Cosmopolitanism and social dominance orientation mediate relationship between political orientation and sexism

Abstract

Over the past decade, ‘anti-gender discourse’ has been institutionalised by the governing right-wing party in Hungary to a wide effect, from the removal of accreditation from a gender studies MA program to the Parliament's refusal to ratify the Istanbul Convention. The anti-egalitarian backlash echoes those emergent in other countries where right-wing populism has gained ground — such as Poland, Turkey, India, the United States, and Brazil. The present study examined the role of two opposite orientations, cosmopolitanism as an egalitarian worldview and social dominance orientation as the preference for hierarchies and inequality among groups and people in general, in mediating the relationship between political orientation and sexism among a representative Hungarian sample (N = 1000). The path analysis revealed that left-wing political orientation was associated with higher levels of cosmopolitan orientation, while right-wing political orientation was associated with higher levels of SDO. Higher levels of cosmopolitan orientation were associated with a more positive attitude toward feminists and lower levels of modern sexism and gender-based zero-sum thinking, while higher levels of SDO were associated with the opposite. Furthermore, cosmopolitan orientation mediated the relationship between political orientation and modern sexism and attitudes toward feminists, while SDO mediated the relationship between political orientation and modern sexism and gender-based zero-sum thinking. Our study emphasizes the important role of cosmopolitan orientation in opposing SDO and promoting a more egalitarian worldview.