5 = My goal is to have a very great deal of power, being one of the real “movers and shakers” in our country.
So, how much power do you want? Social dominators in each of two studies I ran wanted to have much more than most people did. Authoritarian followers did not.
Now people can want power for different reasons. If you wanted to save the planet from the destructiveness of its dominant species, you would need to make (for example) oil companies do some things they definitely do not want to do. Power as a means to a laudable end is not a bad thing—although we have to acknowledge that almost everyone thinks he’s the good guy, and if you take your stand on the slope of Mount Righteous Cause, it has proven as slippery as greased glass.
But social dominators will run to take their chances on that slippery slope. They thrill to power in and of itself. They want to control others, period. (Make that, “exclamation mark!”) Their name says it all. And they come bundled with a shock of nasty attitudes that completes the package. The following items are from a Personal Power, Meanness, and Dominance Scale I have developed, to which high social dominators respond in very predictable ways, compared with most other people. Look over this “Power Mad” scale to get an idea of what goes on in dominators’ minds.
The Personal Power, Meanness and Dominance Scale
It’s a mistake to interfere with the “law of the jungle.” Some people were meant to dominate others. (Agree)
Would you like to be a kind and helpful person to those in need? (Disagree)
“Winning is not the first thing; it’s the only thing.” (Agree)
The best way to lead a group under your supervision is to show them kindness, consideration, and treat them as fellow workers, not as inferiors. (Disagree)
If you have power in a situation, you should use it however you have to, to get your way. (Agree)
Would you be cold-blooded and vengeful, if that’s what it took to reach your goals? (Agree)
Life is NOT governed by the “survival of the fittest.” We should let compassion and moral laws be our guide. (Disagree)
Do money, wealth, and luxuries mean a lot to you? (Agree)
It is much better to be loved than to be feared. (Disagree)
Do you enjoy having the power to hurt people when they anger or disappoint you? (Agree)
It is much more important in life to have integrity in your dealings with others than to have money power. (Disagree)
It’s a dog-eat-dog world where you have to be ruthless at times. (Agree)
Charity (i.e. giving somebody something for nothing) is admirable, not stupid. (Disagree)
Would you like to be known as a gentle and forgiving person? (Disagree)
Do you enjoy taking charge of things and making people do things your way? (Agree)
Would it bother you if other people thought you were mean and pitiless? (Disagree)
Do you like other people to be afraid of you? (Agree)
Do you hate to play practical jokes that can sometimes really hurt people? (Disagree)
It would bother me if I intimidated people, and they worried about what I might do next. (Disagree)
I will do my best to destroy anyone who deliberately blocks my plans and goals. (Agree)
Social dominance scores correlate very strongly [3] with these answers to the Power Mad scale. High scorers are inclined to be intimidating, ruthless, and vengeful They scorn such noble acts as helping others, and being kind, charitable, and forgiving. Instead they would rather be feared than loved, and be viewed as mean, pitiless, and vengeful. They love power, including the power to hurt in their drive to the top. Authoritarian followers do not feel this way because they seldom have such a drive to start with.
So, are you lucky enough to know some social dominators personally? It’s uncharitable to describe them in these terms. But this is how they describe themselves, compared to others, when answering the Power Mad scale anonymously.
In a similar vein, remember those “group cohesiveness” items in chapter 3, such as, “For any group to succeed, all its members have to give it their complete loyalty.” We saw that authoritarian followers endorse such sentiments. But social dominators do not. Oh sure, they want their followers to be super loyal to the group they lead. But they themselves are not really in it so much for the group or its cause, but more for themselves. It’s all about them, not about a higher purpose. If trouble arises, don’t be surprised if they start playing “Every man for himself” and even sell out the group to save their own skin.[4]
Empathy. Here’s an easy one. How empathetic, how compassionate do you think dominators are? Not very, right? You got it, for they agree with statements such as “I don’t spend a lot of time feeling sorry for people less fortunate than me,” and “I have a ‘tough’ attitude toward people having difficulty: ‘That’s their problem, not mine.’” And they disagree with, “I feel very sorry for people who are treated unfairly” and “I have a lot of compassion for people who have gotten the bad breaks in life.” For high social dominators “sympathy” indeed falls, as the saying goes, between “ship” and “syphilis” in the dictionary. (Well, maybe that’s not the exact saying, but this is a family web-site.)
Religion. High RWAs, we know, strongly tend to be religious fundamentalists. Social dominators do not. In fact, like most people in my samples, most dominators only go to church for marrying and burying. This would be “Three strikes and ye’re out” as far as the religiously ethnocentric high RWAs are concerned except for one thing. Dominators can easily pretend to be religious, saying the right words and claiming a deep personal belief and, as we saw in chapter 3, gullible right-wing authoritarians will go out on almost any limb, walk almost any plank to believe them.
So some non-religious dominators, as part of the act, do go to church regularly, for manipulative reasons. This amounts to lying, but I hope you don’t think social dominators would never, ever, ever, tell a lie. Here are the items from another measure I’ve concocted, called the Exploitive Manipulative Amoral Dishonesty (“Exploitive-MAD”) scale. Again, high social dominators’ responses, compared with others, really open your eyes.
The Exploitive Manipulative Amoral Dishonesty Scale
You know that most people are out to “screw” you, so you have to get them first when you get the chance. (Agree)
All in all, it is better to be humble and honest than important and dishonest. (Disagree)
There is really no such thing as “right” and “wrong.” It all boils down to what you can get away with. (Agree)
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and never do anything unfair to someone else. (Disagree)
One of the most useful skills a person should develop is how to look someone straight in the eye and lie convincingly. (Agree)
It gains a person nothing if he uses deceit and treachery to get power and riches. (Disagree)
Basically, people are objects to be quietly and coolly manipulated for your own benefit. (Agree)
Deceit and cheating are justified when they get you what you really want. (Agree)
One should give others the benefit of the doubt. Most people are trustworthy if you have faith in them. (Disagree)
The best skill one can have is knowing the “right move at the right time”: when to “soft-sell” someone, when to be tough, when to flatter, when to threaten, when to bribe, etc. (Agree)
Honesty is the best policy in all cases. (Disagree)
The best reason for belonging to a church is to project a good image and have contact with some of the important people in your community. (Agree)
No one should do evil acts, even when they can “get away with them” and make lots of money. (Disagree)
There’s a sucker born every minute, and smart people learn how to take advantage of them. (Agree)
The end does NOT justify the means. If you can only get something by unfairness, lying, or hurting others, then give up trying. (Disagree)
Our lives should be g
overned by high ethical principles and religious morals, not by power and greed. (Disagree)
It is more important to create a good image of yourself in the minds of others than to actually be the person others think you are. (Agree)
There’s no excuse for lying to someone else. (Disagree)
One of the best ways to handle people is to tell them what they want to hear. (Agree)
The truly smart person knows that honesty is the best policy, not manipulation and deceit. (Disagree)
Social dominance scores correlate strongly [5] with the responses to these statements. RWA answers again do not correlate at all. Social dominators thus admit, anonymously, to striving to manipulate others, and to being dishonest, two-faced, treacherous, and amoral. It’s as if someone took the Scout Law (“A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, …”) and turned it completely upside down: “A ‘winner’ is deceitful, manipulative, unfair, base, conniving, …” Furthermore, while the followers may feel admiration bordering on adoration of their leaders, we should not be surprised if the leaders feel a certain contempt for their followers. They are the suckers, the “marks,” the fools social dominators find so easy to manipulate.
Roots of hostility. Another difference between authoritarian leaders and followers comes into view when you untangle the roots of their hostility. Social dominators show greater prejudice against minorities and women than high RWAs do, but the followers are much more hostile toward homosexuals. Why should this be the case?
As we saw in chapter 2, high RWAs are especially likely to aggress when they feel established authority approves of the aggression, when they are afraid, and because they are self-righteous. Since the Bible condemns homosexuality in several places, and “giving” rights to homosexuals seems to right-wing authoritarians yet another nail in the coffin of moral society, aggression against homosexuals is aroused and blessed. Similarly high RWAs are more likely than social dominators to impose stiff sentences in the Trials situation, and more likely to help the government persecute radicals when it’s time to round up a “posse.”
However when it comes to racial and ethnic minorities, right-wing authoritarians will still aggress—overtly or sneakily, physically or verbally—but such attacks are less clearly supported by religious and civic authorities than they used to be. So their prejudice in these cases has dropped some. But not that of social dominators.
Why are social dominators hostile? Well unlike high RWAs who fear an explosion of lawlessness, they already live in the jungle that authoritarian followers fear is coming, and they’re going to do the eating. They do not ask themselves, when they meet someone, “Is there any reason why I should try to control this person?” so much as they ask, “Is there any reason why I should not try to gain the upper hand with him right now?” Dominance is the first order of business with them in a relationship, like dogs encountering each other in a school yard, and vulnerable minorities provide easy targets for exerting power, for being mean, for domination. It’s an open question whether the aggression mainly serves a desire to dominate, or if the domination mainly serves a desire to hurt others. But either way in the dog-eatdog world of the social dominator, they’re out to claw their way to the top.
If this analysis is correct, then social dominators should not score highly on the measures that predict authoritarian aggression among the followers: fear of a dangerous world and self-righteousness. And most of them don’t. Dominators aren’t usually afraid that civilization might collapse and lawlessness ensue. Laws, they think, are not something you should necessarily obey in the first place, so much as things you should not get caught disobeying. And as for self-righteousness, it’s pretty irrelevant to people as amoral as most social dominators tend to be. They may speak of the righteousness of their cause, but that’s usually just to assure and motivate their followers. Might makes right for social dominators.
By the same token, as noted earlier, most high RWAs do not score highly on the Power-MAD and Exploitive-MAD scales that reveal “what makes the dominator tick.” Their image of themselves as the good people leaves no room for believing they are cold-blooded, ruthless, immoral manipulators after power at almost any cost. So social dominators might incite authoritarian followers to commit a hate crime, but the dominators and followers probably launch the attack for different reasons: the dominator out of meanness, as an act of intimidation and control; the follower out of fear and self-righteousness in the name of authority.
The mental life of the social dominator. Persons who score highly on the Social Dominance scale do not usually have all the nooks and crannies, contradictions and lost files in their mental life that we find in high RWAs. Most of them do not show weak reasoning abilities, highly compartmentalized thinking, and certainly not a tendency to trust people who tell them what they want to hear. They’ve got their head together. Nor are most of them dogmatic or particularly zealous about any cause or philosophy. You have to believe in something to be dogmatic and zealous, and what social dominators apparently believe in most is not some creed or cause, but gaining power by any means fair or foul.
The “soundness” of their thinking hardly means you can believe them, however. They are quite capable of saying whatever will get them ahead. After all, they hold that there’s no such thing as “right” and “wrong.” It all boils down to what you can get away with. And one of the most useful skills a person should develop, they say, is how to look someone straight in the eye and lie convincingl y.[6] So like high RWAs, social dominators are quite capable of hypocrisy—the difference being that the RWAs probably don’t realize the hypocrisy because their thinking is so compartmentalized, whereas the dominators do but don’t care. I found evidence of this duplicity when I asked various samples for their opinions about equality—the thing the Social Dominance scale is all about, the underlying democratic value that high social dominators do not believe in.
What reasons do dominators give for giving equality short-shrift? Well, they say, ultimately complete equality is a pipe dream. Natural forces inevitably govern the worth of the individual. And people should have to earn their places in society, not get any free rides. All that society is obliged to do, if fairness is an issue, is provide a level playing field. The poor can pull themselves up by their bootstraps if they really want to. Lots of people have, haven’t they?
You have probably heard these arguments before, and some of them make a certain amount of sense. But I don’t trust the social dominator when he says them because I know how he reacts to other statements about equality. Namely:
People have no right to economic equality. All of us should get as much as we can, and if some don’t get enough, that’s their problem. (Agree)
Everyone should have an equal opportunity for economic success. Those born into poor circumstances should be given extra help to make the “playing field” level for them. (Disagree)
If the natural forces of supply and demand and power make a few people immensely wealthy and millions of others poor, so be it. (Agree)
“Access programs” to higher education, which give people from poor backgrounds extra financial support and counseling while in university, are a good idea. (Disagree)
Nobody should get extra help improving his place in society. Everyone should start off with what his family gives him, and go from there. (Agree)
There is nothing wrong with the fact that powerful people get better treatment by the law than poor people do. (Agree)
Since so many members of minority groups end up in our jails, we should take strong steps to make sure prejudice plays no role in their treatment in the legal system. (Disagree)
If powerful people can get away with illegal acts because they can afford the best lawyers, and because they have “friends in high places,” so what? It’s just natural. (Agree)
The “one-person-one-vote” idea is dumb. People who make bigger contributions to our society should get a lot more votes than those who do nothing. (Agree)
Eq
uality is one of the fundamental principles of democracy, so we should work hard to increase it. (Disagree)
Equality” is one of those nice-sounding names for suckers. Actually only fools believe in it. (Agree)
No racial group is naturally inferior to any other. If a group does poorly, it is usually because of discrimination. (Disagree)
If everyone really were treated equally, I would get less and I would not like that. (Agree)
Given all of this, do you really believe the social dominator who says people should have to earn their success in life? He’s quite willing to let the children of the rich get rich merely through inheritance. Do you trust him when he says he’s in favor of a level playing field? He’s against programs that would give the disadvantaged a better chance. Does he really believe the poor can pull themselves up by their bootstraps, or is he content to let them face an uphill struggle that very few can overcome? It doesn’t bother the social dominator that masses of people are poor. That’s their tough luck. And some racial groups are just naturally inferior to others, he says. Justice should not be applied equally to all. The rich and powerful should have advantages in court, even if that completely violates the concept of justice. Who cares if prejudice plays a role in the justice system? He certainly doesn’t. The “right people” should have more votes than everybody else in elections. And so on.
If you stare deeply into the souls of social dominators, they believe “equality” is a sucker word. Only fools believe in it, they say. And if people took equality seriously, if society did try to provide equal opportunity for all, and if the playing field really were made level so that bootstraps could be pulled up and multitudes of lives bettered, the social dominator knows he would get less. And he very much dislikes that notion. He says so.
Personal Origins of the Social Domination Orientation
We think we understand how people become authoritarian followers (chapter 2). So where do social dominators come from? Right now, it’s hard to say. Attempts to find shaping experiences have uncovered a few “beginnings.” High social dominators among university students say it has been their experience that:
The Authoritarians Page 18