Social Dominance (1999) introduces Social Dominance Theory (SDT), explaining why and how group-based hierarchies persist across societies. Authors Sidanius and Pratto unveil Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), a key trait predicting support for inequality, making this a foundational work on power dynamics, status, and systemic oppression.

Exec Summary

• Higher status individuals cooperate to maintain the social hierarchy with over or covert discrimination, manipulation, and force
• Status hierarchies are ubiquitous in all societies for gender and age. Post-agricultural socies also add arbitrary classes (ethnic, racial, etc.)
• Hierarchies are a consequence of male reproductive strategies, with men cooperating to keep women below them, and high-status men allying themselves to keep other classes of men marginalized

FULL SUMMARY

About the Author:
Jim Sidanius was a professor of psychology and African American studies at Harvard University. He was internationally known for his work on prejudice, ideology, and intergroup conflict.
Felicia Pratto is a professor of psychology at the University of Connecticut. Her research focuses on power dynamics, social inequality, and intergroup relations.

Together, Sidanius and Pratto developed Social Dominance Theory (SDT), integrating psychological and sociological insights into a unified theory of hierarchy and oppression.

Chapter 1: From Viciousness to Viciousness: Theories of Intergroup Relations

This chapter surveys four major families of theories—psychological, social-psychological, structural-sociological, and evolutionary—that seek to explain why intergroup hatred and oppression recur across time and culture.

Psychological models like the frustration-aggression hypothesis (Dollard et al., 1939) suggest displaced anger fuels prejudice, while authoritarian personality theory (Adorno et al., 1950) links it to personality traits. Social-psychological approaches, such as realistic group conflict theory (Campbell, 1965), tie discrimination to resource competition, and social identity theory (Tajfel, 1978) reveals bias even in minimal groups.

Here are the main pre-existing theories, and what SDO takes from them:

• Psychological models examine intrapsychic drives (e.g. the frustration-aggression hypothesis), personality syndromes (authoritarianism; RWA), and values conflicts (equality vs. individualism) to account for prejudice and displaced hostility (Turner, 1994).
  • ➡️ From authoritarian personality theory and Rokeach’s two-value theory of political ideology comes the notion that the importance that people place on the values of equality, dominance, and submission are of fundamental importance to our understanding of a whole range of sociopolitical beliefs and behaviors
• Social-psychological approaches emphasize how social learning and symbolic racism sustain covert biases in post–civil-rights societies, and how minimal-group settings reveal a basic drive for ingroup favoritism (even at self-cost) as part of positive social identity strategies (Tajfel & Turner, 1986).
  However, favoritism isn’t enough to explain more active oppression.
  • ➡️ From realistic group conflict grou group position theories comes the notion that the political choices and attitudes of individuals must often be seen within the context of group conflict over both real and symbolic resource allocation
  • ➡️ From SIT come the important notions that conflict between groups is not necessarily or even primarily designed to maximize the absolute material return to the ingroup, but rather to maximize the relative return to the ingroup, sometimes even at the cost of substantial material loss to both the self and the ingroup
• Structural-sociological theories (group-position, Marxism, neoclassical elitism) show how dominant groups institutionalize inequality and legitimize their power through ideology (e.g. divine right, free-market doctrines), breeding false consciousness among subordinates (Blumer, 1958).
  • ➡️ From classical and neoclassical elitism theories comes the notion of the functional value of ideology in the dynamics of hierarchical social control
• Evolutionary perspectives argue that ethnocentrism and male dominance coalitions are by-products of inclusive-fitness and sexual-selection dynamics; hierarchical social structures thus amplify adaptive tendencies for ingroup cooperation and outgroup hostility (van den Berghe, 1981).
  • ➡️ The ubiquitousness of social hierarchy and ethnocentrism seen in terms of survival strategies adopted by hominoids, including Homo sapiens

Insights From All:

Despite their flaws, these approaches offer valuable insights into how stereotypes, individual differences, culture, institutions, and possibly evolution contribute to social oppression, including:

• Stereotyping is Common: Due to limits in human information processing, people often rely on social stereotypes.
• Individual Differences Matter: People vary in their tendency to adopt negative stereotypes and discriminate.
• Cultural Transmission is Key: Socialization spreads ideologies and practices that shape attitudes and behaviors.
• Institutions Play a Role: Lasting oppression can’t be explained without considering systemic and institutional actions.
• Shared Ideologies: Both dominant and subordinate groups internalize social ideologies, which help sustain inequality.
• Possible Evolutionary Basis: Traits like patriarchy and ethnocentrism may stem from evolved predispositions—but caution is urged to avoid simplistic biological explanations or justifications for oppression.

Some theories I particularly enjoyed here were:

Authoritarian Personality

While some early claims have been criticized, modern research using improved methods supports several key points. Notably, there is evidence for a generalized ethnocentrism tied to political conservatism and themes of dominance and submission.
However, foundational claims about child-rearing origins and the psychological pathology of authoritarianism remain unsupported or untested.

Pros – Supported Claims:

• ✅ Generalized Ethnocentrism Exists: Research confirms a broad tendency to stigmatize various outgroups (ethnic, political, sexual, religious).
• ✅ Dominance & Submission Themes: These are central to authoritarian attitudes, consistent with original theory.
• ✅ Link to Conservatism: Generalized ethnocentrism correlates strongly and consistently with political conservatism across cultures.

Cons – Weaknesses & Unsupported Claims:

• ❌ Child-Rearing Origins Lack Evidence: No strong empirical support for the theory’s foundational claim about upbringing.
• ❌ Psychoanalytic Foundation Unnecessary: The complex Freudian basis may not be required to explain findings (and, we add, feels like psychobabble)
• ❌ No Evidence of Psychological Pathology: Authoritarianism is not proven to be a psychological disorder or condition needing treatment.
• ❌ No Societal-Level Explanation: The theory doesn’t bridge individual psychology with broader institutional or ideological dynamics.

Pareto Knew Better Than Marx: Elites Make Their Interest First

Pareto disagrees with Marx and Engels that the modern class struggle differs in any essential degree from group struggles of the past.
Pareto argues that, rather than bringing about the “victory of the Proletariat,” the end of the class struggle will instead merely bring about the victory of new elites speaking in the name of the proletariat. In essence, the Paretian model is the ultimate statement of “Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.”

And turns out, every single communist revolution proved Pareto right.
Unsurprisingly, since it aligns with human nature and foundational power dynamics.

Building on the insights of Chapter 1, Sidanius and Pratto introduce Social Dominance Theory (SDT) as an integrative framework connecting individual attitudes, legitimizing ideologies, and institutional discrimination into one dynamic system.

Chapter 2: Social Dominance Theory: A New Synthesis

Social Dominance Theory (SDT) starts with the observation that all human societies are organized into group-based hierarchies. These hierarchies typically include dominant groups at the top and subordinate groups at the bottom.
The dominant group possesses a disproportionate share of positive social value like power, status, higher income, better homes , etc. And the subordinate groups possess a disproportionate share of negative social value like low power and social status, high-risk and low-status occupations, poorer health care and food,
modest homes, and severe negative sanctions (e.g., prison and death sentences).

Goal of SDT: To identify and explain the mechanisms that create and sustain these group-based hierarchies.

Key Points:

• Group-Based Hierarchies Are Universal for at least age and gender: All societies tend to be structured with dominant and subordinate groups.
• All surplus-producing societies generate arbitrary hierarchies, some of which are ‘arbitrary’ that go alongside ‘common ones’ such as:
  • Age
  • Gender
  • Arbitrary
• Dominant Groups Gain On Subordinate Groups, hold a disproportionate share of positive social value—such as power, wealth, status, quality food, housing, and healthcare.
  • Subordinate Groups: Bear a disproportionate share of negative social value—like poverty, low status, poor healthcare, risky jobs, and harsh punishments.
• Oppression expressions (racism, ethnocentrism, sexism, nationalism) are manifestations of a universal predisposition to maintain group-based hierarchies (Sidanius et al., 1994).
  Social Dominance Orientation measures this predisposition at individual level
• Oppression is directed towards male of subordinate groups, probably because of evolutionary psychology reasons. Men are competitors, while women are potential mates

Key mechanisms that maintain social hierarchies

• Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) at an individual level. Simple definition: an individual’s general preference for group-based inequality.
  The 4 drivers of SDO are:
  • Group Membership & Identification: SDO is higher among those who belong to or identify with dominant, hierarchical groups.
  • Socialization & Background: Factors like education, religion, and major life events (e.g., war or disasters) influence SDO levels.
  • Personality & Temperament (empathy): Traits such as empathy play a role—higher empathy generally leads to lower SDO.
  • Gender: Men consistently show higher SDO than women, even beyond differences in social roles (invariance hypothesis).
• Aggregated individual discrimination as an emergent social-level component of a multitude of personal attitudes and behavior. They can be small and seemingly insignificant in daily life, but add up
• Institutional discrimination includes the rules, procedures, and actions of social institutions, both private and public, including courts, lending institutions, hospitals, retail outlets, and schools. Institutional discrimination may be conscious, deliberate, and overt, or unconscious, unintended, and covert
• Behavioral asymmetry, ways in which behavior and attitudes differ between dominant and subordinate groups. These asymmetries help explain how social hierarchies are maintained and internalized.
  • Asymmetrical Ingroup Bias: All groups show some ingroup favoritism, but dominant groups tend to exhibit stronger bias in favor of their own group compared to subordinate groups.
  • Outgroup Favoritism (Deference): In extreme cases, subordinate groups may favor the dominant group over their own—e.g., “Uncle Tom” behavior among some African-Americans.
  • Self-Debilitation: Subordinates may engage more frequently in self-destructive behaviors, often aligning with negative stereotypes. These stereotypes are internalized by both dominants and subordinates and can become self-fulfilling.
  • Ideological Asymmetry refers to how dominants and subordinates differ in their beliefs around group-based hierarchy. Dominant classes are more likely to support hierarchy-enhancing ideologies, and their social attitudes and policy preferences are more strongly driven by social dominance <— I found this sub-component less clear and less value-adding
• Legitimizing myths: cultural ideologies (e.g. meritocracy, universal rights, divine sanction) that justify or challenge hierarchy.
• Proximal processes: aggregated individual discrimination, institutional discrimination, and behavioral asymmetries that sustain the power differential.
• Hierarchy-enhancing (HE) and hierarchy-attenuating (HA) forces shape group inequality, and HE forces typically predominate (Pratto et al., 1994).
  Hierarchy-enhancing tend to be conservative, and hierarchy-attenuating tend to be liberal
• Group oppression is a cooperative game. While sometimes subordinates rebel or sabotage the system, most often they go along with it and cooperate. Sometimes, they wholeheartedly buy into the ideologies and legitimizing myths.

TPM Note: Hierarchy Maintenance Is Manipulation

Quoting but rephrasing for brevity some key passages:

(…) the greater the degree to which dominants can induce subordinates to endorse self-demeaning ideologies (…) the less physical force or threat of force will be necessary to keep the hierarchical group relationships in place.
(…) one of the reasons that the Protestant work ethic is such a potent HE-LM is because it is widely embraced across broad swaths of the social power continuum, by rich and poor (…)

It can go even deeper, to associations you never questioned:

While the color black is most often associated with implications of evil, filth, depravity, and fear, the color white is most often associated with notions of purity, truth, innocence, goodness, and righteousness. These two contrasting color symbols permeate a great deal of Western culture and can be discerned in everything from classical fairy tales to popular film and literature.

Learn more in:

• Manipulation 101: the basics
• Political manipulation

Black skin seems to be a target for discrimination in many countries:

There is also relatively consistent evidence from Australia, Canada, Ghana, Jamaica, the United States, and Western Europe that those with darker skin complexions are evaluated as being less valuable, experience higher levels of discrimination, and have lower socioeconomic status than those with lighter skin complexions.

Chapter 3: The Psychology of Group Dominance: Social Dominance Orientation

Definition:

SDO is defined as the degree to which individuals desire and support group-based hierarchy and the domination of “inferior” groups by “superior” groups.

• Development and validation: Factor analyses demonstrate that SDO loads uniquely on dominance attitudes, distinct from authoritarianism or ideological conservatism.
• Correlates: High-SDO individuals consistently favor punitive criminal justice policies, oppose welfare and affirmative action, and endorse free-market capitalism over redistributive programs.
• Cross-cultural stability: SDO predicts prejudice and policy attitudes in multiple societies, underscoring its universal utility.

How SDO Correlates to Attitudes

• Racism & ethnic prejudice: SDO is positively correlated with racism across cultures, including anti-Black, anti-Arab, anti-Asian, and anti-Palestinian attitudes.

• Cross-cultural bias: SDO predicts prejudice in many countries, not just the U.S., but is muted in politically repressive contexts like China.

• Internal attributions for low-status (it’s their fault): High SDO correlates with blaming low-status groups’ misfortunes on internal traits like laziness or low ability.

• Denial of external attribution for low status (it’s not about context): High SDO correlates negatively with blaming inequality on external factors like discrimination or poor schooling (except in Taiwan, where fatalistic external beliefs correlate positively with SDO).

• Rationalization for inequality (expedience over analysis): Across the cultures studied, SDO is not a particular habit of making internal or external attributions. Rather, SDO orients people to find the most socially acceptable way of rationalizing inequality.

• Protest is criminality: High SDO individuals view social unrest (e.g., LA riots) as criminality, not protest against injustice.

• Policy support for hierarchy-enhancing measures: e.g., law-and-order, punitive policies

• Opposition to hierarchy-attenuating (HA) policies: e.g., diversity, LGBTQ+ rights

• Policy justification for hierarchy defense: People high in SDO prefer HE rationales (e.g., “affirmative action causes conflict”) and reject HA rationales (e.g., “promotes equality”), even when discussing the same policy.

• War support: High SDO predicts support for military action (e.g., Gulf War), particularly when framed as reasserting dominance.

• Conservative leaders support: SDO aligns with support for conservative, anti-affirmative action figures, especially during polarizing political moments.

Roots of SDO

Gender and group status are the strongest and most consistent predictors of SDO.

The authors believe that SDO is shaped by three main influences: socialization, situational context, and possibly temperament (though the latter is less studied).

People from dominant social groups (e.g., men, Whites, heterosexuals) tend to have higher SDO than those from subordinate groups.
This is likely because hierarchical beliefs align with their self-esteem and societal treatment and society defines norms that reinforce dominant group superiority.

Empirical and experimental evidence confirm it.
Across multiple samples and countries, higher SDO levels are consistently found in higher-status groups:

• In the U.S.: Men > Women, Whites > Blacks/Hispanics, Heterosexuals > Gays/Lesbians/Bisexuals.
• Among police officers in L.A. and New Zealand: White officers had higher SDO than minority officers.
• In Israel: Ashkenazi Jews (highest status) had the highest SDO, followed by Sephardic Jews, mixed Jews, Israeli Arabs, and finally Palestinian Arabs (lowest status).

SDO vs. Political Conservatism

The authors state that SDO (Social Dominance Orientation) is often mistaken for political conservatism, but they are conceptually and empirically distinct.

While conservatism has many definitions—ranging from resistance to change to support for traditional values and capitalism—only opposition to social equality overlaps with SDO.

Empirically, the correlation between SDO and conservatism is modest, and statistical analyses show that SDO predicts social and political attitudes even when conservatism is controlled for. This means SDO offers unique explanatory power beyond political conservatism.

SDO vs. Authoritarianism

While SDO and authoritarianism share similarities—both predict prejudice, low empathy, and conservative attitudes—they are conceptually distinct.

Authoritarianism centers on submission to ingroup authority, while SDO reflects a preference for hierarchical relationships between groups.

Authoritarianism is also is seen as a pathological personality style, while SDO is considered part of normal personality variation.

Empirical research shows only weak correlations between the two, and SDO continues to predict prejudice and ideological attitudes even when authoritarianism is controlled for.
Studies consistently find that both SDO and authoritarianism uniquely and independently contribute to explaining group-based prejudice.

Chapter 4, 5, 6, 7, 8: Proving Psychological & Systemic Discrimination

The central chapters lay out the evidence for social, psychological, and systemic discrimination against lower-status groups to perpetrate and maintain the higher class privileges.

I find the evidence convincing and it changed my mind on several issues.

However, we provide a briefer summary because while the book focuses on a few countries, the level and targets of systemic discrimination is contextual and changes:

Chapter 4: “Let’s Both Agree That You’re Really Stupid”: The Power of Consensual Ideology

Sidanius and Pratto examine how dominant groups shape and maintain shared belief systems, or consensual ideologies, that legitimize hierarchy.

• Mechanisms of ideological negative stereotyping: educational curricula, media framing, religious doctrines, and cultural ritual reinforce stereotypes of subordinate groups as lazy, unfit, or dangerous.
• False consciousness: subordinates may internalize HE myths—e.g., “hard work alone determines success”—which obscure structural barriers and dampen collective resistance.
• Ideology as social glue: consensual myths bind diverse dominant-group factions and diffuse intra-elite conflicts by focusing hostility outward.

Chapter 5: “You Stay in Your Part of Town, and I’ll Stay in Mine”: Discrimination in the Housing and Retail Markets

An empirical investigation of how SDT processes shape residential segregation and consumer discrimination.

• Housing market bias: Real-estate agents and landlords use coded language and institutional “redlining” to steer minorities away from affluent neighborhoods
• Retail discrimination: High-SDO business owners and managers more frequently refuse service, enforce longer waits, or “profile” minority customers as shoplifters.
• Consequences: Segregation entrenches resource gaps in schools, policing, and access to healthy food, reinforcing broader hierarchies.

Chapter 6: “They’re Just Too Lazy to Work”: Discrimination in the Labor Market

This chapter documents employment disparities driven by group dominance dynamics.

• Hiring and promotion: Employers with high-SDO profiles rely on subjective “fit” criteria, disproportionately excluding minority and female applicants.
• Wage gaps: Legitimate-looking justifications (e.g. performance “metrics”) mask systematic under-rewarding of subordinate groups.
• Glass ceiling: Even high-achieving women and racial minorities face institutional barriers shaped by HE ideologies that valorize traditional male breadwinner norms.
• Lowest-status men pay the bigger price because the level of employment discrimination is greater for lower qualifications and highest during recessions

Chapter 7: “They’re Just Mentally and Physically Unfit”: Discrimination in Education and Health Care

Sidanius and Pratto explore how HE ideologies permeate schools and clinical settings, resulting in unequal outcomes.

• Educational tracking: Schools track minority and low-SES students into lower-quality programs based on deficit-oriented stereotypes, limiting academic mobility.
• Medical bias: High-SDO practitioners are more likely to under-diagnose pain or deny treatment to subordinate-group patients, rationalized by notions of “lower compliance” or “risk.”

Chapter 8: “The More of Them in Prison, the Better”: Institutional Terror, Social Control, and the Dynamics of the Criminal Justice System

This chapter examines how official and semiofficial terror sustain group hierarchy through mass incarceration and targeted policing.

• Disproportionate sentencing: Racial minorities receive harsher penalties for identical offenses (Tonry, 1995).
• Policing “stop-and-frisk”: High-SDO precincts deploy aggressive street tactics in minority neighborhoods, producing a self-reinforcing cycle of surveillance, arrest, and conviction.
• Collateral consequences: Legal disenfranchisement, employment bans, and social stigma post-release perpetuate subordinate-group marginalization.

Light bar unadjusted, dark bar adjusted

Chapter 9: Social Dominance Theory: A Cooperative Game

A crucial tenet of SDT is that, in large part, subordinates participate in their own subordination.

Sometimes the subordination is internalized from childhood.
For example, black children preferred playing with the white dolls and thought the black dolls looked bad.

• Behavioral asymmetries: Dominant groups employ both carrot (cooptation, patronage) and stick (punitive sanctions) tactics, while subordinates oscillate between compliance, contestation, and exit.
• High status groups present higher favoritism for the ingroup, but exceptions apply when the political climate for example discourages favoritism and shames the dominant group for bias and racism
• Outgroup favoritism helps maintain hierarchies: Even as children, more black children preferred playing with the white dolls and thought the black dolls looked bad (Clark and Clark, 1947).
• Feedback loops: HA successes (e.g. civil-rights gains) spur HE counter-reactions (e.g. “color-blind” backlash), underscoring the non-linear “spiral” of equality struggles (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999).
• Policy design: Sustainable reductions in group inequality require simultaneous structural reforms and ideological shifts—quadruple-helix interventions spanning legal, economic, educational, and cultural domains.

Chapter 10: Sex and Power: SDO, Patriarchy & Social Classes Are Reproductive Strategies

In this chapter the authors close the circle by adopting an evolutionary framework to explain the rationale behind SDO.

Their argument was convincing and well-aligns with accepted evolutionary psychology principles.
And it also aligns with many of our social power dynamics analyses of inter-gender dynamics.

One key quote to summarize it perfectly:

Thus, what is called intrasexual competition among males may encourage men not only to dominate women politically and economically and so control women’s sexual and reproductive behavior, but also to form expropriative male coalitions against outgroup males.
These activities will result both in the oppression of women and in class stratification among men.

Some takeaways:

• Patriarchy and economic status hierarchies are the result of men’s efforts to gain reproductive advantage b keeping women below them, and gaining a comparative advantage reproductive advantage over outgroup men
  • Discrimination against women softer, to disempower them, without harming them
  • Discrimination against men is more aggressive to remove them as competition (subordinate male target hypothesis)
• High status men are higher SDO because they gain with larger economic disparities, and the less the relative political power of women, the greater the degree of overall economic inequality.
• Higher SDO men are more likely to want to have multiple partners, be jealous, and reject adoption, reinforcing the link between SDO as a sexual reproductive strategy
• Women’s higher SDO correlates with a higher desire for high status men: Women prioritize securing high-status mates and favor redistributive social policies, reflecting evolutionary investments in offspring survival. However, higher SDO women sought higher status men

TPM Addition: Refining SDO

Since SDO is important to our work I will add the extra research and refinements that followed in the years to make this an even more comprehensive resource:

Revised SDO scale (SDO7) Adds Two Dimensions

The revised SDO scale (SDO7) breaks it down into two dimensions:

• SDO-D(dominance): Group-based dominance
• SDO-E(equality): Opposition to equality

Some studies find that gender differences are larger in SDO-D but smaller or inconsistent in SDO-E.

Women may reject dominance but still vary in equality preferences based on ideology, religion, or context.

Dual-Process Motivational (DPM): Threat VS Competition

John Duckitt (2001) offers one of the most influential refinements and extensions of SDO, connecting it with Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA).

The Problem Duckitt Solved

Before Duckitt, SDO and RWA were known to correlate with prejudice — but their interrelation was unclear, and their causes poorly understood.
Why do some people score high on SDO, others on RWA? Why are their prejudices different?

Duckitt’s Dual-Process Model (DPM) explains that they stem from different personality traits and worldviews and lead to different types of prejudice.

The Dual Motivational Pathways

1. RWA Pathway: Threat-Driven

• Personality trait: Low openness to experience + high conscientiousness
• Worldview: The world is a dangerous and threatening place
• Motivation: Seek social security, stability, and group conformity
• Ideology: High Right-Wing Authoritarianism
• Prejudice type: Against threatening or deviant outgroups (e.g., immigrants, criminals, religious minorities)

2. SDO Pathway: Competition-Driven

• Personality trait: Low agreeableness + low empathy
• Worldview: The world is a competitive jungle
• Motivation: Seek power, dominance, and group-based hierarchy
• Ideology: High Social Dominance Orientation
• Prejudice type: Against low-status or subordinate groups (e.g., the poor, ethnic minorities)

Key Implications of the Model

Different roots = different interventions:

• RWA prejudice is fear-based → reduced by security, education, and diversity exposure
• SDO prejudice is dominance-based → reduced by empathy training, equality norms, or disrupting hierarchical framing

Explains distinct ideologies:

• RWA → supports law & order, religious conservatism, moral traditionalism
• SDO → supports capitalism, nationalism, militarism, and elite privilege

Predicts different policy support:

• RWA: Opposes abortion, supports surveillance, wants law enforcement crackdowns
• SDO: Opposes welfare, supports harsh immigration laws, favors hierarchy-maintaining systems

MORE WISDOM

Marx Was Smart, & Marxism Is An Insightful Theory

Though Marxism has been criticized from a number of perspectives, this model also contains several very insightful ideas of enduring value.
Among the most important are that ideology functions to justify and support hierarchical group relations and that ruling elites largely control the contents and framing of social discourse

This is manipulation at its finest:

Because of this control of social ideology, ruling elites are able to convince not only themselves but, more importantly, their subordinates of the legitimacy of their rule.
(…) can exercise near hegemonic control over the social system without serious resistance from, and often with the cooperation of, the working class.

Group-Based Versus Individual-Based Social Hierarchies

The two overlap but are distinct:

In an individual-based social hierarchy, individuals might enjoy great power, prestige, or wealth by
virtue of their own highly-valued individual characteristics, such as great athletic or leadership ability, high intelligence, or artistic, political, or scientific talent or achievement.
Group-based social hierarchy, on the other hand, refers to that social power, prestige, and privilege that an individual possesses by virtue of his or her ascribed membership in a particular socially constructed group such as a race, religion, clan, tribe, lineage, linguistic/ethnic group, or social class.

Why Pre-Industrial Hunter-Gatherers Are More Socially Egalitarian

First off, it’s not that the hunther-gatherer societies have no status hierarchies, but it’s more they have an individual-based hierarchy.

It’s not class-based, and it’s not transgenerational or hereditary in nature, but it exists.

In hunter-gatherer societies, the absence of arbitrary-set, group-based social hierarchies stems primarily from the lack of economic surplus, driven by limited food production and storage technologies.

As nomadic groups, they cannot amass nonedible resources like animal skins or weapons, which restricts the development of specialized roles such as professional armies or bureaucracies that enable coercive political authority. Without military or coercive specialists, all adult males are essentially equal in military capacity, fostering political authority based on mutual agreement, persuasion, and consultation rather than domination.

Nationalists from lower status give up ethnic identification

The more that dominants embrace group dominance, the more strongly they should with their ingroups.

However, it’s the opposite for subordinate groups.

These findings then show that while patriotism implies the endorsement of the ethnic self among dominants and only mild rejection of the ethnic self among people with intermediate ethnic status (i.e., Asian-Americans), patriotism implies relatively strong rejection of the ethnic self among those at the bottom of the ethnic status continuum (i.e., Blacks in particular).

Conservative Pushback Follow Liberal Policies

While we may think the world smoothly advance(d) towards more agalitarianism, that advance is never linear (and, I’d add, never granted).

Historical advances in equality are always met with HE counter-currents.
We’re seeing one at the time of writing (2025) with the rise of populist leaders.

Force Alone Isn’t Enough: Framing & Manipulation

There are two primary means to maintain a hegemonic position over subordinate groups

• Naked force, threatened or actualized
• Ideology, controlling the contents of “legitimate” social discourse

Say the authors:

Of these two mechanisms, control over discourse and ideology are much to be preferred. Maintaining hegemonic control by the use of violence alone carries at least two critical dangers.
First, use of naked force can further stiffen resistance and resentment within subordinate groups. If deemed “excessive,” the use of force will only delegitimize the dominant group’s right to rule in the eyes of subordinates and dominants alike. The more illegitimate the dominants’ power is seen to be, the more violence dominants will be required to use, leading to even greater delegitimation and thus into an ever spiraling downward cycle

Of course, I’d add, the two aren’t mutually exclusive.
But for a functioning society that progresses and moves forward, ideology is foundational.

Also see:

• How to build an empire

QUOTES

Power dynamics set the foundation for social dynamics:

In essence, social dominance theory presumes that, beneath major and sometimes profound differences between different human societies, there is also a grammar of social power shared by all societies.

That’s the grammar we focus on TPM.

CRITICISM

Focus on win-lose, rather than win-win (socialist undertones?)

The authors’ frames and choice of words, including for ‘hierarchy enhancing idelogies’ hint at manipulation to keep lower classes at the bottom.

While I don’t fully disagree, I also don’t fully agree.
The line between manipulation and persuasion can be blurred sometimes, but ‘hierarchies enhancing idelogies’ also maintain a wealth-producing system that make everyone’s life better.

Less social tension, more cooperation, and more hard workers make a bigger pie for all, not just the upper classes. And hard-working men also advance for themselves.

In bullets, the authors never stop to wonder if:

• Accepting the class systems may be better for all because insurrection is costly, often goes nowhere, only replaces the upper class if successful, and shrinks the pie for all.
  This why social hierarchies are an evolutionary stable strategy (ESS)
• Working within the class system is better for industrious lower-class individuals, because rebellion is costly for the individual, while hard working subordinates fare far better than lazy ones
• Accepting protestant work ethic may be better for all because hard work and commerge makes the pie bigger for all, and a smaller slice of a bigger pie is also better for subordinates

Such as, hierarchy-enhancing ideologies may ultimately be win-win, rather than win-lose.
Sure, upper classes win ‘more’, but with a larger pie everyone can get a bigger slice.

Overall, I felt the authors may hold a left-leaning bias that may influence their work.

Doesn’t take into account small sample size (law of disproportion)

I’m nitpicking: the text seems well-referenced and logical

One survey had 26 respondents, and I’d have liked a note on the small sample size.

And the law of increasing disproportion, such as that the higher the political authority, the more likely it is that a member of the elite will hold the post, is inherently biased by small sample sizes.

Take most countries’ history, and the history of top prime ministers or presidents is naturally too small to draw big conclusions.
And it would take one single outlier to skew the number.

For example, the US with Obama, or Italy now with the first female prime minister, would completely skew the numbers’ calculation.

That being said, I still agree with the authors.
But a note on the numbers would have increased its persuasiveness.

Potentially overstates the impact of ‘terror’ / oppression

For example, write the authors on minority killings:

This type of terror can be quite widespread in scope and comprehensive in its effects. For example, unofficial terror resulted in the deaths of at least 3,400 African-Americans in the United States between 1882 and 1927.24

I don’t doubt that some of those were motivated by hatred, racism, or social dominance motives.

But I couldn’t help to think that the numbers pale in comparison to how many African Americans were killed by other African Americans, by accidents, by diseases, etc. etc.

It doesn’t take anything away from the horrible brutality of any single murder.
But if we’re talking about systemic-level murder, then it didn’t struck me as ‘comprehensive in its effects’, and one should note that the numbers are puny compared to most other causes of death.

Never considers there may be some truths to the stereotypes

Including the potential factors of genetic and/or cultural differences, leading to different attitudes and behaviors.

I know, tough nuts to crack, but not mentioning it won’t make the elephant in the room disappear.

For example, if a certain lower class commits more crimes and the reason is that they’re marginalized, why don’t we see Asians committing more crimes than whites despite the book itself claims Asians are below whites?

That’s a damning question.

That being said, SDO as a psychological construct still holds.

Doesn’t account for rational red-lining or profiling

The authors never stop considering that:

• Profiling can make statistical sense. That may be unfortunate, but it’s no less true
• Preventing lower classes from joining affluent neighborhoods may be rational or driven by pragmatic and economical reasons as well, since lower classes may lower properties values

Overlap with conservatism is modest?

The authors say that the correlation between SDO and conservatism is modest and that only one element, opposition to social equality, overlaps with SDO.

However, even if it’s one element, it’s such a meaningful element that it weakens the point of general non-correlation.
Indeed, say the authors a bit later:

Another robust relationship was that between SDO and political conservatism, measured in standard ways, using some combination of respondents’ political party preferences and their self-classifications along a liberal-conservative continuum on several issue domains, such as foreign policy, economic policy, and social policy. This relationship was robust within the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Israel. Though conservatism was not correlated with SDO in Taiwan (r = .04), support for the existing ethnic/political hegemony was correlated with SDO

Same goes for authoritarianism, which is even more closely related to SDO.

To me, the denial of the significance of overlap is akin to saying ‘the overlap between a tree and a trunk is low because a tree is so much more’.
Sure a tree is much more, but don’t tell me the overlap is modest because if we focus on the trunk, a highly relevant part of a tree, the overlap is 1:1.

Patriarchy dynamics miss the cooperation of all men, not just the higher classes

I think the authors may underestimate the level of shared interest among all men, beyond class-level, to keep women politically and economically disempowered.

Even lower-status men gain when women are lower power because, at least, they can date and find a woman among the lower-status ones.

REVIEW

Social Dominance was at the time of publication a groundbreaking book and it remains a foundational theory in the study of power, prejudice, and social hierarchy.

Its introduction of Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) marked a turning point in how researchers and practitioners understand social dynamics and inter-group competition.

Furthermore, the reader may wish to know that SDT/SDO have been supported by subsequent research and across cultures, and it enjoys wide acceptance.

For anyone studying power dynamics, status dynamics, or institutional power Social Dominance is essential reading.

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• Best books to read
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