ROMANCE ACROSS THE SOCIAL-STATUS CONTINUUM - INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE ANDTHE IDEOLOGICAL ASYMMETRY EFFECT

This study examined the asymmetrical relationship between attitudes to ward interracial marriage and social dominance orientation across four ethnic groups in the United States, Differences in these correlations were explained with the ideological asymmetry hypothesis, a specific feature of social dominance theory, which asserts that the relationshi p between attitudes regarding hierarchy-maintaining social practices a nd antiegalitarian social values will be more positive among members o f high-status groups than among members of low-status groups. Using op position to interracial marriage and dating (i.e., antimiscegenation a ttitudes) as a case of a hierarchy-maintaining social attitude, the da ta were found to support the ideological asymmetry hypothesis. With al most no exceptions, the correlations between social dominance orientat ion and antimiscegenation attitudes were significantly more positive w ithin a high-status ethnic group vis-a-vis a given low-status ethnic g roup than they were within a low-status ethnic group vis-g-vis a given high-status ethnic group. The theoretical implications of these findi ngs are discussed.