Social Dominance Orientation and exposure to violence as predictors of support for past peace agreements

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to explore individual predictors of support for peace agreements after their implementation. The aim is to test if individual differences in Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) temper the effect of exposure to violence on support for peace agreements. One hundred and eighty participants completed measures surveying their SDO, exposure to violence and voting behavior four years after the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC in 2016. Results show that SDO lowers support for the peace agreement four years after it was signed among those who experienced violence but has a smaller effect on those who did not experience violence. The implications of the interaction between SDO and exposure to violence are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Social dominance orientation
• peace referenda
• peace agreements
• Colombia
• exposure to violence

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Matthias Basedau, Elisabeth Höhne, Juan Masullo, Julia Köbrich, the editor and the two reviewers for the detailed comments. I received funding from the German Institute for Global Affairs and Area Studies and from the Stiftung der deutschen Wirtschaft (sdw).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are publicly available.

Public significance statement

Exposure to violence was associated with support for a peace agreement in 2016 between the Colombian government and an armed group. Four years later, the associations between exposure to violence and support for the 2016 peace agreement are reduced by ideological attitudes such as Social Dominance Orientation.

Notes

1. A student sample was used because students were the agents who pushed for the peace agreement when the plebiscite failed. The study would benefit from a replication with a more representative sample.

2. This correlation could indicate that exposure to violence is not independent of SDO if people are high in SDO because they experienced violence, but the results remain robust.

3. A simple regression of the main effects, the interaction effects, and the control variables can be found in Appendix Table A2.