Preferences for group dominance track and mediate the effects of macro-level social inequality and violence across societies
People's preferences for group-based hierarchy track the inequality and violence of the societies around them — and mediate their effects. Individual psychology and social structure are not rival explanations; they are a loop.
The paper, in plain language
Connecting two levels of explanation
Social dominance orientation — the preference for some groups to sit above others — had been studied mostly as an individual difference. With Ronald Fischer, Jim Sidanius and Lotte Thomsen, I asked the cross-national question: does this disposition vary with the actual inequality and violence of the societies people inhabit, and does it transmit their effects?
What we found
Both. Across societies, average dominance preferences track macro-level inequality and violence, and they mediate the relationship between those structural conditions and downstream intergroup outcomes. The disposition is not free-floating temperament; it is calibrated by the social order it then helps to justify.
Why it matters
Debates about prejudice often stall on a false choice: fix people or fix structures. This evidence dissolves the choice — unequal structures cultivate the psychology that defends them, which means structural reform is also psychological intervention, and vice versa. The paper has become one of the anchors of my broader work on where political attitudes come from.
Kunst, J. R., Fischer, R., Sidanius, J., & Thomsen, L. (2017). Preferences for group dominance track and mediate the effects of macro-level social inequality and violence across societies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114 (21), 5407-5412. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1616572114