The Feasibility OF Collectives' Actions

Orthodox decision theory gives no advice to agents who hold two goods to be incommensurate in value because such agents will have incomplete preferences. According to standard treatments, rationality requires complete preferences, so such agents are irrational. Experience shows, however, that incomplete preferences are ubiquitous in ordinary life. In this paper, we aim to do two things: (1) show that there is a good case for revising decision theory so as to allow it to apply non-vacuously to agents with incomplete preferences, and (2) to identify one substantive criterion that any such non-standard decision theory must obey. Our criterion, Competitiveness, is a weaker version of a dominance principle. Despite its modesty, Competitiveness is incompatible with prospectism, a recently developed decision theory for agents with incomplete preferences. We spend the final part of the paper showing why Competitiveness should be retained, and prospectism rejected.     

All employees are equal,but some are more equal than others: dominance,agreeableness, and status inconsistency among men and women

Status inconsistency is a situation in which there is an objective or subjective mismatch between, for example, a person’s education and his/her income. This mismatch may transform into status enhancement, wherein rewards exceed one’s human capital, or into status detraction, wherein one’s human capital exceeds one’s rewards. Although status inconsistency affects employees’ attitudes and behaviours, little is known about individual differences in this variable. The current study investigates whether the relationships of agreeableness and dominance—with objective and subjective status inconsistency vary by gender. We analysed objective and subjective input and return statuses among a sample of 375 employees. We found that men who expressed a gender-non-congruent trait, namely agreeableness, experienced an objective backlash effect compared with dominant men, whereas women who expressed a gender-non-congruent trait, namely dominance, did not experience a backlash effect compared with agreeable women. In addition, our results show that agreeable employees, both men and women, perceive themselves as status-enhanced when in fact they are not. Finally, we show that objective status inconsistency mediates the relationships of agreeableness and dominance with subjective status inconsistency.     

The role of emotion transition for the perception of social dominance and affiliation

Individuals who show anger are rated as higher in dominance and lower in affiliation, whereas those who express sadness are rated lower in dominance and higher in affiliation. Little is known about situations where people show both expressions in sequence as happens when a first emotional reaction is followed by a second, different one. This question was examined in two studies. Overall, we found that the last emotion shown had a strong impact on perceived behavioural intentions. However, the information about the previously shown emotion was also integrated. The specific mode of integration was dependent on the salience of the change and naive theories about the type of person who changes their emotion in the face of changing events.     

Common Ideological Roots of Speciesism and Generalized Ethnic Prejudice: The Social Dominance Human–Animal Relations Model (SD‐HARM)

Recent research and theorizing suggest that desires for group‐based dominance underpin biases towards both human outgroups and (non‐human) animals. A systematic study of the common ideological roots of human–human and human–animal biases is, however, lacking. Three studies (in Belgium, UK, and USA) tested the Social Dominance Human–Animal Relations Model (SD‐HARM) proposing that Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) is a key factor responsible for the significant positive association between ethnic outgroup attitudes and speciesist attitudes towards animals, even after accounting for other ideological variables (that possibly confound previous findings). Confirming our hypotheses, the results consistently demonstrated that SDO, more than right‐wing authoritarianism (RWA), is a key factor connecting ethnic prejudice and speciesist attitudes. Furthermore, Studies 2 and 3 showed that both SDO and RWA are significantly related to perceived threat posed by vegetarianism (i.e. ideologies and diets minimizing harm to animals), but with SDO playing a focal role in explaining the positive association between threat perceptions and ethnic prejudice. Study 3 replicated this pattern, additionally including political conservatism in the model, itself a significant correlate of speciesism. Finally, a meta‐analytic integration across studies provided robust support for SD‐HARM and offers important insights into the psychological parallels between human intergroup and human–animal relations. Copyright © 2016 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Religious identification and interreligious contact in Indonesia and the Philippines: Testing the mediating roles of perceived group threat and social dominance orientation and the moderating role of context

This study integrates three theoretical perspectives provided by social identity theory, realistic group conflict theory, and social dominance theory to examine the relationship between religious identification and interreligious contact. It relies on a unique dataset collected among Christian and Muslim students in ethnically and religiously diverse regions of Indonesia and the Philippines, where social cleavages occur along religious lines. Religious identification directly predicts a higher quality of interreligious contact, whereas it indirectly predicts a lower quantity and quality of contact, mediated by higher perception of group threat, and a higher quality of contact, mediated by lower social dominance orientation. Furthermore, these direct and indirect relationships are moderated by religious group membership and relative group size. We conclude that religious identification functions as a ‘double‐edged sword’ predicting both higher quality and lower quantity and quality of interreligious contact through various pathways and with a varying strength depending on intergroup context.     

Political involvement moderates the impact of worldviews and values on SDO and RWA

The Dual Process Model (DPM) of social attitudes and prejudice proposes that Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) and Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) reflect two distinct motivational processes. In two studies, we investigated how political involvement moderates the impact of social worldviews and value‐based dimensions on SDO and RWA. We proposed that political involvement constrains SDO, RWA and their antecedents into a tighter left–right ideological dimension, therefore transforming the double dissociation pattern of the DPM into a double additive pattern. As expected, for stronger political involvement, Study 1 (N = 237) showed that SDO and RWA were a function of both the competitive jungle and the dangerous world worldviews, whereas Study 2 (N = 143) pointed out that SDO and RWA were both connected with the value dimensions of self‐enhancement and conservation.     

Playful defensive responses in adult male rats depend on the status of the unfamiliar opponent

Adult male rats reared as pairmates from weaning were tested in a neutral arena with both members of another pair (one at a time). The unfamiliar pairs were found to engage in play fighting, although they were more likely to escalate the encounter into serious fighting than were pairs of familiar rats. Based on their within‐home pair behavior, each pairmate was designated as a dominant or a subordinate. When the test encounters between unfamiliar males were analyzed with regard to whether the pairings consisted of two dominants, two subordinates, or a mixed pair, the pattern of play fighting was found to be attenuated. Both dominants and subordinates were more likely to initiate playful encounters, to respond defensively during these encounters, and to do so using adult‐typical tactics of defense when paired with an unfamiliar rat that was dominant in its home cage. The mechanisms by which the home status of unfamiliar male rats can be identified by another male are discussed, particularly with regard to the role that play fighting may serve for this function. It is concluded that the data support the hypothesis that play fighting can be used by adult rats for social testing, which in this case seems to involve ascertaining the opponent's fighting capability. Aggr. Behav. 25:141–152, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Dominance and competence face to face: Dissociations obtained with a reverse correlation approach

The article explores whether the traits representing the dimensions underlying the structure of facial and non-facial impressions are similarly mapped in the face space. Two studies examine whether the trustworthiness-by-dominance and the warmth-by-competence two-dimensional models overlap in face perception. In Study 1 (N = 200), we used a reverse-correlation task to obtain classification images (CIs) reflecting how each dimension is mapped onto a face. Results show that the similarity between CIs was higher between warmth and trustworthiness than between competence and dominance. In Study 2 (N = 31) the evaluations of each CI on each social dimension show a higher dissociation between dominance and competence than between trustworthiness and warmth. These results, obtained at both perceptual and judgment levels, suggest that there is only a partial correspondence between the two models that seems to be driven by the relationship that the competence and dominance dimensions establish with valence.     

The lack of dominance and choice deferral: Choosing to defer to cope with the feeling of being out of control

The present study aimed to explore whether emotional dominance can also account for choice deferral. This research manipulated emotional dominance through the difference in attractiveness among current alternatives in Experiment 1 and the readability of fonts for describing current options in Experiment 2, to investigate the role of dominance in choice deferral. The results revealed that increasingly submissive decision environments were related to more choice of deferral options. Mediation analyses indicated that dominance could mediate the effects of experimental manipulations on choice deferral, and that the actual choice of a deferral option was associated with more increase in dominance of retrospective emotion. The results indicate that dominance plays an important role in choice deferral and that choosing to defer can minimize the explicit confrontation of being out of control.     

Peering into the “black box” of education interventions and attitude change: Audience characteristics moderate the effectiveness…and then only toward specific targets

To probe the inconsistent link between education and attitude change toward minority social groups, we conducted a field study that focused on audience characteristics and education about lesbian, gay, and transgender (LGT) targets. Participants enrolled in a sexuality course were compared to those in a neurology course, both taught by the same professor. Multiple regression analyses predicted attitude change toward LGT targets from social dominance orientation (SDO), right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), ratings of professor’s characteristics, SDO by course interaction, and RWA by course interaction. Only the SDO by course interaction significantly predicted attitude change. Simple slopes analyses indicated that high-SDO participants in the sexuality course showed the most positive attitude change. These findings suggest that education may reduce prejudice for certain audience characteristics.