# Felicia Pratto American social psychologist, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor at the University of Connecticut. Co-developer with Jim Sidanius of the *Social Dominance Orientation* (SDO) scale (1994) and *Social Dominance Theory* (1999) — the framework that, alongside Altemeyer's RWA, structures most contemporary empirical authoritarianism research. Pratto's research has extended Social Dominance Theory across cross-cultural samples, gender (Pratto's "invariance hypothesis": SDO is reliably higher in men than women across cultures, attributed to differential evolutionary-psychological selection pressures), and political-application contexts. Her research on power-and-asymmetry as cognitive variables has been influential in contemporary work on intergroup conflict. ## Academic Career Pratto earned her **Ph.D. in psychology** from **New York University** and has spent the majority of her career at the **University of Connecticut**, where she holds the rank of **Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor** of psychological sciences. She has also held visiting positions at Stanford, UCLA, and international institutions. ## SDO Scale Development (1994) Pratto was co-developer (with [[Jim Sidanius]], Lisa M. Stallworth, and Bertram F. Malle) of the **Social Dominance Orientation scale** — published in 1994 in the *Journal of Personality and Social Psychology*. She was a principal architect of the measure's psychometric design and has been a primary contributor to its validation, revision (SDO-7, the current version), and cross-cultural replication across dozens of countries. ## The Gender Invariance Hypothesis One of Pratto's most distinctive findings: the **invariance hypothesis** — that SDO is **reliably higher in men than in women across all cultures studied**. The gender gap in SDO has been replicated in samples across multiple continents, political systems, and levels of gender equality. Pratto has attributed this to differential evolutionary-psychological selection pressures (men's greater historical involvement in intergroup competition and dominance hierarchies), though the interpretation is debated — cultural-constructionist critics argue the gap reflects socialization rather than evolutionary dispositions. The invariance hypothesis has practical implications for understanding why authoritarian-populist movements tend to draw disproportionately male support — a pattern visible across the Trump base, the European far right, and the manosphere-to-politics pipeline this KB tracks. ## Power-and-Asymmetry Research Beyond SDO, Pratto has conducted influential research on **power as a cognitive variable** — how power asymmetries shape attention, perception, and intergroup attitudes. Her work on "power basis theory" examines how different forms of power (coercive, resource-based, legitimacy-based) produce different intergroup dynamics and conflict patterns. ## KB Significance Pratto is the co-developer (with Sidanius) of the **SDO framework** — the dominance-preference half of the contemporary dual-process model of authoritarianism. Her gender-invariance findings are particularly relevant for this KB's analysis of the gendered demographics of authoritarian-populist movements and the manosphere-to-politics pipeline. ## See Also - [[Jim Sidanius]] — co-developer - [[Bob Altemeyer]] — RWA-scale parallel - [[Authoritarianism]]