Abstract
In a landmark 1994 publication in the British Journal of Social Psychology, Jost and Banaji proposed the existence of a novel, fundamental system justification motive that drives social behaviors. More specifically, they proposed (a) that people have an epistemic need to support social hierarchies and societal systems, (b) that this system justification motive is inversely related to personal and group interests among members of low status groups, and (c) that it is stronger and more effective for people who arc disadvantaged by societal systems than for those who arc advantaged by them, especially when personal and group interests are weak. This system justification theory (SJT) has faced theoretical opposition from social identity researchers (e.g., Spears et al., 2001; Reicher, 2004; Rubin and lIewstone, 2004). In addition, evidence against the theory has recently accumulated from large scale cross-national studies (e.g., Brandt, 20:13; Kelemen et al., 2014) and experimental studies (frump and White, 2015; Owttarnalam et al., 2 0 16). In the present article, we re-examine the key cognitive dissonance assumptions for SJT 's central proposition that support for unequal systems should be higher among members of disadvantaged groups than among members of advantaged groups when personal and group interests are weak.
Highlights
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Personality and Social Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology
One useful approach has been to focus on the responses of members of disadvantaged groups because, system justification theory (SJT) assumes that personal and group interests reinforce the system motive among people who belong to advantaged groups (e.g., European Americans), the theory assumes that personal and group interests conflict with the system motive among people who belong to disadvantaged groups (e.g., Black/African Americans)
We examined the cognitive dissonance assumption underlying SJT (Jost and Banaji, 1994), and our analysis highlights a theoretical inconsistency between cognitive dissonance theory and SJT
Summary
There is an important problem with SJT’s assumption that system justification should be most apparent when personal and group interests are weak. 32) acknowledge this inconsistency but do not provide a reason for it Perhaps for this reason, recent revisions of SJT have suggested that system justification should be most likely to emerge when people are dependent on the system for some benefit, such as access to healthcare and education (Kay et al, 2009) or remunerations and salaries (van der Toorn et al, 2015). This system dependence is thought to increase the sense of cognitive dissonance and subsequent system justification.
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