The Role of Needs in Maintaining Attitudes That Legitimize the Socio-Political Status Quo in Russia

Abstract

In recent years, researchers have been focusing on a wide range of different constructs to study legitimizing grounds in socio-political relations. Political system justification, social dominance orientation (dominance and anti-egalitarianism) and political conservatism are considered as attitudes containing various grounds for legitimizing the currently existing socio-political relations (status quo). Maintaining these attitudes is associated with satisfying a number of psychological needs, including epistemic (e.g., the need for cognitive closure), existential (e.g., the need for security), and relational ones. The purpose of this research work was to study the contribution of needs in the maintenance of different attitudes legitimizing the socio-political status quo in the Russian context. With this in mind, we empirically examined the model, which considered needs as predictors, legitimizing attitudes as dependent variables, and sociodemographic characteristics associated with the maintenance of legitimizing attitudes (income, subjective social status, age, and gender) as control variables. The online study involved 387 Russian residents aged 18 to 73 who filled out questionnaires to assess the need for cognitive closure and fear of death as well as the relational need, social dominance orientation, political system justification and political conservatism. The data obtained were processed using structural equation modeling. The results of the study have shown that the most significant and consistent contribution in the maintenance of legitimizing attitudes is made by the epistemic needs (in particular, the need for cognitive closure). At the same time, the presence in everyday notions of a system of legitimizing attitudes makes it possible, depending on the context (e.g., the presence or absence of threats) or the socio-demographic characteristics of the individual (e.g., age and socio-economic status), to realize different needs, which ensures the flexibility of the process of social cognition.