**4. Method**

## **4.1 Participants**

There is a general consensus in literature that SDO is a stable individual difference [51] although can relatively vary across some conditions. According to personenvironment fit theory, authors [27] posited that people select hierarchy-enhancing environments according to their SDO levels, as well as environments attract and socialize people according to how much in such places hierarchy-enhancing myths are supported. As a result, high-SDO people tend to fit better in hierarchy-enhancing environments and low-SDO people tend to fit better in hierarchy-attenuating environments (e.g., [18, 27, 52]). In the present chapter, we opted to study the gender invariance hypothesis in people belonging to political groups with a different support of hierarchy-enhancing legitimizing myths accordingly to the literature that outlines that the SDO level among participants (of both sex) of political groups mirrors the different extents to which parties support group dominance.

We included 626 subjects, 350 males and 276 females, who had been for at least 2 years activists in political parties or associations belonging to two well-differentiated groups of (1) extreme left-wing and (2) extreme right-wing and having also two additional groups of (3) center left-wing and (4) center right-wing parties. We decided to invest considerable effort to secure a relatively large sample of political activists of different political parties. We sent emails to the address of local political parties asking to give the questionnaire to the activists. The questionnaire was accompanied by a letter of the Sapienza University of Rome stationery presenting the aims of the scientific research and guaranteeing anonymity and privacy. After mailing questionnaires and letters, we tried to recontact the political parties to ascertain that they received the questionnaires and to solicit their responses. However, since the response rate was low, after the first contacts had been established, snowball sampling was used to recruit other political activists:


**65**

*Political Gender Gap and Social Dominance Orientation*

All subjects filled a questionnaire which contained:

extreme left-wing orientation.

**5. Statistical analyses and results**

Results are shown in **Table 1**.

the conceptual model (**Figure 1**).

political orientation groups.

political groups.

political groups.

Several competing models were tested.

females on SDO.

3.Center left-wing activists were 111, 50 males and 61 females (mean age 26.71, SD 4.86; range 16–35). They are members of the center left-wing moderate parties. About 7% have a junior high diploma, 67% a high school diploma, and 26% a college degree. They engage in more traditional legal-political activities such as signing petitions, political campaigns, raising funds, and getting people to the voting polls.

4.Center right-wing activists were 208, 107 males and 101 females (mean age 27.20, SD 4.76; range 14–35). They belong to center right-wing parties. About 68% have a high school diploma, 24% a college degree, and 8% a junior high education. They also engage in more traditional party activities, like organizing fundraising events, helping party candidates, distributing documents, and getting voters to the poll.

1.A section in which subjects recorded age, sex, and educational level. Furthermore, to confirm and control the distinctive SS belonging to the selected groups, we measured their political orientation by means of a single item (a 10-point scale), where point 1 meant extreme right-wing orientation and point 10 meant

We first performed an analysis of variance to ascertain the political orientation

To deepen the test of the invariance hypothesis, we applied a multiple regression model involving social dominance orientation and gender across the four groups considered. A multigroup path analysis was performed to test the hypothesis of the influences of gender on social dominance, this way independently of political orientation. A dummy variable was created with 1 corresponding to males. Thus, in our regression model, the weight is the average difference between males and

SDO was treated as an exogenous latent variable with three indices. The latter was formed summing up groups of items of the scale. The figure below illustrates

• **H1:** both factor loadings and regression weight are different for each of the four

Hypotheses were as follows in ascending order of constraints:

• **H0A:** regression weight is invariant for each of the political groups.

• **H0B:** factor loadings of social dominance are invariant for each of the four

• **H0C:** both regression weight and factor loading are invariant for each of the

as firmly acting differences within groups in SDO males and females scores.

2.SDO scale used was an Italian adaptation of the SDO scale [53].

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.92222*

**4.2 Instruments**

