Whites are theorized to support color-blind policies as an act of racial agenda setting-an attempt to defend the existing hierarchy by excluding race from public and institutional discourse. The present analysis leverages work distinguishing between two forms of social dominance orientation (SDO): passive opposition to equality (SDO-E) and active desire for dominance (SDO-D). We hypothesized th...

Although research drew attention to the importance of both parental goal promotion and parental rearing style in explaining adolescent authoritarian submission (Right-Wing Authoritarianism or RWA) and authoritarian dominance (Social Dominance Orientation or SDO), research failed to examine their combined effects. This study examines the relative contribution of parenting goals (i.e. extrinsic v...

Dominance hierarchies are ubiquitous in the societies of human and nonhuman animals. Evidence from comparative, developmental, and cognitive psychological investigations is presented that show how social dominance hierarchies shaped the evolution of the human mind, and hence, human social institutions. It is argued that the pressures that arise from living in hierarchical social groups laid a f...

How to achieve social dominance in a group is a recurrent challenge for individuals of many species, including humans. Previous research indicates that both relationship status and contraceptive use appear to moderate women’s testosterone levels. If testosterone contributes to social dominance, this raises the possibility for group differences in social dominance between single and partnered wo...

Issues surrounding the upcoming presidential election season highlight the need for a better understanding of the relationship between human motivation and political orientation. The neurophysiological trait systems of approach (BAS) and avoidance (BIS) are crucial to understanding human motivation (Gable, Mechin, Hicks, and Adams, 2015). The behavioral inhibition system (BIS) is sensitivity to...

This research broadens our understanding of racial and gender bias in leader evaluations by merging implicit leadership theory and social dominance perspectives. Across two experimental studies (291 participants), we tested the prediction that bias in leader evaluations stemming from White and masculine leader standards depends on the extent to which people favor hierarchical group relationship...

Sexism toward women in online video game environments has become a pervasive and divisive issue in the gaming community. In this study, we sought to determine what personality traits, demographic variables, and levels of game play predicted sexist attitudes towards women who play video games. Male and female participants (N = 301) who were players of networked video games were invited to partic...

The authors examined one manner in which to decrease the negative impact of social dominance orientation (SDO), an individual difference variable that indicates support for the "domination of 'inferior' groups by 'superior' groups" (J. Sidanius & F. Pratto, 1999, p. 48), on the selection of candidates from low-status groups within society. Consistent with the tenets of social dominance theory, ...

The relationships between cytochrome oxidase blobs, ocular-dominance columns, and iso-orientation domains, subsystems underlying visual perception, were explored in primary visual cortex of macaque monkey. High-resolution maps of these three subsystems were acquired. Optical imaging based on activity-dependent intrinsic signals revealed that the most prominent organizational feature of orientat...

A common feature of the mammalian striate cortex is the arrangement of 'orientation domains' containing neurons preferring similar stimulus orientations. They are arranged as spokes of a pinwheel that converge at singularities known as 'pinwheel centers'. We propose that a cortical network of feedforward and intracortical lateral connections elaborates a full set of optimum orientations from ge...