Relationships among social dominance orientation, social axioms, and values

Abstract

We adopted 2 cross-culturally validated instruments, developed for the measurement of human values (Schwartz's value model) and generalized beliefs (Leung and Bond's social axioms model), to examine their relationships with the perceptions of legitimacy, permeability, and social dominance orientation (SDO) in a group of 383 Turkish university students. The results showed that the students' perceptions of legitimacy were positively related to their conservation values and the religiosity belief dimension, and negatively related to openness to change and self-transcendence values. We also found that the permeability scores were positively correlated with conservation values and religiosity beliefs, and negatively correlated with openness to change, self-enhancement values, and social cynicism beliefs. Regression analysis results revealed that generalized beliefs (social axioms) and SDO were more effective than values in predicting the legitimacy scores of participants who saw boundaries as legitimate and permeable. This pattern was reversed for participants who regarded the boundaries as illegitimate and impermeable.