Sa-Kiera Hudson, PhD
Postdoctoral Scholar, Yale University

The Connection between Preferences for Hierarchy and Empathic and Counter-Empathic Emotions
Social dominance orientation, or SDO, measures the extent to which people desire and promote group-based inequality and is associated with prejudicial attitudes as well as positively related to endorsing policies and behaviors that support inequality. Despite the wealth of research on the attitudinal and behavioral implications of having higher levels of SDO, there is relatively little work concerning the relationship between SDO and emotions. This project focuses specifically on the connection between SDO and experiencing empathic and counter-empathic emotions, as well as with support for intergroup helping and harming, across a total of 6 studies (N = 2583). First, we provide evidence that SDO is negatively associated with feeling empathy for others and positively associated with feeling counter-empathy, and that competitive group settings exacerbated these relationships. Second, we provide initial evidence for the motivated nature of this relationship, as people with higher levels of SDO make similar forecasts of others’ emotions as do those low in SDO, but they desire to feel less empathy toward low-status targets and when given a choice, choose to feel less empathy and more counter-empathic. Lastly, we discuss a preliminary model that explicates how SDO’s relationship with downstream behaviors and policy preferences are mediated by (counter-)empathic responding. This work contributes to the growing body of work on the role that ideologies play in driving emotions and empathic responses.

Zoom link: https://washington.zoom.us/j/99399423738

This lecture made possible in part by a generous endowment from Professor Allen L. Edwards. 
Faculty host: Cynthia Levine, cslevine@uw.edu.

Accommodation requests related to a disability should be made by 2/25/20 to chairpsy@uw.edu.