Abstract
System justification is a social psychology term of art that designates any motivational tendency to defend, bolster, or rationalize existing social, economic, and political arrangements. It is conceptualized as a response tendency possessed by many, or perhaps most, members of society to see aspects of the overarching social system as good, fair, and legitimate. Consequently, alternatives to the status quo are often derogated or avoided for ideologically defensive reasons. In other words, system justification is an inherently conservative inclination to preserve “the way things are,” sometimes even at the expense of objective social interests (Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004). Keywords: cognitive dissonance theory; protestant work ethic; american dream ideology; belief in a just world; free-market fundamentalism; political conservatism; epistemic needs; existential needs; relational needs; social identity theory; system-serving beliefs
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