The Pathway between Social Dominance Orientation and Drop out from Hierarchy-Attenuating Contexts: The Role of Moral Foundations and Person-Environment Misfit

The present study examines the role of individuals' preference for unequal intergroup relations in exacerbating a process of differential attrition from organizations that value intergroup equality (i.e., hierarchy-attenuating contexts). We proposed that people functioning within a well-recognized hierarchy-attenuating context (i.e., students of social work) who were higher on social dominance orientation (SDO) would be more likely to leave their institution through two pathways; first, people higher on SDO would have fewer moral concerns of social fairness and human harm-avoidance (i.e., individualizing); in turn, a lack of individualizing morality would stimulate a perceived person-environment misfit, ultimately increasing their intention to leave. We conducted a single cross-sectional design study involving a convenience sample of 245 undergraduate social work students. Overall, the results of the serial mediation model suggest that people higher on SDO intend to leave their organization that supports inclusive equality via reduced individualizing morality and high perceived P-E misfit. These findings contribute to understanding the role of socio-political orientations and moral beliefs in hindering proper adaptation to contexts that value egalitarian social norms, with relevant implications for individuals and groups.

Reductions in perceived COVID-19 threat amid UK's mass public vaccination programme coincide with reductions in outgroup avoidance (but not prejudice)

It has long been proposed that perceptions of threat contribute to greater outgroup negativity. Much of the existing evidence on the threat–prejudice association in the real world, however, is cross‐sectional in nature. Such designs do not adequately capture individual‐level changes in constructs, and how changes in constructs relate to changes in other theoretically relevant constructs. The current research exploited the unique opportunity afforded by the mass COVID‐19 vaccination programme in the United Kingdom to explore whether reductions in pathogen threat coincide with reductions in outgroup prejudice and avoidance. A two‐wave longitudinal study (N₁ = 912, N₂ = 738) measured British adult's perceptions of COVID‐19 threat and anti‐immigrant bias before and during mass vaccine rollout in the United Kingdom. Tests of latent change models demonstrated that perceived COVID‐19 threat significantly declined as the vaccine programme progressed, as did measures of outgroup avoidance tendencies, but not prejudiced attitudes. Critically, change in threat was systematically correlated with change in outgroup avoidance: those with greater reductions in perceived COVID‐19 threat were, on average, those with greater reductions in outgroup avoidance. Findings provide important and novel insights into the implications of disease protection strategies for intergroup relations during an actual pandemic context, as it unfolds over time.