Learning and Unlearning the Myths We Are Taught: Gender and Social Dominance Orientation

Abstract

Within social dominance theory (SDT) the invariance hypothesis predicts that men will be higher in social dominance orientation (SDO) even after accounting for cultural or social factors. We tested this hypothesis by measuring the relationship between sex and SDO while controlling for the effects of gender socialization. Our first two studies demonstrated that the sex difference in SDO is mediated by gender socialization and that masculinity and femininity are differentially related to two different forms of SDO. Study 3 extended these results by showing that SDO decreases as a function of feminist identity acquisition. These results suggest that the status hierarchy based on gender has properties of arbitrary classifications such as race, and they call into question the classification of gender as invariant within SDT.