Antecedents and consequences of preferences for hierarchy in early childhood

Social dominance orientation, or SDO, reflects a preference for group-based inequality and is one of the strongest predictors of a variety of political attitudes, including support for affirmative action, nationalism, and even support for torture. Yet how SDO emerges is unclear. Although some work suggests that SDO primarily forms around adolescence, the present set of studies suggests that SDO can emerge earlier in development and meaningfully shape how children view social inequality. Across three studies (N = 314), we show that children's (ages 5-12; M = 7.75, SD = 1.58, 116 boys, 183 girls, 133 White, 47 Black, 24 Asian, 11 Hispanic/Latine, one Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, 32 multiracial, 66 unreported) self-reported levels of SDO are associated with less desire to rectify inequality, lower likelihood to believe claims of inequality from low-status groups, and less sympathy for outgroup suffering. We also examine the role of group status and status essentialism in shaping SDO, finding some support that group status and status essentialism jointly influence self-reported SDO. These data also suggest that SDO and ingroup bias are different processes and highlight the utility of taking a developmental perspective to discuss how social dominance theory and social identity theory may be both conceptually and empirically distinguishable. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).