual factors thus appear to influence authoritarianism more than they impact the preference for intergroup hierarchy. Similar trends emerged when differentiating birth cohorts by gender and ethnic majority status. Age and cohort effects for generalized prejudice among an ethnic majority group were also assessed (N = 47,955), revealing that prejudice declined in early adulthood but began to stabilize in middle age. This is the first large-scale study to document how SDO, RWA, and generalized prejudice change over the adult lifespan while also examining trends associated with the period in which a person was born and socialized. 

Recently, there has been considerable discussion of how many older Americans hold powerful leadership roles. One possibility for the growing animosity of the right and the left is that older people, who are more likely to hold positions of power, are more likely to hold both social dominance and right-wing (or left-wing) authoritarian views. Oosterhoff et al. (2022) published “Adolescents Provide More Complex Reasons for Lowering the Voting Age Than Do Adults: Evidence from national convenience samples” in Developmental Psychology. Taken together, the studies suggest more open-mindedness and good cognitive capacities among the young.