U s patriotism and ideologies of group dominance a tale of asymmetry

patriotism and two different dimensions of social dominance orientation: group antiegalitarianism and group dominance.. A consistent body of research suggests that there are two major di

Address correspondence to Yesilernis Peña, Department of Psychology, University of Cal-ifornia, Los Angeles, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1563; yesil@ucla.edu (e-mail).

U.S Patriotism and Ideologies of

Group Dominance: A Tale of Asymmetry

YESILERNIS PEÑA JIM SIDANIUS

Department of Psychology University of California, Los Angeles

ABSTRACT Using a random sample (N = 405) of White and Latino Americans from Los

Angeles County, the authors explored whether there is an asymmetrical relationship between U.S patriotism and two different dimensions of social dominance orientation: group antiegalitarianism and group dominance Although there was no evidence of asym-metry in the relationship between U.S patriotism and group antiegalitarianism, there was evidence of consistent asymmetry in the relationship between U.S patriotism and group dominance Among Whites (the dominant North American ethnic group) and depending

on demographic variables such as age, education, income, and gender, the greater the respondents’ tendency to subordinate “inferior groups,” the greater their level of U.S patri-otism In contrast, among Latino Americans (the major subordinate group in Southern Cal-ifornia), the opposite trend was found Here, higher levels of group dominance orientation were associated with lower levels of U.S patriotism The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

Key words: ethnic status, group dominance, Latino, nationalism, social dominance orien-tation, U.S patriotism, xenophobic

DOES NATIONAL PRIDE necessarily imply ethnocentric and xenophobic regard for others? Recent empirical research suggests that the answer to this ques-tion depends on at least two major variables: the precise definiques-tion of naques-tional pride and the social status of the in-group being questioned

A consistent body of research suggests that there are two major dimensions

of national pride: patriotism and nationalism (Feshbach, 1994; Kosterman & Feshbach, 1989; Sidanius, Feshbach, Levin, & Pratto, 1997) Social scientists generally define nationalism as the sense of national superiority and dominance over other nations and peoples (Feshbach, 1994; de Figueiredo & Elkins, 2000;

Sidanius et al., 1997) Because of nationalism’s implied in-group–out-group structure, it is not surprising that the sentiment is positively associated with

dom-ination ideologies such as ethnocentrism, xenophobia, and social dominance ori-entation (de Figueiredo & Elkins, 2000; Lea, 1996; Pratto et al., 2000; Sidanius

et al., 1997) More interesting is the relationship between patriotism,

xenopho-bia, and group-based dominance Patriotism is generally defined as love of and

pride in a nation and its symbols Although it is possible to define different sub-dimensions of patriotism (Sullivan, Fried, & Dietz, 1992), at their core all the def-initions express a strong identification with and positive attachment to a specific nation and its defining symbols However, unlike nationalism and consistent with social identity theory (Brewer, 1979; Brewer & Campbell, 1976; Herring, Jankowski, & Brown, 1999; Hinkle & Brown, 1990; Struch & Schwartz, 1989), neither in-group attachment nor patriotism implies a zero-sum relationship between in-group and out-group affect, a rejection of out-groups or a desire to dominate and oppress out-groups Because favoritism toward the in-group does not necessarily imply hostility toward or denigration of out-groups (Brewer, 1979; de Figueiredo & Elkins, 2000), we did not expect patriotic attachment to a particular nation to be positively associated with group-based inequality and domination ideologies as exemplified by social dominance orientation (Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999)

In contrast, social dominance theorists have argued that within strongly hier-archical social systems, both nationalistic attachment and patriotic attachment are associated with ideologies of group-based dominance Because very hierarchi-cally structured social systems are usually established by military conquest and the subsequent subordination or even enslavement of defeated groups (e.g., the United States, Australia, South Africa; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999), the concept of

nationalism is usually defined as expression of the values and cultural and racial

identity of the dominant group Nations are often disproportionately controlled

by the dominant group and allocate more of their valued resources to members

of the dominant group rather than the subordinate groups (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999) As a result, members of dominant groups are expected to feel a particu-larly keen sense of ownership of the nation and its symbols

Because of this sense of ownership, we also expected to find a positive association between patriotic attachment to the nation and ideologies of group dominance We expected members of subordinated groups to have little, if any, positive association between patriotic attachment to the nation and ideologies

of group-based dominance Social dominance theorists regard this expected asymmetrical relationship between patriotism and group dominance ideologies

as a special case of the ideological asymmetry hypothesis (Fang, Sidanius, &

Pratto, 1998; Levin, Sidanius, Rabinowitz, & Federico, 1998; Sidanius, 1993; Sidanius, Levin, & Pratto, 1996) Sidanius et al (1997) initially found support for this type of asymmetry by using a sample of university students in South-ern California Their results showed that although measures of classical racism

and social dominance were positively correlated with patriotism among ethnic dominants—White students—they were either unrelated or negatively related

to patriotism among ethnic subordinates such as Asian, Latino, and African Americans (Sinclair, Sidanius, & Levin, 1998) For example, although

patrio-tism increased as a function of social dominance among White Americans (B = 0.23, p < 01), it decreased as a function of social dominance among African Americans (B = –0.36, p < 01) The difference in slopes was statistically

sig-nificant at the 05 level Similarly, patriotism increased as a function of

classi-cal racism among White Americans (B = 0.30, p < 01), but it decreased as a function of classical racism among Asian Americans (B = –0.24, p < 05) and was not related to classical racism among Latinos (B = 0.05, ns) The slope

dif-ferences were statistically significant at the 01 and 05 levels, respectively (Sidanius et al., 1997) Despite the consistency of these asymmetrical relation-ships between patriotic attachment to the nation and antiegalitarian ideology, it

is still unclear whether this type of asymmetry can be generalized to the popu-lation at large or is simply restricted to the university campus

A further complication is that recent studies using the Social Dominance Scale (SDS) show this instrument to consist of two distinct and relatively orthog-onal subdimensions: group dominance (the desire to subordinate inferior groups) and group antiegalitarianism (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999).1Assuming that the asym-metrical relationship between social dominance orientation and patriotism can be generalized across broader populations, we expected the group dominance sub-dimension to be positively related to patriotism among ethnic dominants but unre-lated or negatively reunre-lated to patriotism among ethnic subordinates However, it

is not clear whether the ideological asymmetry hypothesis applies to the anti-egalitarianism subdimension In this study, we examined both issues

Method

Participants

The data came from the Los Angeles County Social Survey (LACSS), con-ducted every year by the Institute for Social Science Research (ISSR) at the Uni-versity of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) The survey assessed approximately 250 variables, including standard demographics and general attitudes regarding ethnic-ity, political ideology, job satisfaction, income distribution, and ethnic dispersal The 1999 LACSS total data set consisted of 791 respondents We selected

mem-bers of the two largest ethnic groups (Whites: n = 290; U.S Latinos: n = 265) From

these two groups, we then selected only those who were U.S citizens This left a

total of 405 respondents (Whites: n = 275; Latinos: n = 130) for final analysis.

1 For a slightly different conceptualization of these two dimensions, see Jost and Thomp-son, 1998.

Sampling Procedure

The LACSS was drawn as a probability sample of adult residents of Los Angeles County The computer-assisted telephone interviewing unit of ISSR con-ducted the survey, which used a random digit-dial telephone technique directed

at households To fully capture the views and opinions of Los Angeles County’s large Latino population, the questionnaire was translated into Spanish for use with monolingual Spanish speakers and those who preferred to be interviewed in Spanish rather than English

Measures

Patriotism was measured by three items that tap into the core elements of patriotic attachment: love of country and pride in the nation The three items were (a) “I have great love for the United States,” (b)“I am proud to be an American,” and (c) “I find the sight of the American flag very moving.” All items were

answered on a 5-point Likert-type response scale ranging from 1 (strongly dis-agree) to 5 (strongly dis-agree) The higher the score, the stronger the patriotism

(Cronbach α= 77)

Social dominance orientation (SDO) was measured using 6 items from the full 16-item SDS (Pratto et al., 1994; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999).2SDO is defined

as a very general individual difference orientation that expresses the value peo-ple place on nonegalitarian and hierarchically structured relationships among social groups The SDS has proven to be consistently reliable, with a substantial degree of convergent and divergent validity, and is conceptually and empirically distinct from constructs such as political conservatism, personal dominance, and authoritarianism (Altemeyer, 1998; McFarland & Adelson, 1996; Sidanius & Pratto; Whitley, 1999)

The items used in this survey were (a) “It’s probably a good thing that certain groups are at the top and other groups are at the bottom,” (b) “Inferior groups should stay in their place,” (c) “Sometimes other groups must be kept in their place,” (d) “We should do what we can to equalize conditions for different groups,” (e) “We should increase social equality” and (f) “We would have fewer problems

if we treated different groups more equally.” All items were answered on a 5-point

response scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).3

The first three items in the preceding list define the group dominance subdi-mension, whereas the last three define the group antiegalitarianism subdimension

To confirm this two-dimensional factor model, we performed a confirmatory

fac-2 Because of the limited space available on the omnibus survey, only three questions were chosen to tap into each of the dimensions of social dominance theory

3 The correlation between this short version of the SDS and the full 16-item scale was com-puted using a random sample from the Los Angeles County in 1996 This correlation was

found to be 882 (p < 0001).

tor analysis by using LISREL 8 The results of this analysis strongly supported the two-dimensional hypothesis and proved an excellent fit to the empirical data,

χ2(8, N = 374) = 9.94, p < 27, adjusted goodness-of-fit index = 98 The

relia-bility of the group dominance dimension was 80, and the reliarelia-bility of the group antiegalitarianism subdimension was 78 (Dillon & Goldstein, 1984),4using the construct reliability approach on the factor loadings Furthermore, these two

dimensions were found to be only marginally correlated with one another (r = 11, p < 04).5After we confirmed the two-dimensional structure of these SDS items, we generated scores for each factor by computing composite scores across the items defining each subdimension

Results and Discussion

Within each of the two ethnic groups (Whites and Latinos), we used two sep-arate least-squares regression analyses and regressed U.S patriotism on one of the two SDS subdimensions, controlling for education, family income, gender, and age (see Table 1) Depending on demographic variables, U.S patriotism was not related to group antiegalitarianism for either the Whites or the Latinos How-ever, the picture was quite different for the dimension of group dominance (see Table 2) This dimension clearly evidenced the predicted type of ideological asymmetry Among the Whites, depending on the net effects of demographic vari-ables such as income, age, education, and gender, there was a small, statistically significant, and positive effect for group dominance The greater the degree of

group dominance among the Whites, the higher the level of U.S patriotism (B =

0.46,β= 14, p < 05) In contrast, the exact opposite trend was found among the

Latinos: the greater the level of group dominance, the lower the level of U.S

patriotism (B = –0.77,β = –.25, p < 01) Furthermore, an interaction analysis

showed that the multiple regression coefficient of group dominance among the Whites was significantly more positive than the corresponding coefficient among

the Latinos (B = 0.46 vs β= –.77), t(1346) = 3.86, p < 001 (Aiken & West, 1993).

Clearly, the participants’ group dominance orientation had different implications for their level of U.S patriotism depending on their ethnicity

Thus, results from this random sample of Los Angeles County adults con-firmed the asymmetrical relationship between patriotism and social dominance orientation found among university students (Sidanius et al., 1997; Sinclair et al., 1998) However, this asymmetrical relationship appears to be restricted to the subdimension of group dominance or the desire to actively subordinate inferior groups The present results not only are broadly consistent with earlier findings

4 The reliability for the group dominance was similar for both groups, 79 for White icans and 75 for Latino Americans Antiegalitarianism was more reliable for White Amer-icans, 84, than for Latinos, 51.

5 In order to normalize the distributions of these SDS subdimensions, each variable was log-transformed.

Peña & Sidanius

Variables, Patriotism, Antiegalitarianism, and Group Dominance

*p < 05 **p < 01

among student populations but also are theoretically congruent with recent find-ings in national probability samples of White and Black Americans with mea-sures of relative ethnic favoritism: Although patriotism was positively related to affective preference for the racial in-group among Whites, the opposite was found among ethnic minorities (Sidanius & Petrocik, 2001) In other words, among all groups, U.S patriotism was associated with the preference for White Americans over other U.S ethnic groups (Blacks, Latinos, and Asian Americans) This result

is broadly consistent with the notion that White Americans are viewed as having more proprietary rights to the United States than do other U.S ethnic groups (see Sidanius & Pratto, 1999) Because social dominance theorists (e.g., Sidanius & Pratto, 1999) regard the United States as a group-based social hierarchy defined largely in terms of race, a hierarchy in which Whites are the dominant group, there is reason to expect that love of country and loyalty to the nation as a whole should have implications for both general ideologies of group-based dominance and affective preference for Whites compared with other racial and ethnic groups Although these results are consistent with the social dominance perspective, they also show a certain amount of convergence with research programs that are outside the social dominance theory tradition For example, congruent with research findings by Sullivan, Fried, and Dietz (1992), the present results suggest that U.S patriotism means different things to members of different ethnic groups U.S patriotism shows a slight tendency to be associated with increased commit-ment to group dominance among Whites, but it has exactly the opposite implica-tions for Latinos For members of the Latino American community, greater patri-otic commitment to the United States appears to be even more strongly associated with the rejection of group-based social dominance However, unlike suggestions made by Sullivan et al (1992), we assert that these implied differences are tied

to the hierarchical power relationships among the groups and the history of eth-nic and racial domination within the nation

Although asymmetrical relationships between patriotism and ideologies of group dominance seem to be reasonably well established in the United States, and

TABLE 2 U.S Patriotism Regressed on Group Antiegalitarianism and

Group Dominance for Whites’ and Latinos’ Net Income,

Education, Gender, and Age

Group antiegalitarianism 0.10 03 –0.01 –.00

Group dominance 0.46* 14* –0.77** –.25**

*p < 05 **p < 01.

to a certain extent in Israel as well (Sidanius et al., 1997), it remains to be seen whether this asymmetry generalizes also to nations with very different types and degrees of group-based social hierarchy Although this type of asymmetry might

apply both to herrenvolk democracies (e.g., the United States, apartheid South

Africa) and nondemocratic societies with extreme levels of racial and ethnic hier-archy (e.g., Nazi Germany), it is not clear whether such asymmetry also applies to societies that are hierarchically structured but have a less intense degree of ethnic–-racial hierarchy, such as Brazil, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic (Freyre, 1951) Not only is more cross-cultural work needed to determine whether this asymmetry can be generalized across a broad range of hierarchically structured social systems, but we also need to determine whether this asymmetry is restricted to only one type

of group dominance ideology

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Received January 17, 2001 Accepted May 30, 2001