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further by showing, first, that two worldview beliefs do seem to have causal impacts on RWA and SDO, and, second, that they mediate different social environmental effects on RWA and SDO.

Consistent with the model, a good deal of research over many years has shown that social situational threat seems to cause or be associated with higher levels of authoritarian attitudes or societal indicators of authoritarianism (e.g., Doty, Peterson, & Winter, 1991; McCann, 1997; McCann & Stewin, 1990; Perrin, 2005; Sales, 1973; Sales & Friend, 1973). More recently, longitudinal and experimental research has also shown that membership in competitively dominant social groups and high levels of societal resource scarcity and competition seems to increase levels of SDO (e.g., Guimond, Dambrun, Michinov, & Duarte, 2003; Huang & Liu, 2005; Schmitt, Branscombe, & Kappen, 2003). However, this research on social situational effects has typically looked at either indicators of authoritarianism or social dominance attitudes separately, and therefore not shown differential effects directly.

Three more recent studies have provided more direct evidence of differential effects. First, cross-national research comparing White Afrikaners in South Africa with New Zealanders of European descent indicated that differences in overall level of RWA and SDO in these two social groups might have different social causes that were mediated through different social worldview beliefs (Duckitt, 2004). This research found that Afrikaners were very much higher in RWA, and this was directly linked to their very high levels of dangerous world beliefs, presumably reflecting the higher levels of social threat experienced by White Afrikaners at the time. New Zealand Europeans, on the other hand, were significantly higher in SDO than Afrikaners, and this was associated with them having a higher competitive worldview, probably reflecting the higher levels of inequality and intergroup competition perceived by New Zealand Europeans.

Second, an experiment by Duckitt and Fisher (2003) provided direct evidence of social context effects on RWA that were mediated by social worldview beliefs. This experimental research found that reading a hypothetical scenario depicting a dangerous and threatening future increased RWA, but not SDO, and the increase in RWA fully mediated by heightened dangerous worldview. Finally, results from a recent longitudinal study indicated that competitive worldview predicted change in SDO but not RWA over a fivemonth period. Dangerous worldview, in contrast, predicted change in RWA but not SDO over the same timeframe in an undergraduate sample (Sibley, Wilson, & Duckitt, 2007a).

Overall, therefore, a good deal of new research has supported a dual process model proposing that two distinct and relatively independent ideological attitude dimensions, represented by RWA and SDO, are determined by

two very different sets of personality traits, two very different social worldview schemas, and two very different kinds of social situational influences.

THE DUAL PROCESS MODEL AND THE EFFECTS

OF THE TWO IDEOLOGICAL DIMENSIONS

A great deal of empirical research has shown that the two ideological attitude dimensions, represented by RWA and SDO, have powerful and pervasive effects on socio-political behavior and phenomena. Thus, both RWA and SDO powerfully predict support for rightversus left-wing political parties, policies, issues, causes, attitudes of chauvinistic nationalism, ethnocentrism, generalized prejudice, and intolerance (Adorno et al., 1950; Altemeyer, 1981, 1998; Pratto et al., 1994; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999).

A dual process approach to ideological attitudes makes important predictions about these effects that differ markedly from those suggested by a more traditional unidimensional approach. Because the dual process approach sees the two ideological attitude dimensions represented by RWA and SDO as having different origins and expressing different motivational goals and values, it proposes that, although these two dimensions may often have the same effects, they should do so for different reasons, and as an expression of different motives. According to the dual process model, RWA expresses the motivation to maintain or establish societal order, security, cohesion, and stability; that is, to manage social uncertainty and threat. The perceived threat of a particular outgroup should therefore be an important mediator of the effect of RWA on political behavior and prejudice directed toward that specific group. SDO expresses tough-minded competitive motivation to maintain or establish group dominance and superiority over other groups, and these concerns should therefore be important mediators or causes of its effects on attitudes toward those groups.

Several recent studies have supported this differential mediation or causation hypothesis of the effects of RWA and SDO. A correlational study by McFarland (2005) found that both RWA and SDO were significantly related to American students’ support for the attack on Iraq. However, a structural equation model analysis indicated that these effects were differentially mediated. The effect of RWA was fully mediated by perceived threat from Iraq. On the other hand, the effect of SDO was fully mediated by a lack of concern for the human costs of war, a finding that fits with the tough-minded, hard, competitive motivational orientation expected to be characteristic of those high in SDO.

In addition, several experimental studies have tested whether the effects of RWA and SDO on prejudice or outgroup negativity might be differentially

caused. First, Dru (2007) investigated the effects of priming an ingroupnorm preservation orientation or a competitiveness orientation on French students’ attitudes to various immigrant groups (Arabs, Blacks, Asians). Dru found that when an ingroup-norm preservation orientation was salient, RWA was a significant predictor of anti-immigrant attitudes, whereas SDO was not. On the other hand, when group competitiveness was made salient, SDO significantly predicted anti-immigrant attitudes, whereas RWA did not.

Second, Cohrs and Asbrock (in press) investigated the effect of depicting an immigrant group (Turks) as either threatening or competitive on German students’ attitudes to that group. There was a significant interaction between perceived threat and RWA, and not SDO, such that persons high in RWA became more negative to Turks when they were depicted as threatening. Depicting Turks as competitive did not, however, produce the expected interaction with SDO, possibly because this manipulation may have made personal competitiveness salient (which high SDOs should admire) rather than intergroup competitiveness.

And third, research by Duckitt, Nasoordeen, and Sibley (2007) investigated New Zealand (NZ) students’ attitudes toward a bogus new immigrant group (“Sandrians”). Sandrians were depicted as either culturally different and threatening to NZ values (threat condition), likely to compete for jobs and resources with New Zealanders (competitive condition), low in status and power (disadvantaged condition), or as similar in status and culture to New Zealanders (control condition). As expected, neither RWA nor SDO predicted negativity to Sandrians in the control condition; only SDO predicted negativity in the disadvantaged condition; both RWA and SDO predicted negativity in the competitive condition (this was expected, because the competitive manipulation should elicit both perceived threat and competitiveness over relative dominance); and RWA predicted negativity to Sandrians in the threat condition. There was one unexpected finding, however: SDO also predicted negativity to Sandrians in the threat condition. The manipulation checks revealed that the threat conditions increased both perceived threat from Sandrians, as had been expected, and competitiveness to Sandrians, which had not been expected but which may have been due to the heightened salience of intergroup differences produced by the description of Sandrians as culturally very different.

In addition to this differential mediation and causation hypothesis, the dual process approach makes another important prediction: a differential effect hypothesis that is also radically different from that which a unidimensional approach would make. Because the two ideological attitude dimensions represented by RWA and SDO express very different motives,

they should sometimes have very different effects, particularly in domains directly relevant to these motivational differences.

For example, persons high in RWA and SDO will both tend to support right-wing conservative political parties in general (Jost et al., 2003). However, they should differ in their relative preference for different kinds of right-wing parties. Persons high in RWA should prefer right-wing parties that emphasize law and order, and defend traditional and religious values. Persons high in SDO should prefer right-wing parties that emphasize free market capitalism and anti-welfare policies. When right-wing parties espouse both sets of policies, RWA and SDO should predict their support similarly, though, as already noted, there should be differential mediation of this support.

In the case of foreign policy, both RWA and SDO should predict support for tough, aggressive, militaristic foreign policies, but do so for different reasons, as shown by McFarland’s (2005) study of support for the attack on Iraq. However, differential effects for RWA and SDO on support for aggressive foreign policy are also possible. For example, SDO should be more strongly associated with support for blatant wars of conquest than RWA, whereas RWA should be more strongly associated with purely defensive military policies and expenditures in the absence of direct external threats.

Similarly, whereas both RWA and SDO are associated with prejudice or generalized intolerance, this should be so for different reasons. Persons high in RWA should dislike outgroups because they are seen as threatening social order, stability, cohesion, and security. Persons high in SDO, on the other hand, are motivated to maintain or establish intergroup dominance or superiority. Therefore, persons high in SDO should dislike low-status or socially subordinate groups, since derogating them would justify their subordination. They should also dislike outgroups seen as directly competing for dominance or resources. Such directly competing groups would also tend to be seen as socially threatening (threatening to disrupt social order and stability) and would thus elicit both RWAand SDO-motivated dislike.

These predictions about differential effects on prejudice for RWA and SDO were tested in two recent studies. In the first study, an exploratory factor analysis of attitudes to 24 different social outgroups revealed three distinct outgroup attitude dimensions (Duckitt & Sibley, 2007). One dimension comprised attitudes toward dangerous and threatening outgroups (violent criminals, terrorists, people who disrupt safety and security in society), a second comprised attitudes to derogated or disadvantaged groups (unattractive people, mentally handicapped people, obese people, psychiatric patients), and a third comprised attitudes to dissident groups (protestors, people who cause disagreement in society, feminists). As the dual process model would predict, only RWA significantly predicted attitudes toward

dangerous groups, only SDO predicted attitudes to disadvantaged groups, and both RWA and SDO predicted attitudes to dissident groups, which was expected since these groups would be socially threatening and, in most cases, also challenged social inequality.

A second study has also investigated both the differential effects and the degree to which these different effects for RWA and SDO are differentially mediated by threat and competitiveness (Duckitt, 2006). Results indicated that RWA, but not SDO, predicted negative attitudes toward two groups selected as likely to be seen as socially deviant and therefore threatening established norms and values, but not as socially subordinate (drug dealers, rock stars), and the effect of RWA was mediated by perceived threat from these groups rather than competitiveness to them. In addition, SDO, but not RWA, predicted negative attitudes to three groups selected as likely to be seen as socially subordinate and therefore likely to activate competitive motives to maintain their relative subordination, but not as socially deviant or threatening (physically handicapped people, unemployment beneficiaries, housewives), and the effect of SDO was mediated by competitiveness over relative dominance toward these groups and not by perceived threat from them.

Overall, therefore, new research has provided important support for the dual process hypotheses that the two ideological attitude dimensions represented by RWA and SDO will have the same effects on socio-political behaviors and attitudes for different reasons and as expressions of different motives, and may sometimes have different effects as well, particularly in domains directly relevant to these motivational differences.

A Dual Process Approach to Legitimizing

Myths and System Justifi cation

The dual process model also has implications for how different societal and individual difference factors may jointly predict the kinds of discourses and legitimizing myths that most effectively enhance and attenuate system justification toward different groups within society. Specifically, it suggests that the dual personality, social worldview, and motivational goal dimensions underlying the two dimensions of ideological attitudes should generate broadly corresponding dual domains of legitimizing myths (Pratto et al., 1994; see also Jost & Banaji, 1994) that justify social inequality and discrimination. Following Sidanius and Pratto (1999, p. 104), legitimizing myths are conceptualized as providing the moral and intellectual justification for social practices that either increase or maintain levels of social stratification and inequality between social groups.

Legitimizing myths come in many different forms. We suggest that the content of these ideologies in a given domain should be the joint product of two factors:

•the social representations used to build consensus and manage debate about intergroup relations in that context, and

•the degree to which social stratification and inequality is motivated by the competitive-driven need for intergroup dominance and superiority (SDO) and/or the threat-driven need for collective security and social control (RWA).

On the one hand, the content of legitimizing myths stemming from groupbased motivations for dominance and superiority (indexed by SDO) should be explicitly tailored toward justifying and maintaining hierarchical relations between groups. This is suggested by Sidanius and Pratto’s (1999) research describing the function of ideologies that position fairness and equality as meritocracy, and hence justify opposition toward affirmative action policies in America. Saucier (2000, p. 378) has neatly summarized the motivations of people who score high in SDO and on empirically similar dimensions when he stated that “it may be that such individuals have only relationships of convenience with belief systems: They endorse beliefs that seem likely to justify their current behavior patterns—patterns that make sense from a fitness maximization standpoint but do not garner much societal approval.”

In contrast, the content of legitimizing myths stemming from group-based motivations for ingroup security and conformity (indexed by RWA) seems likely to be tailored toward maintaining ingroup norms and social roles. These ideologies are likely to be anchored in notions of (ingroup) morality and values, portraying outgroup threats to ingroup values and way of life, and prescriptions of the roles that specific subgroups may perform within society.

The motivational goals indexed by SDO and RWA, then, should result in ideologies that justify existing and desired social arrangements by emphasizing quite different characteristics of outgroups and that stratify and position groups based on qualitatively different stereotype characteristics. Accordingly, legitimizing myths motivated by the competitive-driven desire for groupbased dominance and superiority should tend to differentiate groups on the basis of status and competence. This should result in categorizations along the lines of “us,” who are superior, strong, competent, and dominant (or should be) and “them,” who are inferior, incompetent, and worthless and not deserving of any special treatment or help. Legitimizing myths motivated by the threatdriven need for collective security and social cohesion should, in contrast, tend to differentiate groups on the basis of morality and subjective warmth versus

coldness. This should result in categorizations along the lines of “them,” who are bad, dangerous, immoral, and deviant and who threaten “us,” who are normal, morally good, decent people.

Recent research examining the dual motivational bases of sexism, for example, is consistent with the premise that SDO and RWA predict different legitimizing myths anchored in different ideologies or societally elaborated discourses (Sibley, Wilson, & Duckitt, 2007b). With regard to sexism, Glick and Fiske (1996) argued that sexist attitudes toward women can be summarized in terms of two interrelated dimensions. One dimension assesses individual differences in hostile sexism (HS), which, according to Glick and colleagues (2004, p. 715), is consistent with notions of sexism-as-antipathy, and reflects “hostility toward women who challenge male power, whether directly (e.g., feminists) or through ‘feminine wiles.’ ” The other dimension, termed benevolent sexism (BS), has a seemingly more positive tone, and is defined as attitudes toward women that are “subjectively benevolent but patronising, casting women as wonderful but fragile creatures who ought to be protected and provided for by men” (Glick et al., 2004, p. 715). Ambivalent sexism theory posits that BS and HS form an integrated ideological system that justifies and maintains men’s greater status and power in society by emphasizing both subjectively positive (BS) and subjectively negative (HS) evaluations of women depending upon their social role (Glick & Fiske, 1996).

Sibley and colleagues (2007b) presented meta-analytic and longitudinal data suggesting that individual differences in men’s HS attitudes toward women were caused by a competitively driven motivation for intergroup dominance, indexed by SDO, whereas men’s BS attitudes toward women were caused by a threat-driven security-cohesion motivation, indexed by RWA. According to Sibley and colleagues (2007b), men high in RWA endorse BS because it positions women’s ideal role relative to men within the broader context of patriarchal society. Thus, men’s endorsement of BS is a result of the motivation to maintain social cohesion and establish clear boundaries for the prescriptive roles that men and women should perform within society. Men’s endorsement of HS, in contrast, is at least partly motivated by the desire to directly subjugate women, which stems from a competitivedriven motivation for group-based dominance (i.e., SDO). Men high in SDO are highly sensitive and reactive to competitiveness in gender relations, resulting in negative attitudes toward women because they are perceived as competitively challenging male dominance within society. These initial findings therefore provide good evidence for the premise that SDO and RWA may cause the individual to subscribe to different domains of legitimizing myths, one concerned with maintaining hierarchical relations between groups, and the other concerned with maintaining ingroup norms and values.

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, we have presented new theory and research extending the dual process motivational model. Overall, the available research supports the causal sequence proposed by the model, and suggests that the combination of socio-structural characteristics of the situation (resource scarcity and danger or threat) and certain personality traits (namely, low openness and low agreeableness) causes the individual to develop schematized views of the social world as more dangerous and competitive, respectively. These worldviews then heighten the cognitive accessibility of motivational goals for social cohesion and security and intergroup dominance and superiority. RWA and SDO appear to provide the most reliable and valid measures of these two constructs currently available. Finally, extending the dual process cognitive-motivational model, we have presented new evidence suggesting that these two motivational goals result in dual ideologies that justify existing and desired social arrangements by emphasizing quite different characteristics of outgroups and that stratify and position groups based on qualitatively different evaluations. To understand the process by which ideologies legitimate social systems, then, it is necessary to understand the motivational bases of these two different ideological dimensions, the conditions under which they will cause the individual to espouse different legitimizing myths, and importantly, the conditions under which these different domains of legitimizing myths may combine to form an integrated ideological system that maintains the existing social order through multiple ideological mechanisms.

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