Background
Social dominance orientation (SDO), an individual’s degree of preference for inequality among social groups is found to be associated with a range of socioemotional, political, behavioral, and neurophysiological factors. Critical to the understanding of SDO are the mediating factors that may affect the capacity to relate to the experiences of others. Researchers found a negative relationship between SDO and empathy and positive relationship between empathy and self-compassion. However, the relationship between SDO and self-compassion remains unclear.
Hypotheses
We hypothesized that empathy mediates the connection between SDO and self-compassion. We also investigated whether the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the relationships between those variables.
Sample
We collected data from 839 undergraduates at a public university in the Pacific, aged 17–55 (M = 20.1, SD = 4.09). Participants identified as female (71.28%) and Asian (42.79%).
Design
We used network analysis to investigate the relationships between SDO, empathy, and different facets of self-compassion. The networks were estimated separately for the pre-(n = 541) and post-COVID (n = 298) groups, using a combination of glasso regularization and extended Bayesian Information Criterion (EBIC). We studied topology, stability, and centrality of the two networks, followed by invariance analysis.
Results
In both networks SDO was connected only with empathy which was in turn connected to the tightly interrelated self-compassion network through the mindfulness subscale. Thus, empathy bridged the connection between SDO and the mindfulness subscale of the SCS. Mindfulness also bridged the connection between empathy and other facets of self-compassion. Invariance analysis confirmed that network structure, global strength, as well as strength of individual connections were the same in both samples, suggesting that this pattern is stable despite the adverse effects of the pandemic.
Scientific Contribution
Self-compassion is connected to SDO through empathy and might therefore offer a target for interventions that seeks to promote social equality.