The social psychology of dominance and counter-dominance: The role of political complexity evaluation in legitimizing moral vs. hegemonic intervention in protests against Authoritarian government

The present communication aims at framing the social dominance orientation and its articulation with political complexity evaluations in legitimizing the international intervention in support for the Arab uprising,). In addition, this study contrasts the role of social dominance orientation against its theoretical opposite, the counter-dominance construct (Pratto et al., 2013a) defined as a psychological response to oppressive hierarchical systems. This new construct is driven by a collective relational “need for social inclusion” toward myths and ideologies to fight group hierarchies. This study relies on a preliminary version of a Counter-Dominance Orientation (CDO) developed by Pratto and colleagues, as well as the new short version of the social dominance orientation scale (Sorth-SDO; Pratto et al, 2013b). Political complexity was measured testing the different degree participants have in framing “political issues” as a complex entity to manage. Path analysis was used to test the relationship between perception of political complexity, the two dominance constructs (SDO and CDO), and their connection with legitimizing myths in supporting international intervention in the Arab countries touched by the uprising movements. Results show that two different types of interventions (moral and hegemonic) were supported by counter-dominant and social-dominant respectively, through specific legitimizing myths. In addition, social-dominance and counter-dominance orientations reflected opposite readings of the complexity of political reality: SDO was partially explained by a simplistic view of the political dynamics, and CDO was associated to a complex view.