**4.2 Instruments**

*Psycho-Social Aspects of Human Sexuality and Ethics*

**4. Method**

**4.1 Participants**

hierarchy-attenuating extreme left-wing political groups and hierarchy-enhancing extreme right-wing political groups. Both settings should reinforce both in male and female members the dominant legitimizing myths of the political group they have chosen, and the political divide should be stronger than the gender divide.

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

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 estab-

1.Extreme left activists were 126, 70 males and 56 females (mean age 26.21, SD 4.83; range 16–34). About 9% have a low level of education, 61% a high school diploma, and 30% a college degree. These extreme left-wing organizations define themselves as supporting socialist, feminist, and ecologist issues and fighting against all social inequalities based on race, ethnicity, gender, or other discriminating features. Activists spend considerable time in these groups in weekly meetings and organizing protest marches, boycotts, and sit-in in favor

2.Extreme Right activists were 181, 123 males and 58 females (mean age 24.01, SD 5.07; range 14–34). About 23% had a college degree, 57% had a high school diploma, and about 20% did not finish high school. These groups promote attitudes and belief systems such as nationalism, racism, classism, sexism, ethnocentrism, and political-economic conservatism. Extreme right activists also meet weekly and often engage in nontraditional political activities bordering on illegality such as unauthorized protest marches that sometimes end in

mirrors the different extents to which parties support group dominance.

lished, snowball sampling was used to recruit other political activists:

violence (fights with police officers or leftwing extremists).

**64**

of oppressed groups.

All subjects filled a questionnaire which contained:

