Ideological Support for the Indian Caste System: Social Dominance Orientation, Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Karma

This paper extends the social dominance perspective to the Indian context by examining the role of belief in Karma (sanchita) in the justification of the Indian caste system. Using social dominance theory (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999) and the dual process model (Duckitt, 2001) as guiding theoretical frameworks, we tested four related hypotheses within a sample of 385 Indian university students. In particular we expected that social dominance...