RWAc and SDOc: the measurement of right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation in childhood

Abstract

Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO) predict prejudice and discrimination in adults. To create analogous scales for children, we carried out four studies. First, we gave 112 adults from New Zealand (Study 1) and 146 adults from Turkey (Study 2) novel child-appropriate measures of RWA and SDO, along with the standard adult measures. The two RWA measures correlated more highly with each other than with the SDO measures, and the two SDO measures correlated more highly with each other than with the RWA measures. Study 3 tested 75 children aged 6 to 12, finding acceptable to good reliability for the two child scales. Child RWA (RWAc) and SDO (SDOc) decreased significantly over age. SDOc correlated with maternal SDO and RWA, and RWAc correlated with children's racial bias. Study 4 examined the RWAc scale with 39 children aged 5 to 11 years. There was good reliability for the RWAc scale and a correlation with anti-fat prejudice. Overall, the findings indicate that: (a) the scales are reliable, (b) SDOc correlates with parental attitudes, (c) RWAc correlates with children's prejudice, and (d) RWA and SDO are present early in life and decline with age.