Abstract
This study addressed the system-justifying function of compensatory judgments in person perception. We hypothesized that compensatory judgments of competence and warmth would create an illusion of equality, thereby fulfilling system-justifying motives in the economically unequal society. An experimental vignette study was conducted with 188 Japanese university students. Results indicated that evaluating target persons in a compensatory manner enhanced the perceived legitimacy of the current social system when participants were led to believe that a significant economic gap exists in Japan between the rich and the poor. This suggests that compensatory judgments serve to system justification through restoring the impaired belief in equality. We discussed the implications of our results for system justification theory and the literature on compensation effects in social judgments.
Highlights
Numerous studies have investigated the psychological mechanisms that determine how impressions of others are formed
The present research addresses when and why such compensatory judgments emerge in person perception from the perspective of system justification theory (Jost & Banaji, 1994) combined with the arguments made by Kay et al (2007) regarding the system-justifying function of complementary stereotypes
We examined whether individuals will make compensatory judgments in person perception in order to justify an economically unequal society
Summary
Numerous studies have investigated the psychological mechanisms that determine how impressions of others are formed. Judgments based on these two fundamental dimensions are likely to fall into a compensatory pattern (i.e., targets are evaluated high on one dimension and low on the other) (Judd, James-Hawkins, Yzerbyt, & Kashima, 2005; Yzerbyt, Kervyn, & Judd, 2008). Judd et al (2005) demonstrated that, while perceivers who observed only one target (individual or group) judged the target in a non-compensatory manner, perceivers who observed two targets contrasted on either of one dimension judged the targets in a compensatory manner
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