L'orientamento alla dominanza sociale in dinamiche di "misfit" persona-ambiente

The present study is aimed at testing if social dominance orientation (SDO), that is the people's willingness to support group-based dominance is an antecedent of perceived person-environment misfit (P-E misfit) when people experience a context characterized by a culture that strongly favors equality among groups (i.e., hierarchy-attenuating environments). We collected two waves of data from a cohort of students of a social work faculty (i.e., first-year), a typical hierarchy-attenuating major. Participants voluntarily answered an anonymous self-report questionnaire. SDO and perceived P-E misfit were measured. As hypothesized, a cross-lagged panel model revealed that the initial levels of SDO predict future levels of P-E misfit, while no evidence was found for the opposite. The results contribute to enriching the embodiment of P-E fit/misfit within the Social Dominance Theory, revealing that the more people show high levels of SDO the more they will perceive misfit in hierarchy-attenuating environments. These results highlight that the P-E misfit is likely to occur in the initial stage of people's socialization with the hierarchy-attenuating culture of the settings they experience, that is when people with high SDO become gradually more aware of the values pursued within a hierarchy-attenuating setting (in the six months period, between the first and the second data collection in our students’ sample).