Social Dominance Orientation Predicts Opposition to Hierarchy-Attenuating Intergroup Apologies

Abstract

People who value social hierarchy may resist giving intergroup apologies because such apologies may attenuate the very hierarchies that these people value. We tested this claim across four studies (total N = 541) by examining associations between social dominance orientation (SDO)—a measure of preference for social hierarchy—and support for intergroup apologies. We found that higher SDO scores, and specifically the antiegalitarianism subdimension (social dominance orientation–egalitarianism [SDO-E]), predicted less apology support among U.S. residents in both domestic (Study 1) and international (Study 2) contexts. In Study 3, we found that the effect generalizes to an Australian cultural context. In Study 4, we demonstrated that the negative effect of SDO-E can extend to third-party contexts and is only observed when apologizing would be hierarchy attenuating. These studies show that the desire to maintain social hierarchies is an important driver of opposition to hierarchy-attenuating intergroup apologies.

Keywords

intergroup apologies social dominance orientation antiegalitarianism social hierarchy reconciliation

Introduction

Many conflicts around the world, from civil wars in Sri Lanka or Northern Ireland to human rights struggles of Indigenous peoples in Australia, have roots in historic injustices committed by one group against another. Although transgressions cannot be undone, one method of addressing past harms being employed at an increasing rate is the intergroup apology—an apology, often in the form of a public statement, offered on behalf of one group to another. Researchers have shown that intergroup apologies can serve a valuable role in reconciliation by, for example, increasing forgiveness and intergroup trust (Berndsen, Hornsey, & Wohl, 2015; Brown, Wohl, & Exline, 2008), decreasing desires for avoidance and revenge (Brown et al., 2008), and creating more positive evaluations of transgressor groups (Blatz, Day, & Schryer, 2014). Despite their promise, intergroup apologies are not without their detractors. For example, the Australian government’s apology to the Stolen Generation, a generation of Indigenous Australians who were forcibly taken from their families as children, was met with strong opposition (Korff, 2017). Similarly, in Turkey, in response to a campaign pushing for an apology for the Armenian Genocide, Turkey’s prime minister stated, “I neither accept nor support this campaign. We did not commit a crime, therefore we do not need to apologise” (Tait, 2008). Such tendencies toward denial and minimization in the face of ingroup transgressions have been well documented (e.g., Čehajić & Brown, 2008; Gausel, Leach, Vignoles, & Brown, 2012; Leidner, Castano, Zaiser, & Giner-Sorolla, 2010; Wohl, Hornsey, & Philpot, 2011). The prevalence of defensive strategies, even in the face of overwhelming evidence or consensus, suggests that rather than arising from genuine beliefs about history, opposition to apologizing may be driven by other motives.

One such motive may relate to a feature common to many conflicts—the existence of a clear social hierarchy in which one group, typically the perpetrator, is high status and the other, typically the victim, is low status (Fiske & Berdahl, 2007; Magee & Galinsky, 2008; Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994). Although most intergroup apology research has explored contexts meeting this description (e.g., Barlow et al., 2015; Rotella, Richeson, & McAdams, 2015; Wohl, Matheson, Branscombe, & Anisman, 2013; Zaiser & Giner-Sorolla, 2013), the implications of this underlying hierarchical relationship between groups have been largely ignored (cf. Halabi, Dovidio, & Nadler, 2018; Shnabel, Halabi, & SimanTov-Nachlieli, 2015).

In the current research, we argue that intergroup apologies often function to attenuate social hierarchies by simultaneously elevating and lowering the status of victims and perpetrators, respectively. Because intergroup apologies are often hierarchy attenuating, resistance to apologizing might be driven by motives to maintain social hierarchies. As such, we explore the role of social dominance orientation (SDO; Pratto et al., 1994)—a measure of hierarchy maintenance motives—as a predictor of opposition to apologizing.

Apologies as Hierarchy Attenuation

Apologies are regularly theorized as serving to correct imbalances in relations that are caused by a transgression (Levinas, 1969; Murphy & Hampton, 1988; O’Malley & Greenberg, 1983; Tavuchis, 1991; J. Thompson, 2008). These accounts typically suggest that transgressions signal that victims are not considered worthy of fair treatment and respect and are therefore relegated to a lower status. In offering apologies, perpetrators express their belief in the moral worth and dignity of their victims, put on record their understanding that their victims did not deserve to be harmed (Govier & Verwoerd, 2002; Tavuchis, 1991), and seek forgiveness (Murphy & Hampton, 1988). Thus, for victims, apologies are commonly seen as means by which dignity and status are restored. For perpetrators, however, apologies threaten their status because their misdeeds and shortcomings are openly acknowledged (Shnabel & Nadler, 2008). In addition, requests for forgiveness put perpetrators in a position of vulnerability as victims are able to provide or withhold forgiveness (Murphy & Hampton, 1988; Shnabel & Nadler, 2008).

The notion that apologies modify social hierarchies in such ways—simultaneously lowering perpetrator and raising victim status—has also been supported in psychological research. When considering their transgressions, perpetrators become sensitive to how their wrongdoing will affect their status. For example, perpetrators who deny any wrongdoing experience higher levels of self-esteem (Wenzel, Woodyatt, & Hedrick, 2012), whereas those who feel their positive identities are protected are more willing to engage in apologizing and reconciliation (Rotella et al., 2015; Schumann, 2014; Shnabel, Nadler, Ullrich, Dovidio, & Carmi, 2009). In addition, perpetrators who do not apologize, compared with those who do, feel more power and control (Okimoto, Wenzel, & Hedrick, 2013), suggesting that the act of apologizing leads perpetrators to feel less powerful. Together, these theoretical and empirical accounts suggest that apologies have the ability to redistribute status and power between perpetrator and victim groups, thus serving to renegotiate or restructure existing social hierarchies.

Importantly, the broader implications of these dynamics for a social hierarchy are fundamentally different depending on the relative ranks of victim and perpetrator groups. When the victim and perpetrator groups are equal in status prior to a transgression, apologies represent a relative increase in the rank of victims and a decrease in rank of perpetrators. When a perpetrator group is of lower status than a victim group, apologies serve to further demote perpetrators relative to victims, thus enhancing the hierarchy. When a perpetrator group sits above a victim group in a pretransgression social hierarchy, as tends to be the case, apologies represent a move toward equality between groups or, in other words, hierarchy attenuation.

Opposition to Apologizing as Hierarchy Maintenance

The fact that apologies often represent hierarchy attenuation provides a clue to better understanding what leads some people to oppose, and others to support, intergroup apologies. Our central hypothesis is as follows: People who have a motivation to maintain social hierarchies should be especially reluctant to apologize when doing so would be hierarchy attenuating, that is, when perpetrator groups are high status and victim groups are low status. A widely used construct in investigations of hierarchy-related motives is SDO (Pratto et al., 1994). SDO is an individual difference that describes a general preference for group-based hierarchies and inequality (Pratto, Sidanius, & Levin, 2006). The construct is grounded in social dominance theory (Pratto et al., 2006; Sidanius & Pratto, 2001), which offers an account of how social hierarchies manifest and are maintained. People high in SDO are more supportive of institutions, policies, and practices that maintain or enhance inequality between social groups. They also justify and rationalize such support by endorsing a range of hierarchy-enhancing legitimizing myths (e.g., racism). For the same reasons, those high in SDO are generally opposed to institutions and policies that decrease inequality (Pratto et al., 2006). Accordingly, we expect that those high in SDO will oppose apologies delivered to low-status groups to maintain existing social hierarchies.

Although no work has explicitly examined SDO in the context of opposition to intergroup apologies as hierarchy attenuation, two studies are suggestive of the relation. Hornsey et al. (2017) investigated the effects of political conservatism on opposition to apologizing across nine nations and explored SDO as a mediator of the relation. Consistent with our central hypothesis, the authors found that SDO positively predicted opposition to apologizing, albeit in an interpersonal context. Halloran (2007) explored the relationship between egalitarianism, which is conceptually related to SDO (Ho et al., 2015), and support for an apology to Australia’s Indigenous people. His results demonstrated that endorsement of egalitarian values positively predicted support for reconciliation.

Although suggestive, these studies do not directly address the role of SDO in opposition to apologies as hierarchy attenuation. First, because the focus of Hornsey et al. (2017) was the relationship between opposition to apologizing and conservatism, not SDO, the study was not designed to determine whether hierarchy maintenance was a key motivator. As such, support for apologizing was assessed using a proclivity to apologize scale (Howell, Dopko, Turowski, & Buro, 2011), which measures a general tendency to avoid apologizing without specifying the hierarchical relationship between victim and perpetrator. In addition, the items of this scale clearly placed the apologies in interpersonal rather than intergroup contexts, limiting generalizability to intergroup settings.

Second, Halloran (2007) operationalized egalitarianism using a measure of “universalism,” a broad conceptualization of egalitarianism that includes values of justice and tolerance (Schwartz & Bilsky, 1987), differentiating it from the more specific construct of preference for group-based social hierarchy (implemented in SDO). As such, the possibility remains that at least part of the association reported by Halloran (2007) was due to broader justice or tolerance values rather than hierarchy maintenance motives. In addition, as Halloran (2007) only investigated the effect in a single context, it is not clear that effects generalize. Thus, although these two studies provide some support for our prediction, whether hierarchy maintenance motives can explain opposition to intergroup apologies is yet to be established.

The Current Research

We present four studies that test and explore the relationship between SDO and support for apologizing as hierarchy attenuation. In Studies 1 to 3, we tested our main hypothesis—that SDO would predict opposition to apologizing—and sought to generalize across contexts and cultures. In Study 4, we provide a more direct test of the importance of hierarchy attenuation in driving the effect, by comparing contexts in which an apology is directed up versus down a social hierarchy.

Study 1

In Study 1, we tested our central prediction: Those with greater preference for social hierarchies (higher SDO scores) will be less supportive of intergroup apologies. To provide a more nuanced examination of the role of hierarchy preferences, we specifically assessed the unique effects of the social dominance orientation–dominance (SDO-D) and social dominance orientation–egalitarianism (SDO-E) subdimensions of SDO (Ho et al., 2015; Ho et al., 2012). Although related, SDO-D and SDO-E are associated with qualitatively different hierarchy maintenance strategies. SDO-D is uniquely associated with overt discrimination against outgroups (Eagly, Diekman, Johannesen-Schmidt, & Koenig, 2004; Sears, Haley, & Henry, 2008), nationalism (Peña & Sidanius, 2002), hostility toward outgroups, concern for competition for resources between groups (Kugler, Cooper, & Nosek, 2010), and blatant dehumanization (Kteily, Bruneau, Waytz, & Cotterill, 2015); SDO-E is uniquely associated with more subtle forms of hierarchy enhancement, such as opposition to redistributive social policies (Ho et al., 2015; Jost & Thompson, 2000; Kugler et al., 2010), agenda setting through the endorsement of color-blind public policy (Chow & Knowles, 2016), and a lack of social compassion and giving to the disadvantaged (Eagly et al., 2004; Kugler et al., 2010).

Much like the more subtle approaches to hierarchy maintenance associated with SDO-E, opposition to apologizing is often accompanied by hedging strategies such as contesting the facts of an alleged transgression (e.g., contesting the need for remedial action or denying any wrongdoing) or denying responsibility for the crimes of past generations (Corntassel & Holder, 2008; Wohl et al., 2011). These strategies ostensibly provide reasonable justifications for opposing an apology and thus more subtly maintain the perpetrator and victim groups’ relative hierarchical positions. As such, we hypothesized that SDO-E, which is associated with support for more subtle hierarchy maintenance strategies, would predict opposition to apologizing more strongly than SDO-D, which is associated with support for more aggressive and proactive hierarchy maintenance strategies (Ho et al.,2015; Ho et al., 2012).

In the current study, we investigated apology support in the context of injustices suffered by African Americans in the United States, both historically, in the form of slavery and Jim Crow laws, and in the present day, in the form of institutionalized social and economic disadvantage (Coates, 2014; Marable, 2015). Although apologies have been offered to the African American people by the House of Representatives (Civic Impulse, 2017a) and the Senate (Civic Impulse, 2017b) on separate occasions, disagreements over wording and concern about enabling demands for financial reparations have meant that neither apology received bipartisan support across both houses (James, 2009). Participants in Study 1 were asked to consider a whole of government apology that took into account both the historical and ongoing disadvantages that African Americans suffer in areas such as housing, education, and equal treatment under the law. Importantly, given the disadvantaged position of African Americans in comparison with White Americans, this apology would, on our account, be hierarchy attenuating.

Method

Power analysis

We determined sample size by referring to past effect sizes of correlations between SDO and a range of hierarchy-enhancing and hierarchy-attenuating beliefs and social policies as reported in a review of SDO research (Pratto et al., 2006). Reported effect sizes ranged from r = .27 to r = .51. We calculated required sample size using G*Power 3.1, on a conservative estimate of ρ = .30, with an alpha of .05 (two tailed) and power of 0.8. The recommended minimum sample size given these parameters was 82. We oversampled to allow for the removal of incomplete or outlying responses.¹

Participants

Ninety-one U.S. residents (38.5% female, M_age = 37.77 years, SD_age = 12.72 years), recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk, participated in this study and were compensated US$0.50. Participants were predominantly college educated (58.2%), middle income (annual household income between US$25,000 and US$49,999; 31.9%), and White (64.8%).

Procedure and materials

Participants first read a passage asking them to imagine that the U.S. Congress was considering passing a resolution to officially apologize to all African American people for historic and present injustice (full text is presented in the supplemental material). After reading this passage, participants were asked to indicate their support for the apology with three items: “I think the U.S. Congress offering an apology to African Americans for historic and present injustices is a good idea,” “I support the U.S. Congress offering an apology to African Americans for historic and present injustices,” and “There is no need for the U.S. Congress to offer an apology to African Americans for historic and present injustices” (reverse scored; 1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree). These items combined to form a reliable scale, α = .96.

Participants’ hierarchy maintenance motives were then measured using the 16-item SDO₆ scale (henceforth referred to as the SDO scale; Sidanius & Pratto, 2001).² Participants indicated their reaction to each item from 1 (strongly negative) to 7 (strongly positive). The first eight items of the scale form the SDO-D subscale (e.g., “In getting what you want, it is sometimes necessary to use force against other groups”; α = .97) and the remaining items (reverse scored) form the SDO-E subscale (e.g., “We should do what we can to equalize conditions for different groups”; α = .96).³

Participants next completed a series of scales to be used as covariates to rule out the possibility that any effects of SDO could be attributed to broader political orientation. Authoritarianism, national identification, and ideological self-placement were assessed, all of which have been shown to share variance with SDO or support for apologizing or both (Asbrock, Sibley, & Duckitt, 2010; Doosje, Branscombe, Spears, & Manstead, 1998; Ho et al., 2015; Levin & Sidanius, 1999). Participants completed the 22-item Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) scale (Altemeyer, 2006). Items such as “Our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us” were responded to on a 1 (very negative) to 7 (very positive) scale. After excluding the two practice items, the remaining 20 items formed a reliable scale, α = .96.

Participants also completed a 14-item national identification scale (Leach et al., 2008), with items such as “I feel a bond with America” and “I am glad to be American,” to which participants responded from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The items combined to form a reliable scale, α = .96.

Political conservatism was assessed with two ideological self-placement items, one measuring social (“When it comes to social issues, how would you describe your views”) and the other economic conservatism (“When it comes to economic issues, how would you describe your views?” 1 = strongly liberal to 7 = strongly conservative). The items correlated strongly, r = .69, p < .001, and were combined into a single composite measure of political conservatism.

Finally, participants indicated their gender, age, educational achievement (none, elementary school, high school, college, or graduate school), annual household income (less than US$25,000, US$25,000-US$49,999, US$50,000-US$74,999, US$75,000, US$99,999, or US$100,000 or greater), and ethnicity (White, Black, Asian, Hispanic/Latino, Native American, Other).

Results and Discussion

Correlations, means, and standard deviations are presented in Table 1. Consistent with predictions, SDO-E and, to a lesser extent, SDO-D were negatively correlated with support for apologizing. However, given significant correlations between both the SDO variables and support for apologizing, RWA, conservatism, national identification, and age, multiple regression analyses were conducted to determine the unique contribution of the SDO subdimensions to support for apologizing.⁴

Table 1.

Correlations, Means, and Standard Deviations: Study 1.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	M (SD)
1. Support for apologizing	—									4.67 (2.04)
2. SDO-D	−.30**	—								2.15 (1.44)
3. SDO-E	−.65**	.60**	—							2.36 (1.53)
4. RWA	−.33**	.55**	.54**	—						2.64 (1.39)
5. Conservatism	−.55**	.45**	.57**	.66**	—					3.20 (1.54)
6. National identification	−.28**	.12	.18	.22*	.33**	—				5.02 (1.21)
7. Age	−.09	−.22*	−.12	−.10	.02	.17	—			37.77 (12.72)
8. Gender	−.07	.16	.17	.13	.20	−.06	.01	—		0.23 (0.98)
9. Education	−.03	.04	.05	−.04	−.03	.10	.01	−.21*	—	4.00 (0.65)
10. Income	−.13	−.05	.15	−.07	.01	.01	−.02	.03	.12	2.47 (1.21)

Note. Gender: female (−1), male (1). SDO-D = social dominance orientation–dominance; SDO-E = social dominance orientation–egalitarianism; RWA = Right Wing Authoritarianism.

p < .05. **p < .01.

Support for apologizing was regressed onto SDO-D and SDO-E in an initial model (Table 2, Model 1).⁵ Consistent with expectations, SDO-E was a significant negative predictor of support for apologizing, whereas SDO-D was not. The effect of SDO-E held when theoretical (RWA, conservatism, and national identification), and correlated (age) covariates were added to the model (Table 2, Model 2).⁶

Table 2.

Multiple Linear Regression Analyses Predicting Support for Apologizing in Study 1.

Predictor	Model 1		Model 2
Predictor	ΔR²	β [95% CI]	ΔR²	β [95% CI]
	.43***		.09*
SDO-D		.14 [–.06, .34]		.11 [–.09, .31]
SDO-E		−.73*** [–.93, –.53]		−.61*** [–.82, –.40]
RWA		—		.17 [–.05, .39]
Conservatism		—		−.33** [–.55, –.11]
National identification		—		−.10 [–.25, .07]
Age		—		−.09 [–.25, .07]

Note. CI = confidence interval; SDO-D = social dominance orientation–dominance; SDO-E = social dominance orientation–egalitarianism; RWA = Right Wing Authoritarianism.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

As predicted, SDO-E, but not SDO-D, was a strong negative predictor of support for apologizing and remained significant after controlling for RWA, political conservatism, national identification, and age. This indicates that support for apologizing is more directly a function of antiegalitarianism, rather than being driven by broader indicators of overt dominance, authoritarianism, or national identification. Conservatism exerted a significant unique effect on apologizing, but, importantly, this did not account for the contribution of SDO-E.

Study 2

In Study 2, we sought to explore the generalizability of our results by replicating the effect of SDO-E on support for apologizing in an international transgression context. Previous research has shown that SDO-E is strongly associated with domestically focused attitudes, such as affirmative action and redistributive social policies, while tending to be unrelated (when controlling for SDO-D) to more internationally or outward focused attitudes, such as support for war and hostility toward national outgroups (Ho et al., 2015; Ho et al., 2012). Therefore, it is possible that effects of SDO-E are restricted to domestic contexts; to test this, in Study 2, we sought generalizability to an international context.

U.S. participants were asked to consider an apology to the Cuban people for harms caused by the Cuban trade embargo. The embargo has been linked to medical and economic hardships of the Cuban people due to restrictions on the export of certain U.S. medical supplies and imports of Cuban produce (Amnesty International, 2009). The relationship between the United States and Cuba can, thus, be characterized as one in which the United States wields power and influence over the fate of Cuba and its people. In addition to the economic disparities between the nations, Cubans are also likely to be viewed as being of lower social status than Americans. Historically, Cuban people have been portrayed and viewed by Americans as being animalistic, lustful, socially undesirable, lazy, and dependent on the United States to solve their problems (Cruz, 1994; Eagly & Kite, 1987; Randall, 2003). Accordingly, as well as providing a context that is clearly international, U.S.–Cuban relations can be characterized as hierarchical, both in terms of economic and social status. Thus, as in Study 1, this apology would, on our account, be hierarchy attenuating.

Method

Participants

One hundred sixty-seven U.S. residents, recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk, participated in this study (44.3% female, M_age = 35.99 years, SD_age = 10.76 years) and received compensation of US$1.20. As in Study 1, participants were predominantly college educated (53.3%) and from middle-income households (38.3%).

Procedure and materials

Participants read a passage describing the Cuban trade embargo and the consequences it had on the Cuban people. They were then asked to consider the possibility that the United States officially apologizes to the Cuban people for the embargo (full text in the supplemental material). Participants indicated their support for apologizing on the following items: “I would support an official apology by the U.S. to the Cuban people for the embargo,” “I believe the U.S. should apologize to the Cuban people for the embargo,” “I believe the U.S. apologizing to the Cuban people for the embargo is a good idea,” and “I don’t believe there is a need for the U.S. to provide an apology to the Cuban people for the embargo” (reverse scored; 1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree). The items formed a reliable scale, α = .94. The rest of the procedure and materials were identical to Study 1: Participants completed the SDO scale, from which reliable measures of both SDO-D and SDO-E were formed, αs = .95; the RWA scale, α = .94; national identification, α = .95; political conservatism, α = .84; and demographic measures of gender, age, educational achievement, and annual household income.

Results and Discussion

Correlations between all variables are presented in Table 3. Consistent with Study 1, SDO-E was negatively correlated with support for apologizing; SDO-D was not.

Table 3.

Correlations, Means, and Standard Deviations: Study 2.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	M (SD)
1. Support for apologizing	—									3.91 (1.94)
2. SDO-D	−.07	—								2.18 (1.40)
3. SDO-E	−.23**	.69**	—							2.34 (1.41)
4. RWA	−.11	.66**	.55**	—						2.78 (1.23)
5. Conservatism	−.16*	.39**	.43**	.63**	—					3.42 (1.56)
6. National identification	−.35**	.11	.19*	.34**	.41**	—				4.72 (1.26)
7. Age	−.33**	−.18*	−.01	−.05	.06	.14	—			35.99 (10.76)
8. Gender	−.05	.05	.02	−.06	.00	−.02	−.15	—		0.11 (1.00)
9. Education	−.11	−.07	−.06	−.07	−.09	−.03	.18*	.12	—	3.90 (0.68)
10. Income	−.05	.04	.15*	.11	.05	.07	.11	.04	.27**	2.43 (1.19)

Note. Gender: female (−1), male (1). SDO-D = social dominance orientation–dominance; SDO-E = social dominance orientation–egalitarianism; RWA = Right Wing Authoritarianism.

p < .05. **p < .01.

To explore the unique contribution of SDO-E to support for apologizing, a similar regression strategy was employed as was previously used (see Table 4). In an initial model regressing support for apologizing onto SDO-D and SDO-E, SDO-E emerged as the only significant predictor (Table 4, Model 1). After adding theoretical (RWA, conservatism, and national identification) and correlated (age) covariates in Model 2, the effect of SDO-E remained significant. Of the added variables, national identification and age were significant negative predictors.

Table 4.

Multiple Linear Regression Analyses Predicting Support for Apologizing in Study 2.

Predictor	Model 1		Model 2
Predictor	ΔR²	β [95% CI]	ΔR²	β [95% CI]
	.07**		.18***
SDO-D		.18 [–.03, .38]		.02 [–.20, .23]
SDO-E		−.35** [–.55, –.15]		−.25* [–.44, –.06]
RWA		—		.10 [–.20, .31]
Conservatism		—		.02 [–.16, .21]
National identification		—		−.31*** [–.46, –.16]
Age		—		−.29*** [–.43, –.14]

Note. CI = confidence interval; SDO-D = social dominance orientation–dominance; SDO-E = social dominance orientation–egalitarianism; RWA = Right Wing Authoritarianism.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

These results replicated the basic effect of SDO-E on support for apologizing and again highlight the specificity of effects to the egalitarianism dimension of SDO. The results of the current study also demonstrate that although national identification exerts its own negative effect on support for apologizing, it does not account for the negative effect of SDO-E. In addition, the effect replicating in an international context indicates that the relationship between antiegalitarianism and opposition to apologizing is not specific to domestic issues in the United States but can also generalize into contexts involving international relations.

Study 3

In Study 3, we tested the generalizability of these results to a different cultural context. Cross-cultural research has revealed differences between U.S. and other national populations in the effect sizes of SDO. For example, cross-cultural analysis comparing samples from the United States and a range of European and Asian countries (Pratto et al., 2013) and Sweden (Sidanius & Pratto, 1993) has shown that, in most cases, the relationship between SDO and hierarchy-affecting policies and beliefs is strongest among U.S. participants. One reason for this pattern may relate to America being a relatively hierarchical society in which inequality is both exceptionally high and often accepted (Smeeding, 2005; Western, 2006). Thus, given that Studies 1 and 2 examined only U.S. participants, we cannot be certain that the effects of SDO-E on opposition to apologizing exist in less hierarchical societies.

In Study 3, we used the context of the program of offshore detention of asylum seekers in Australia. This was an appropriate context for several reasons. First, Australia, where egalitarianism is often named as a central cultural value (Peeters, 2004; E. Thompson, 1994), can provide a valuable cultural contrast to determine whether the effects of SDO on support for apologizing can generalize across contexts that vary in background egalitarianism. Second, the context is one in which harm has been broadly recognized to have occurred. At the time this study was conducted, asylum seekers who arrived in Australia by boat were being detained offshore for processing and told they would not be settled in Australia. Their detention has been characterized by what appeared to be intentional delays and neglect designed to encourage the abandonment of asylum claims. In addition, reports have arisen of mental health deterioration, self-harm, attempted suicide, and cases of child sexual abuse (Amnesty International, 2016). Finally, the relationship between the Australian government and asylum seekers in detention is clearly hierarchical. The Australian government holds power over asylum seekers in this situation as the asylum seekers have extremely limited control over their outcomes. Accordingly, this context is one in which a transgression has occurred, a hierarchical relationship between groups is clearly present and an apology would be hierarchy attenuating.

Method

Participants

One hundred thirty-three Australian undergraduates (72.2% female, M_age = 20.23 years, SD_age = 5.97 years) participated as partial fulfillment of course requirements.

Procedure and materials

As in previous studies, participants read a short passage introducing the context (see the supplemental material). The passage described Australia’s policy of detaining asylum seekers offshore and introduced the idea of the Australian government apologizing to asylum seekers. Support for apologizing was then measured using four items: “I would support an official apology by Australia to the asylum seekers harmed in offshore detention,” “I believe Australia should apologize to the asylum seekers harmed in offshore detention,” “I believe Australia apologizing to the asylum seekers harmed in offshore detention is a good idea,” and “I don’t believe there is a need for Australia to provide an apology to the asylum seekers harmed in offshore detention” (reverse scored; 1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree). The items combined to form a reliable scale, α = .92. As in previous studies, participants then completed scales for SDO (SDO-D, α = .88; SDO-E, α = .92); RWA, α = .90; national identification, α = .92; political conservatism, α = .73; and demographic measures (age, gender, educational achievement, and annual household income).

Results and Discussion

Correlations, means, and standard deviations are presented in Table 5. Consistent with the previous studies, SDO-E was correlated with support for apologizing. In this sample, SDO-D, RWA, and conservatism were also significantly correlated with apology support, largely replicating the results of Studies 1 and 2.

Table 5.

Correlations, Means, and Standard Deviations: Study 3.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	M (SD)
1. Support for apologizing	—									5.54 (1.42)
2. SDO-D	−.43**	—								1.81 (0.89)
3. SDO-E	−.45**	.73**	—							1.92 (1.04)
4. RWA	−.31**	.46**	.41**	—						2.26 (0.85)
5. Conservatism	−.25**	.40**	.37**	.62**	—					3.08 (1.17)
6. National identification	−.01	.11	−.08	.17	.19*	—				4.61 (1.07)
7. Age	.01	−.11	.00	−.10	.02	−.03	—			20.23 (5.97)
8. Gender	−.04	.11	.18*	.04	.00	−.05	.02	—		−0.47 (0.88)
9. Education	.06	−.04	.06	−.07	−.03	−.03	.64**	−.04	—	3.27 (0.54)
10. Income	−.01	.06	.07	.05	.13	.17*	.00	.04	−.06	3.19 (1.58)

Note. Gender: female (−1), male (1). SDO-D = social dominance orientation–dominance; SDO-E = social dominance orientation–egalitarianism; RWA = Right Wing Authoritarianism.

p < .05. **p < .01.

Once again, to determine the unique contribution of the SDO subdimensions, support for apologizing was first regressed on SDO-E and SDO-D (Table 6, Model 1), and SDO-E emerged as a unique significant predictor. Theoretical covariates (RWA, conservatism, and national identification) were entered as control variables in Model 2, in which SDO-E was the only significant predictor of opposition to apologizing.⁷ These results suggest that the effect of SDO-E on apology support is not specific to U.S. samples.

Table 6.

Multiple Linear Regression Analyses Predicting Support for Apologizing in Study 3.

Predictor	Model 1		Model 2
Predictor	ΔR²	β [95% CI]	ΔR²	β [95% CI]
	.23***		.04
SDO-D		−.22 [–.44, .01]		−.17 [–.41, .15]
SDO-E		−.29* [–.52, –.07]		−.27* [–.50, –.03]
RWA		—		−.12 [–.33, .08]
Conservatism		—		−.01 [–.21, .19]
National identification		—		.01 [–.15, .17]

Note. CI = confidence interval; SDO-D = social dominance orientation–dominance; SDO-E = social dominance orientation–egalitarianism; RWA = Right Wing Authoritarianism.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Study 4

Studies 1 to 3 involved apologies provided by a high-status to a low-status group, that is, contexts involving hierarchy-attenuating apologies. If the effects of SDO-E on apology support are in fact driven by hierarchy maintenance motives, then we should only expect these effects in contexts involving hierarchy-attenuating apologies; these effects should not be observed in situations in which an apology does not represent hierarchy attenuation. In Study 4, we sought to test this prediction by manipulating whether or not an apology was hierarchy attenuating. Specifically, we compared the effect of SDO-E on apology support when an apology was directed down a social hierarchy (offered by a high- to a low-status group) and thus hierarchy attenuating with when an apology was directed up a social hierarchy (offered by a low- to a high-status group) and thus not hierarchy attenuating.

Upward-directed apologies may be seen as hierarchy enhancing or merely hierarchy maintaining. If the former, then one might expect SDO-E to positively predict support for apologizing. This may be because upward-directed apologies may actually further exaggerate the status and power differences between groups by pushing low-status perpetrators further down the hierarchy while promoting high-status groups further up. Consequently, those high in SDO-E may be more supportive of these apologies. However, upward-directed apologies may simply reaffirm the status quo: Low-status perpetrator groups retain their lower position by acknowledging wrongdoing, and high-status victim groups retain their higher position via reaffirmation of moral status and having power to withhold forgiveness. If these dynamics effectively serve to maintain the status quo, those high in SDO-E may not be motivated to oppose such apologies. Although this could mean that SDO-E would have no relationship with apology support, it is still possible that those low in SDO-E would still be supportive of apologizing. Thus, the effect of SDO-E on hierarchy-maintaining apologies may be null or weaker when compared with hierarchy-attenuating apologies.

In Study 4, we explored these possibilities in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. We used this setting for three reasons. First, the relationship between Israel and Palestine is a clearly hierarchical one. Unlike Palestine, Israel is recognized as a state by most major geopolitical powers, including the United States, giving it greater political power and status. Israel’s more powerful position is also underscored by substantially higher levels of economic development (NationMaster, 2017) and vastly superior military capabilities (Institute for Middle East Understanding, 2009). Second, many agree that both sides of the conflict have transgressed against the other (Pew Research Center, 2007). This means that, although Israel may be considered higher in status and power than Palestine, most participants are likely to agree that both groups have harmed and have been harmed over the course of the conflict. This allows for a within-conflict (and thus highly controlled) manipulation of apology direction comparing an apology delivered by Palestine to Israel (upward-directed apology) with one delivered by Israel to Palestine (downward-directed apology). Finally, an additional goal of Study 4 was to examine the effect of SDO-E in a third-party context. In addition to providing another test of generalizability across contexts, this context also means that the role of national identification should be somewhat minimized (although see discussion for caveats). To achieve this, we recruited U.S. residents to participate in this study, as the vast majority would have no strict national identification with either Israel or Palestine.

Method

Participants

One hundred fifty U.S. residents (62% female, M_age = 37.31 years, SD_age = 12.04 years), recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk, participated in this study and were paid US$1.20 in compensation for their time. Participants were mostly college educated (60.7%) and from middle-income households (32.0%).

Procedure and materials

Participants were randomly assigned to either a downward-directed apology or upward-directed apology condition. The downward condition involved participants considering an apology offered by Israel to the Palestinian people. The upward condition involved participants considering Palestine apologizing to the Israeli people. Participants in both conditions read a passage describing the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, which was designed to convey that both sides had harmed and been harmed while stressing that Israel, compared with Palestine, was a more powerful and high-status group (see the supplemental material for full text).

Participants next completed a power and status manipulation check to confirm that they saw Israelis as more powerful and of higher status than Palestinians. Power beliefs were assessed with the item, “When it comes to having power to control things around them, who do you think has more power?” Status beliefs were assessed with the item, “When it comes to having respect and admiration from others, who do you think has more status?” Participants chose between three responses for each item: “Israelis have more power (status),” “Palestinians have more power (status),” and “Both Israelis and Palestinians have equal power (status).” As the status and power belief measures were ordinal and included many tied ranks, Goodman and Kruskal’s γ was calculated to assess the strength of association between the two measures (Chen & Popovich, 2002). Status and power beliefs were moderately and positively associated, γ = .39, p < .05.

Participants then indicated their support for apologizing: “I would support an official apology by Israel (Palestine) to the Palestinian (Israeli) people,” “I believe Israel (Palestine) should apologize to the Palestinian (Israeli) people,” “I believe Israel (Palestine) apologizing to the Palestinian (Israeli) people is a good idea,” and “I don’t believe there is a need for Israel (Palestine) to provide an apology to the Palestinian (Israeli) people” (reverse scored; 1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree). The items formed a reliable scale in both the downward-directed, α = .94, and upward-directed, α = .94, conditions.

The remaining procedure and materials were identical to those used in previous studies, except that no measure of national identification was included, as participants were not responding to a context in which they were members of the perpetrator group (all αs > .82).

Results and Discussion

Power and status belief manipulation checks

As responses to the power and status items were highly skewed, nonparametric one-sample Wilcoxon signed-rank tests with test medians of 0 (representing equal power and status) were used to determine whether participants saw Israel as more powerful and higher status than Palestine. The tests revealed that participants viewed Israel as more powerful, Z = 6,552.00, p < .001, and higher in status, Z = 7,288.50, p < .001, than Palestine. Comparing apology direction conditions, Mann–Whitney U tests indicated that Israel was seen as being equally more powerful and higher in status than Palestine in both conditions, with mean ranks not differing significantly between conditions for both the power check, U = 2,532.00, p = .17, and status check, U = 3,158.00, p = .08.

Main analyses

Correlations between variables for both the upward- and downward-directed apology conditions are presented in Table 7. Notably, in the downward-directed apology condition (below diagonal in Table 7), which was a conceptual replication of the previous studies, the pattern of correlations was largely identical to those found in Studies 1 to 3. Correlations in the upward-directed apology condition (above diagonal in Table 7), however, revealed some striking differences. Most notably, support for apologizing was unrelated to both SDO-E and SDO-D and positively associated with RWA and conservatism.

Table 7.

Correlations, Means, and Standard Deviations: Study 4.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	M (SD)
1. Support for apologizing	—	.08	.03	.27*	.31**	.12	−.06	−.05	.02	4.63 (1.74)
2. SDO-D	−.12	—	.72**	.46**	.31**	−.10	.14	.21	.20	2.22 (1.47)
3. SDO-E	−.62**	.57**	—	.45**	.41**	−.02	.05	.03	.06	2.36 (1.53)
4. RWA	−.44**	.54**	.54**	—	.73**	.01	.06	.05	.15	3.18 (1.36)
5. Conservatism	−.56**	.47**	.59**	.77**	—	.03	−.02	−.03	−.05	3.84 (1.77)
6. Age	−.09	−.08	.02	−.10	−.04	—	−.25*	.15	−.08	38.28 (12.69)
7. Gender	−.23	.15	.18	.18	.18	−.34**	—	.05	−.05	−0.28 (0.97)
8. Education	−.10	−.20	−.01	−.01	−.02	−.14	.03	—	.38**	3.92 (0.64)
9. Income	−.09	−.33**	−.15	−.06	.10	−.06	.14	.20	—	2.59 (1.30)
M (SD)	4.64 (1.64)	2.36 (1.41)	2.48 (1.52)	3.05 (1.20)	3.51 (1.66)	36.25 (11.29)	−0.19 (0.99)	3.88 (0.60)	2.50 (1.13)

Note. Downward-directed apology condition is reported below the diagonal; upward-directed apology condition is reported above the diagonal. Gender: female (−1), male (1). SDO-D = social dominance orientation–dominance; SDO-E = social dominance orientation–egalitarianism; RWA = Right Wing Authoritarianism.

p < .05. **p < .01.

To better explore these apparent between-condition differences, support for apologizing was first regressed on to standardized SDO-E and SDO-D (Table 8, Model 1), with contrast-coded apology direction (1 = downward, −1 = upward) added in Model 2 (Table 8). No main effects of apology direction emerged; however, adding product interaction terms between apology direction and both SDO-D and SDO-E in Model 3 revealed the predicted SDO-E × Condition interaction (which remained significant when standardized theoretical covariates—RWA and conservatism—and their interactions with condition were added in Model 4).⁸ SDO-D did not interact with condition to predict support for apologizing.

Table 8.

Multiple Linear Regression Analyses Predicting Support for Apologizing in Study 4.

Predictor	Model 1		Model 2		Model 3		Model 4
Predictor	ΔR²	β [95% CI]	ΔR²	β [95% CI]	ΔR²	β [95% CI]	ΔR²	β [95% CI]
	.12***		.00		.10***		.11***
SDO-D		.29** [.08, .49]		.29** [.08, .49]		.23* [.04, .43]		.26* [.06, .45]
SDO-E		−.46*** [–.66, –.26]		−.46*** [–.66, –.26]		−.43*** [–.63, –.24]		−.41*** [–.61, –.21]
Apology direction		—		.01 [–.15, .16]		.01 [.14, .15]		<.01 [–.14, .14]
Apology Direction × SDO-D		—		—		.12 [–.08, .31]		.18 [–.01, .38]
Apology Direction × SDO-E		—		—		−.38*** [–.57, –.18]		−.21* [–.41, –.01]
RWA		—		—		—		.02 [–.20, .25]
Conservatism		—		—		—		−.03 [–.25, .19]
Apology Direction × RWA		—		—		—		−.10 [–.33, .12]
Apology Direction × Conservatism		—		—		—		−.31** [–.53, –.09]

Note. Apology direction was coded as −1 for upward-directed apology and 1 for downward-directed apology. CI = confidence interval; SDO-D = social dominance orientation–dominance; SDO-E = social dominance orientation–egalitarianism; RWA = Right Wing Authoritarianism.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

To decompose the SDO-E × Condition interaction, simple slopes for all independent variables and covariates were calculated in each condition (Table 9). In the downward-directed apology condition, results were like those seen in previous studies (Models 5 and 6), with SDO-E negatively predicting apology support. An unexpected positive effect of SDO-D was observed in this condition, indicating that when controlling for SDO-E, higher SDO-D scores predicted more support for a downward-directed apology.⁹ These effects remained significant after adding RWA and conservatism (and their interaction terms with condition) as covariates in Model 6.

Table 9.

Simple Slopes for the Downward- and Upward-Directed Apology Conditions in Study 4.

Predictor	Downward-directed apology		Upward-directed apology
	Model 5	Model 6	Model 7	Model 8
	β [95% CI]	β [95% CI]	β [95% CI]	β [95% CI]
SDO-D	.35** [.08, .61]	.44** [.18, .70]	.12 [−.17, .40]	.07 [−.21, .36]
SDO-E	−.81*** [–1.07, –.55]	−.62*** [–.90, –.35]	−.06 [–.35, .24]	−.20 [–.49, .09]
RWA	—	−.08 [–.43, .27]	—	.12 [–.16, .41]
Conservatism	—	−.34* [–.68, >–.01]	—	.28^† [>–.01, .56]

Note. CI = confidence interval; SDO-D = social dominance orientation–dominance; SDO-E = social dominance orientation–egalitarianism; RWA = Right Wing Authoritarianism.

†

p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

In contrast, in the upward condition (Models 7 and 8), neither SDO-D nor SDO-E was a significant predictor. After adding RWA and conservatism as covariates in Model 8, the effects of SDO-D and SDO-E remained nonsignificant.

In summary, and consistent with expectations, we found that SDO-E was only a negative predictor of apology support when an apology was downward-directed and thus hierarchy attenuating. In contrast, when an apology was upward-directed, SDO-E had no effect on apology support. This result provides strong support for our central hypothesis while clarifying that the effect of SDO-E does not reflect a more general aversion to apologizing (Hornsey et al., 2017), but is specific to contexts in which apologizing is hierarchy attenuating. In addition, taken together with results from Studies 1 to 3, the emergence of the effect in a context in which participants were not strict members of either victim or perpetrator groups suggests that national identification is unlikely to serve as a general alternative explanation.¹⁰

General Discussion

Across four studies, we found that, as expected, SDO, and specifically SDO-E, consistently predicted opposition to offering hierarchy-attenuating intergroup apologies. The effect was observed when an apology was offered to a minority group within a nation (Study 1) or to national outgroups (Studies 2 and 3) and in both U.S. and Australian samples, indicating that the effect generalizes across both contextual and cultural settings. In addition, the effect was observed both in cases involving national ingroup (Studies 1, 2, and 3) and third-party wrongdoing (Study 4), indicating that the effect of SDO-E on opposition to apologizing is not restricted to instances of ingroup wrongdoing. Finally, SDO-E had no effect on apology support when an apology was directed from a low-status group to a high-status group (Study 4), indicating that it is a motive to avoid hierarchy attenuation that drives the effect.

Our research provides the first direct evidence that hierarchy maintenance motives are a key driver of opposition to intergroup apologies. These results are important extensions of Hornsey et al. (2017) and Halloran (2007). First, the results demonstrate that the negative effect of SDO on support for apologizing found by Hornsey et al. (2017) generalizes to intergroup contexts. Importantly, our research provides a clarification of this effect—by specifying the hierarchical relationships between groups across studies, we were able to demonstrate that the negative effect of SDO is specific to contexts in which an apology is hierarchy attenuating. Notably, an effect of SDO on proclivity to apologize was observed in Hornsey et al. (2017), despite no hierarchical context being specified. One possible explanation for this is that when considering support for apologizing more generally, people may think of situations in which apologizing would be hierarchy attenuating. Another possibility is that a transgression and the subsequent feelings of powerlessness associated with victimization (Shnabel & Nadler, 2008) may themselves create a hierarchical relationship between victim and perpetrator. Further research is needed to test these possibilities.

Second, the use of the SDO scale allows us to make an important clarification of the effect of egalitarianism reported by Halloran (2007) by providing a direct assessment of the role of group-based hierarchy maintenance motives on support for apologizing. Furthermore, the subdimensions of the SDO scale allowed us to identify that it was antiegalitarian motives (SDO-E), rather that dominance motives (SDO-D), that predicted opposition to apologizing—a distinction that could not be made from the results of either Halloran (2007) or Hornsey et al. (2017).

Antiegalitarian and Dominance Motives

To provide another test of the robustness of the distinction between SDO-D and SDO-E, we conducted a meta-analytic summary of the correlations and regression coefficients (from Model 1 in Studies 1-3 and Model 5 in Study 4) for both SDO-E and SDO-D with apology support across all four studies (using only data from the downward condition of Study 4). We conducted the meta-analysis using the Hunter and Schmidt’s (2004) random-effects model. The correlations and regression coefficients were weighted by sample size before being summed and then divided by the total sample size across all studies. The generalizability of the effects was then assessed by calculating 95% credibility intervals. The results of this analysis (Table 10) indicated that the effect of SDO-E on support for apologizing was likely to be negative across populations, whereas the effect of SDO-D was substantially weaker and less reliable.

Table 10.

Meta-Analytic Combinations of Effect Sizes Across Studies 1 to 4 of Correlation and Regression Coefficients.

	Pearson correlation	Regression coefficient
SDO-E	−.44 [–.74, –.13]	−.48 [–.87, –.08]
SDO-D	−.23 [–.47, .02]	.08 [–.27, .44]

Note. Effect sizes are expressed as mean Pearson correlations. The 95% credibility coefficients are presented in square brackets. SDO-E = social dominance orientation–egalitarian; SDO-D = social dominance orientation–dominance.

These results indicate that hierarchy-attenuating apologies are generally opposed as a means of resisting equality between groups, rather than as a means of maintaining overt dominance (Ho et al., 2015). This is consistent with the kind of hedging strategies of denial or minimization of harm in response to accusations of ingroup wrongdoing that are associated with opposition to apologizing (Čehajić & Brown, 2008, 2010; Čehajić-Clancy, Effron, Halperin, Liberman, & Ross, 2011) and provides a valuable insight into drivers of opposition to apologizing. Arguments raised against apologizing by perpetrators typically take issue with the facts of a transgression, arguing that today’s moral standards cannot be used to judge past generations, or suggest that current generations cannot be held to account for the transgressions of past generations (Wohl et al., 2011). Although it is possible that these arguments are generally presented in good faith, one possibility our results present is that these contestations might arise as rationalizations of the hierarchy maintenance motives of those high in SDO.

Limitations and Future Directions

The most notable limitation of the current research is that the correlational nature of our studies limits the ability to be make strong causal claims. However, there are both theoretical and empirical grounds on which some weak causal claims can be supported. First, SDO is conceptualized as causally explaining beliefs in legitimizing myths (Pratto et al., 2006; Pratto et al., 1994), and its function in causally explaining hierarchy-relevant behavior has been empirically demonstrated (Kteily, Sidanius, & Levin, 2011). Thus, it is reasonable to assume SDO-E would play a causal role in determining opposition to apologizing. The alternative causal path is more difficult to justify on theoretical grounds. It is unclear why a specific attitude toward apologizing in a specific context would cause large changes in the more general disposition that SDO-E represents. Finally, we accounted for a number of potential confounder candidates across studies, namely, conservatism, RWA, and national identification, none of which fully accounted for the effect of SDO-E. Having taken these variables into account rules out numerous plausible third variable causation accounts, adding further weight to our weak causal claims. Of course, future work that manipulates hierarchy maintenance motives and examines effects on opposition to apologies would further clarify causation.

Although the results of Study 4 provide evidence of the role of hierarchy maintenance motives in the effect of SDO-E on apology support, future work could consider additional mechanisms that might contribute to the effect. In particular, exploring which ideologies or legitimizing myths (Pratto et al., 1994) mediate the effect of SDO-E on apology support would be valuable steps in developing our understanding of the processes and context-specific beliefs at play. Collective guilt, which has been shown to predict willingness to apologize (e.g., McGarty et al., 2005; Rotella et al., 2015; Wohl et al., 2013), is a promising starting point. By minimizing responsibility, the denial of collective guilt may act as a legitimizing myth that justifies resistance to reparative acts that would disrupt the status quo. Consistent with this reasoning, Sibley, Robertson, and Kirkwood (2005) demonstrated that collective guilt mediated the relationship between SDO and hierarchy-attenuating bicultural policies in New Zealand. A similar relationship may exist in the context of apology support. Future work exploring this possibility, as well as other potential context-specific mediators (e.g., symbolic racism in the context of apologizing to African Americans) will be important steps in establishing a more complete understanding of the effect of SDO-E on support for intergroup apologies.

Although we have focused on how SDO affects the experiences of those offering apologies in this article, there is also much to explore in how social hierarchy may affect those who receive apologies. For example, Hornsey et al. (2017) found that those high in SDO were less likely to provide forgiveness after an apology had been offered, indicating that victims’ reactions to apologies, at least in interpersonal settings, are also related to their hierarchy maintenance motives. Future research could examine the generalizability and implications of this effect in intergroup settings.

Conclusion

In this article, we provided the first direct demonstration that hierarchy maintenance motives drive opposition to hierarchy-attenuating intergroup apologies. More generally, this is some of the first intergroup apology research to put the structural factors of a conflict in the spotlight. Given the prevalence of social hierarchies and the extent to which they are capable of defining the relationship between victim and perpetrator groups, we believe the field of intergroup apology research has much to gain by considering not only individual differences but also how a social hierarchy itself can influence the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of members of both victim and perpetrator groups.

Supplemental Material

Karunaratne_OnlineAppendix – Supplemental material for Social Dominance Orientation Predicts Opposition to Hierarchy-Attenuating Intergroup Apologies

Supplemental material, Karunaratne_OnlineAppendix for Social Dominance Orientation Predicts Opposition to Hierarchy-Attenuating Intergroup Apologies by Kanishka Karunaratne and Simon M. Laham in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

ORCID iD

Kanishka Karunaratne

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material is available online with this article.

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