[2] SDO was first proposed by Jim Sidanius and Felicia Pratto as part of their social dominance theory (SDT).
SDT begins with the empirical observation that surplus-producing social systems have a threefold group-based hierarchy structure: age-based, gender-based and "arbitrary set-based", which can include race, class, sexual orientation, caste, ethnicity, religious affiliation, etc.
[7] While the correlation of gender with SDO scores has been empirically measured and confirmed,[8] the impact of temperament and socialization is less clear.
A desire to compete, which fits with social dominance orientation, influences in-group and outside-group attitudes.
SDO has been measured by a series of scales that have been refined over time, all of which contain a balance of pro- and contra-trait statements or phrases.
[11] Robert Altemeyer said that people with a high SDO want more power (agreeing with items such as "Winning is more important than how you play the game").
[16] Crawford et al. (2013) found that RWA and SDO differentially predicted interpretations of media reports about socially threatening (for example, gays and lesbians) and disadvantaged groups (for example, African Americans), respectively.
[20] Meta-analytic aggregation of these studies indicates that the association with low Agreeableness is more robust than the link to Openness to experience.
[23] Low Openness, by contrast, aligns more strongly with RWA; thinking in clear and straightforward moral codes that dictate how society as a system should function.
Being low in Openness prompts the individual to value security, stability and control: fundamental elements of RWA.
[2] SDO has been suggested to have a link with callous affect (which is to be found on the psychopathy sub-scale), the 'polar opposite' of empathy.
It also suggests that those scoring high on SDO proactively avoid scenarios that could prompt them to be more empathetic or tender-minded.
[32] A person's SDO levels can also affect the degree to which they perceive hierarchies, either over or underestimating them, although the effect sizes may be quite small.
[52] A study report published by Nature in 2017 indicates there may be a correlation between FMRI scanned brain response to social ranks and the SDO scale.
Subjects who tended to prefer hierarchical social structures and to promote socially dominant behaviors as measured by SDO exhibited stronger responses in the right anterior dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (right aDLPFC) when facing superior players.
The French National Agency for Research funded study involved 28 male subjects and used FMRI measurements to demonstrate that response in the right aDLPFC to social ranks was strongly correlated with participant SDO scores measuring response to social ranks.
[53] Felicia Pratto and her colleagues have found evidence that a high social dominance orientation is strongly correlated with conservative political views, and opposition to programs and policies that aim to promote equality (such as affirmative action, laws advocating equal rights for homosexuals, women in combat, etc.).
Some principled-conservatism theorists have suggested that racism and conservatism are independent, and only very weakly correlated among the highly educated, who truly understand the concepts of conservative values and attitudes.
"These findings contradict much of the case for the principled conservatism hypothesis, which maintains that political values that are largely devoid of racism, especially among highly educated people."
[38] Discrimination, prejudice and stereotyping can occur at various levels of institutions in society, such as transnational corporations, government agencies, schools and criminal justice systems.
The basis of this theory of societal level SDO is rooted in evolutionary psychology, which states that humans have an evolved predisposition to express social dominance that is heightened under certain social conditions (such as group status) and is also mediated by factors such as individual personality and temperament.
[citation needed] Plenty of evidence suggests that men tend to score higher on SDO than women, and this is true across different countries, cultures, age-groups, classes, religions and educational levels,[13] with the difference generally being an average of half a point on the scale.
[56] From an evolutionary and biological perspective SDO facilitates men to be successful in their reproductive strategy through achieving social power and control over other males and becoming desired mating partners for the opposite sex.
Differences between male and female attributional cognitive complexity are suggested to contribute to the gender gap in SDO.
[62] Some evidence suggests that both the dominance and anti-egalitarianism dimensions of SDO are determined by genetic, rather than environmental, factors.