Gender differences in intergroup conflict: The effect of outgroup threat priming on social dominance orientation

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of outgroup threat priming on social dominance orientation (SDO). Evolutionary psychologists have proposed the adaptive psychological mechanism to intergroup conflict is specific to males. We predicted that the mechanism would function as enhancement of an orientation concerning hierarchical group relations by cueing outgroup threat. We hypothesized that male participants would demonstrate a higher level of SDO than females by outgroup threat priming in a laboratory experiment. One hundred sixty-seven undergraduate students participated in the experiment that measured SDO after an outgroup priming task. Consistent with our hypothesis, results showed that males had a higher level of SDO than females by cue of outgroup threat, while females did not reveal any significant effects of the outgroup threat cue on SDO.