Widening Social Dominance Orientation: A Study on the Italian SDO7 Version

The SDO6 measure (Pratto et al., 1994) evaluates in different degree the well-known peoples orientations' sustaining group based hierarchy. The release of SDO7 measure by Ho and coll. (Ho et al. 2015; see also 2012) has theoretically broadened the study perspective on social dominance, depicted now as a double faceted construct, composed of SDO-Dominance (SDO-D) and SDO-Egalitarianism (SDO-E). Accordingly to these two dimensions, high powerful status groups act overtly toward lower status groups, whereas SDO-E intercepts now the preference for sustaining system inequalities through the framing of specific "subtle" hierarchy-enhancing ideologies. Our study presents first results concerning SDO7 in its Italian version tested through confirmatory factor and criterion validity analyses, deepening and discussing the findings that SDO-D and SDO-E are distinct subdimension of SDO. Consistent with our first results we further debate the role of support for hierarchy and ingroup status. We studied also the salience of the brief 4-item measure. Although at an early stage the study results' will be discussed accordingly to a broadening of SDT and also looking at the applicative potential for research in a different context and language, prospecting the scale use for Italian research and studies.