From Social Dominance to Political Engagement: The Role of Political Beliefs and Group Status

In three surveys of adults in 5 nations, we investigated how shared beliefs about the political system motivate individuals’ political engagement. Specifically, we tested whether individuals’ beliefs that the political context is fair, non-corrupt, and their belief that they could influence politics motivates political engagement to a higher extent for higher compared to lower status group members. In a novel use of social dominance theory, we theoretically conceived of these political beliefs as legitimizing ideologies, so that we predicted that people with higher social dominance orientation endorse these beliefs, which in turn enhance the motivation to engage in politics to support current social hierarchical systems. Moreover, we expected that these relationships would be stronger for higher compared to lower status groups. These hypotheses were tested considering different levels of group status: wealth status within a country (Study 1), political-regional differences within a country (Study 2), and international status (i.e., between countries; Study 3), and were largely supported.