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The present study examined the asymmetry hypothesis of social dominance theory (SDT) in a work organization. The asymmetry hypothesis posits that members of subordinate groups who are high in social dominance orientation (SDO; desire for group-based hierarchy) can contribute to maintaining hierarchies by conforming with hierarchy-enhancing legitimizing myths and tactics used by members of dominant groups. Focusing on subordinates' perspective, we studied their compliance with supervisors' use of harsh power tactics, and whether this increased with subordinates' levels of SDO. At a hierarchy-enhancing for-profit organization, 207 subordinate employees self-reported their compliance with supervisor's use of harsh influence tactics and the perceived use of those tactics by their supervisors. The moderation analysis confirmed that the concurrence between supervisors' use of harsh power tactics, as perceived by subordinates, and subordinates' compliance with harsh tactics was moderated by subordinates' SDO. The higher SDO subordinates perceived a higher supervisor's use of harsh power tactics, the more they were willing to comply with those tactics. As the asymmetry hypothesis implies, this pattern can maintain hierarchies and even contribute to a spiral of inequalities within work environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents the psychometric proprieties of the Italian version of the Social Dominance Orientation7 (SDO7) Scale, originally developed by Ho et al. (2015). We recruited a convenience sample (N = 497) to answer an online self-report questionnaire, including the SDO7 Scale and other relevant convergent and divergent measures. The confirmatory factor analysis revealed that SDO7 presents a satisfactory fit to the data, both as a two-correlated factor structure and as a one-dimensional measure. The two-correlated factor structure is confirmed as composed by two subdimensions as in the original version: the SDO-Dominance (SDO-D) and the SDO-Anti-Egalitarianism (SDO-E). Since the total SDO7 score measures people's support for asymmetrical group relationships, the SDO-D is concerned with people's support for dominant-submissive forms of intergroup relationships whereas the SDO-E refers to the desire to support intergroup inequalities. The scale and subscales also present satisfactory indexes of reliability as well as convergent and divergent validity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]