Is there a place in politics for compassion? The role of compassion in predicting hierarchy-legitimizing views

Abstract

Political beliefs underlie behaviors including voting and participation in collective resistance. Hierarchy-legitimizing beliefs can justify and perpetuate extant social hierarchies, such as economic inequality. Individual differences are important predictors of many political beliefs, but the role of compassion in this context has not been explored. This study investigated the relationship between dispositional compassion, which has shown promise in predicting enhanced prosociality, with hierarchy-legitimizing viewpoints, mediated by social dominance orientation (SDO). A sample of 590 undergraduate students completed measures of compassion, empathy, SDO, and sociopolitical policy views. Structural equation modeling showed that SDO mediated the relationship between compassion and hierarchy legitimization. The findings have implications for compassion’s relevance in political psychology, and for expanding understanding of the antecedents of anti-egalitarianism.