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Power and Addiction
Published in Hanna Pickard, Serge H. Ahmed, The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Science of Addiction, 2019
Affected family members share with their addicted relatives confusion about where responsibility lies and a tendency, shared with all disempowered groups, to attribute responsibility to themselves. Where their addicted relatives are confused by their own apparently irrational behaviour and experience guilt and shame about what they are doing to themselves and others, affected family members are confused about whether blame lies with their relatives, with ‘addiction’, with the purveyors of substances or activities to which the relatives are addicted, or to themselves. Social dominance theory (SDT: Sidanius and Pratto 1999), one of the most pertinent social psychological theories of power, is helpful here. According to SDT, one of the chief power hierarchy-maintaining ‘myths’ consists of beliefs that attribute responsibility for subordination to the disempowered themselves or to the groups or communities of which they are part. Just as the powerless everywhere have a tendency to put up with things whilst trying to protect themselves from the worst effects of subordination, so family members affected by addiction often cope by putting up with it rather than standing up to it or escaping from it (Orford et al. 2013).
Violence
Published in John C. Gunn, Pamela J. Taylor, Forensic Psychiatry, 2014
John Gunn, Julian Walker, Ron Blackburn, John Gunn, Pamela J Taylor
Powerlessness, the search for control, subjective feelings of weakness and helplessness, distorted perceptions of power, are all factors found in human aggression. One of us in previous publications (Gunn, 1973, 1991b) has proposed a social dominance theory of violence suggesting that violence tends to occur when there is an imbalance of power within a social system or between individuals. This idea gives rise to ideas for reducing levels of violence and could enable further ideas of intervention for treatment to be generated and tested.
Animal Models of Subtypes of Depression
Published in Siegfried Kasper, Johan A. den Boer, J. M. Ad Sitsen, Handbook of Depression and Anxiety, 2003
Paul Willner, Paul J. Mitchell
A related procedure is based on the observation that rats housed in closed groups develop a social hierarchy and the relative social position of each group member may be identified by assessing each individual’s level of success during agonistic encounters with other group members. If rats are housed in triads, then a social hierarchy consisting of a dominant, subdominant, and subordinate develops. Two-week chronic administration of either clomipramine or mianserin to the subdominant animal results in an increase in that subject’s rank position at the expense of the level of dominance enjoyed by the dominant group member [188]. The increase in the social position of the antidepressant-treated subdominant rat is likely to be related to increased assertiveness expressed during social encounters. An attractive feature of this model is that daily assessment of social structure allows the time course of antidepressant-induced elevation of social position to be determined. However, not all features of subordinate animals are necessarily of relevance to depression, and the relationship between social dominance and social competition is potentially problematic. In group-housed rats competing for limited access to a high-incentive reward, the performance of subordinate animals was improved by acute or chronic anxiolytic treatment [96,118], suggesting that the social competition test is relevant to anxiety rather than depression. Consistent with this view is the observation that chronic treatment with m-chlorophenylpiperazine (mCPP), a major metabolite of the antidepressant trazodone which also possesses antidepressant activity, failed to increase the performance of subdominant rats in a social competition test [193] at a dose previously shown to increase the aggressive behavior of resident rats in a resident-intruder test (see below) [192]. However, the benzodiazepine anxiolytic diazepam, which improves performance in a social competition test, did not increase aggressive behavior in dyadic encounters, after either acute or chronic administration [189]. Further studies will be necessary to confirm this ineffectiveness of anxiolytics in social dominance tests.
The Association between Social Dominance Orientation, Critical Consciousness, and Gender Minority Stigma
Published in Journal of Homosexuality, 2020
Jae A. Puckett, L. Zachary DuBois, Jayvien N. McNeill, Cylie Hanson
The 16-item Social Dominance Orientation Scale (Pratto et al., 1994) assessed participants’ preferences for social inequalities and power hierarchies (example item: “Some groups of people are simply inferior to other groups.”). Higher scores indicated stronger preferences for ideologies, policies, and viewpoints that support hierarchies, while lower levels showed weaker support of hierarchical maintenance (Pratto et al., 1994). The original scale’s instructions directed participants to rate whether they had positive or negative feelings about the statements presented. Instead of this, we asked participants to report how much they agreed with each statement (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree). A mean score was computed, with higher scores indicating greater levels of SDO. Previous research has found this scale to be reliable (Cronbach’s alpha average = .83), with evidence of discriminant and convergent validity (Pratto et al., 1994). In the present sample, Cronbach’s alpha was .96.
When There Are No Therapists: A Psychoeducational Group for People Who Have Experienced Social Disasters
Published in Smith College Studies in Social Work, 2018
Carter (2007) has explored the notion of “race-based traumatic stress injury,” which stems from facing ongoing threats and a sense of not being in control, while facing discrimination, harassment, or chronic disempowerment. Symptoms include intrusion, arousal, and avoidance, often accompanied by self-blame. McCrea, Guthrie, and Bulanda (2016) have described the trauma-like symptoms for youth living in poor, socially isolated neighborhoods, where risk is high and social support and validation are low. Extrapolating from social norm theory, social disasters have differential impact because they appear normative to those who have power and privilege but are devaluing and denigrating to those who are the targets of oppression (Pratto & Stewart, 2012). And social dominance theory describes how groups in power strive to retain their privileged position in society through laws, resource hoarding, and social practices, at the expense of groups lacking privilege (Pratto & Stewart, 2012). Terrorism or armed conflict increases the threat of being shot or stabbed; social disasters, also carry such threats and raise the specter of social submission through thousands of psychic paper cuts, institutional and interpersonal, such as through microaggressions, ongoing, “normalized” interpersonal assaults on targeted people (Miller & Garran, 2008; Solorzano & Yosso, 1999; Sue, 2010).
In it to win it: Competitiveness, concussion knowledge and nondisclosure in athletes
Published in The Physician and Sportsmedicine, 2021
Madeline M. Doucette, Sané Du Plessis, Amanda M. Webber, Chelsea Whalen, Mauricio A. Garcia-Barrera
This study confirms previous research on competitiveness in athletes but also expands this research to present a new barrier to concussion reporting that had yet to be investigated. While the competitiveness distribution was slightly negatively skewed, there were no significant differences in competitiveness between the three sports groups. We anticipated that the competitiveness distribution would be slightly skewed as it is consistent with previous research that most athletes are competitive and would score high on any competitiveness measures [34]. Further, we did find a significant difference in competitiveness between sexes, such that males had slightly higher competitiveness scores. Although the difference in competitiveness scores were minimal, they were statistically significant and consistent with the extant literature [35,42–45]. Lastly, there was a small positive correlation between age and competitiveness such that as age increases, competitiveness also increases. Mayr and colleagues [42] found that competitive preferences increase until the age of 50 where it starts to decline, forming an inverted-U trajectory. A possible explanation for this initial age increase is supported by a meta-analysis [46] in which the personality trait social dominance (reflected by qualities like dominance, independence, and self-confidence in a social context) showed the only strong positive trend from early adulthood to the fifties. Social dominance is established by successfully engaging in competition and therefore, it is plausible that as one ages, an increased interest in social dominance also produces an increased level of competitiveness [42].