Abstract
In this article, we examine the roles of social dominance orientation (SDO) and ecological dominance orientation (EDO) as predictors of climate change risk and threat perceptions and associated pro-environmental policy support. EDO is a novel measure that we devised based on social dominance theory to assess general preferences for an anthropocentric, hierarchical arrangement between humans, non-human animals, and the natural environment. Across two pre-registered studies ( N = 715; USA and Germany) our results indicate that SDO and EDO are uniquely associated with decreased support for climate change mitigation policies benefitting humans, non-human animals, and the natural environment. These relationships in turn are partially mediated by decreased climate change risk and threat perceptions. We successfully replicate our findings using a more behavioral measure as dependent variable. Notably, using a more behavioral measure (Study 2), EDO was significantly associated with pro-environmental behavior but not SDO, when threats are accounted for as mediators.
Highlights
In this article, we examine the roles of social dominance orientation (SDO) and ecological dominance orientation (EDO) as predictors of climate change risk and threat perceptions and associated proenvironmental policy support
In line with our hypothesizing, across two studies, we show that Ecological Dominance Orientation (EDO) significantly and uniquely associated with our dependent variables controlling for the effects of SDO, rightwing authoritarianism (RWA; Altemeyer, 1996), human supremacy beliefs (HSB; Dhont & Hodson, 2014), and political orientation
Climate change risk and threat perceptions are a potent predictor of pro-environmental attitudes (e.g., Leiserowitz, 2005), individuals show great variation in the extent to which they perceive and act upon climate change risk and threat perceptions
Summary
We examine the roles of social dominance orientation (SDO) and ecological dominance orientation (EDO) as predictors of climate change risk and threat perceptions and associated proenvironmental policy support. SDO is primarily theorized to explain relationships among human social groups (e.g., racism, sexism; social dominance theory, SDT; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999), an increasing number of studies indicate an inverse relationship between SDO and pro-environmental attitudes associated with climate change (e.g., biodiversity loss, climate change denial; Jylhä et al, 2020; Uenal, Sidanius, Roozenbeek, & van der Linden, 2020) These findings indicate that the more individuals prefer hierarchically organized societal arrangements in which some groups are on top and others on the bottom, the less they show pro-social attitudes benefitting humans as well as non-human animals, or the natural environment (e.g., racism, speciesism, anthropocentrism; Costello & Hodson, 2010; Dhont et al, 2016; Hyers, 2006; Jylhä & Akrami, 2015; Milfont et al, 2013; Stanley & Wilson, 2019). Previous studies far have predominantly relied on non-behavioral measures (cf. Milfont et al, 2018)
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