263

British Journal of Social Psychology (2019), 58, 263–314

© 2018 The British Psychological Society
www.wileyonlinelibrary.com

Debate
A quarter century of system justification theory:
Questions, answers, criticisms, and societal
applications
John T. Jost*
New York University, New York, NY, 10003, USA

A theory of system justification was proposed 25 years ago by Jost and Banaji (1994, Br. J.
Soc. Psychol., 33, 1) in the British Journal of Social Psychology to explain ‘the participation by
disadvantaged individuals and groups in negative stereotypes of themselves’ and the
phenomenon of outgroup favouritism. The scope of the theory was subsequently
expanded to account for a much wider range of outcomes, including appraisals of fairness,
justice, legitimacy, deservingness, and entitlement; spontaneous and deliberate social
judgements about individuals, groups, and events; and full-fledged political and religious
ideologies. According to system justification theory, people are motivated (to varying
degrees, depending upon situational and dispositional factors) to defend, bolster, and
justify aspects of existing social, economic, and political systems. Engaging in system
justification serves the palliative function of increasing satisfaction with the status quo and
addresses underlying epistemic, existential, and relational needs to reduce uncertainty,
threat, and social discord. This article summarizes the major tenets of system justification
theory, reviews some of the empirical evidence supporting it, answers new (and old)
questions and criticisms, and highlights areas of societal relevance and directions for future
research.

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,

And you think you’re so clever and classless and free. . ..
(John Lennon, ‘Working Class Hero’)

Learning to love the questions

A theory of system justification was proposed by Jost and Banaji (1994) in a special issue of
the British Journal of Social Psychology (BJSP) devoted to the structure and functions of
social stereotyping. In that article, which is now ‘celebrating’ its 25th anniversary, we
conjectured that in addition to ego-justifying and group-justifying tendencies to defend
and rationalize the interests and esteem of the self and the ingroup, respectively, people
exhibit system-justifying tendencies to defend and rationalize existing social, economic,
and political arrangements – sometimes even at the expense of individual and collective
self-interest. Specifically, we felt that existing theories in social psychology did not

*Correspondence should be addressed to John T. Jost, Department of Psychology, New York University, Meyer Building,
6 Washington Place, Room 610, New York, NY 10003, USA (email: [email protected]).

DOI:10.1111/bjso.12297
264 John T. Jost

provide an entirely satisfying account of ‘the participation by disadvantaged individuals

and groups in negative stereotypes of themselves’ (Jost & Banaji, 1994, p. 1) and the
related phenomenon of outgroup favouritism, whereby ‘[s]ubordinate groups like black
Americans, South African Bantus, the Mayans of Guatemala, and the lower castes of India
either do, or until recently did, derogate or look down on the in-group and show positive
attitudes toward the depriving out-group’ (Brown, 1986, p. 558).
In proposing system justification theory, we took seriously – perhaps more seriously
than the authors themselves – two critiques of social identity theory wielded by Hewstone
and Ward (1985) and Hinkle and Brown (1990). Both argued that existing approaches to
intergroup relations – including that of Tajfel and Turner (1979) – failed to provide an
adequate account of outgroup favouritism (see Jost & Banaji, 1994, for details). To help fill
the void, we turned to socialist-feminist analyses of the concept of ‘false consciousness’,
which was defined by Cunningham (1987) as the holding of ‘false beliefs that sustain one’s
own oppression’ (p. 255). To me, these ideas offered a promising and heretofore
unexplored direction in the empirical social psychological literature (see also Jost, 1995;
Jost, Sapolsky, & Nam, 2018).
From the very start, the research goal was to synthesize and unify two distinct theoretical
traditions – one coming from philosophy and social theory in the intellectual heritage of
Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, Gy€ orgy Lukacs, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann,
Catharine MacKinnon, and Jon Elster and the other coming from social psychologists such
as Kurt Lewin, Gordon Allport, Henri Tajfel, Morton Deutsch, Leon Festinger, Melvin
Lerner, Serge Moscovici, William J. McGuire, Alice Eagly, John Turner, Susan Fiske, and
many others (see Figure 1). The term ‘system justification’ was inspired by a single line
from a book by Kluegel and Smith (1986), who made reference to ‘certain Marxist
theories that assume working-class people will come to recognize the contradictions
between their self-interests and their system-justifying beliefs’ (p. 15, emphasis added).
The BJSP article grew out of a term paper that I submitted for a doctoral seminar at Yale
University on stereotyping and prejudice taught by Mahzarin Banaji (see Jost & van der
Toorn, 2012). Mahzarin’s familiarity with the caste system in India may have led her to

Marx & Engels (1846) Kurt Lewin (1941)

Ruling ideas, illusions, Group self-hatred,
false consciousness field theory

Gordon Allport (1954)

Rationalization function of
stereotypes, internalization of
inferiority
Antonio Gramsci György Lukács CRITICAL Leon Festinger Morton Deutsch
(1929–1935/1971) (1918–1930/1971) ANALYSES OF (1957) (1974)
Dominant ideology, Class consciousness, POLITICAL Rationalization, Awakening the
spontaneous consent Cultural hegemony CONSERVATISM cognitive dissonance sense of injustice

Berger & Luckmann Henri Tajfel

Adorno et al. (1950)
(1966) (1981)
Authoritarianism, political- STEREOTYPING AS
Legitimation, social Social identity theory,
economic conservatism RATIONALIZATION
construction of reality legitimacy, stability Eagly & Steffen (1984)
Hoffman & Hurst (1990)

Serge Moscovici Catharine MacKinnon Jon Elster Melvin Lerner OUTGROUP

Kluegel & Smith
(1988) (1989) (1982) (1980) FAVORITISM
(1986)
Hegemonic social Socialist-feminism, Micro-foundations of Belief in a just world: A Turner & Brown (1978)
Beliefs about inequality
representations consciousness-raising ideological illusions fundamental delusion Hinkle & Brown (1990)

Jost & Banaji (1994)

SYSTEM JUSTIFICATION THEORY

Figure 1. An intellectual genealogy of system justification theory (adapted from Jost & van der Toorn,
2012, Figure 42.1).
 Quarter century of system justification 265

sympathize with the basic argument, despite her misgivings about the Marxian origins of
the concept of false consciousness – a concept that struck me (then as now) as an
indispensable one for the social and behavioural sciences (Jost, 1995; see also Lukes,
2011).1 One of the guiding notions was that the contents of many familiar social
stereotypes could be explained better by an ideological process of legitimizing inequality
and exploitation than by the then-dominant ‘cognitive miser’ theory of stereotypes as
heuristic energy-saving devices (see also Jost & Hamilton, 2005).
The most distinctive aspect of our argument, which was not clearly expressed in the
writings of any of the theory’s many influential predecessors, was the proposal that even
members of disadvantaged groups would – for psychological reasons – want to believe
that the existing social system is legitimate and justified. Perhaps Gramsci came closest
when he wrote that: ‘the great mass of people hesitate and lose heart when they think of
what a radical change might bring. . .. They can only imagine the present being torn to
pieces, and fail to perceive the new order which is possible’ (quoted in Fiori, 1973, pp.
106–107). System justification theory seeks to explain not only resistance to change,
which was also a primary goal of Lewin’s (1947) field theory (see Jost, 2015), but also the
occurrence of false consciousness from a social, cognitive, motivational perspective – to
investigate it empirically as a psychological process and not merely as a sociological
product or tool of literary criticism (Jost & Banaji, 1994). Like a great many other social
critics, John Lennon observed that many cultural institutions are set up to persuade us that
– as a society – we are ‘clever and classless and free’. In addition, I believe that there are
psychological factors that render us more persuadable than would be the case if we were
(or could be) ideologically neutral about the social system. In other words, ‘top-down’
processes of elite communication (the ‘discursive superstructure’) necessarily meet up –
or interact – with ‘bottom-up’ psychological needs and interests (the ‘motivational
substructure’), so that system-justifying messages find their audiences and vice versa (see
Jost, Federico, & Napier, 2009).
Initially, system justification theory focused specifically on stereotyping, prejudice,
and outgroup favouritism (Jost, 2001), but it was subsequently expanded to account for a
much wider range of outcomes, including appraisals of fairness, justice, legitimacy,
deservingness, and entitlement (Brandt & Reyna, 2013; Jost, 1997; Jost & Major, 2001;
O’Brien, Major, & Gilbert, 2012; van der Toorn, Tyler, & Jost, 2011); attributions and
explanations for poverty and inequality (Ali, Ohls, Parker, & Walker, 2018; Durrheim,
Jacobs, & Dixon, 2014; Godfrey & Wolf, 2016); spontaneous and deliberate social
inferences and judgements about individuals and groups (Jost, Kivetz, Rubini, Guermandi,
& Mosso, 2005; Kay, Jost, & Young, 2005; Monteith, Burns, Rupp, & Mihalec-Adkins,
2016); attitudes and opinions about social, economic, and political issues (Jost, Blount,
Pfeffer, & Hunyady, 2003a; Kay et al., 2009; Mallett, Huntsinger, & Swim, 2011; Tan, Liu,
Huang, & Zheng, 2017; van der Toorn, Jost, Packer, Noorbaloochi, & Van Bavel, 2017b);
rationalizations for certain sociopolitical outcomes or events (Kay, Jimenez, & Jost, 2002;
Laurin, 2018); and full-fledged political and religious ideologies (Jost, Banaji, & Nosek,
2004; Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003b; Jost et al., 2009, 2014).
Looking back, I find that the whole enterprise started with a set of questions that came
to me as I took courses and attended talks not only in social psychology, but also in clinical,
cognitive, and developmental psychology, as well as neighbouring disciplines such as

1
I share Lovibond’s (1989) sense that the epistemological stakes are high: ‘To reject [the concept of] ‘false consciousness’ is to
take a large step towards abandoning the politics of Enlightenment modernism. For it means rejecting the view that personal
autonomy is to be reached by way of a progressive transcendence of earlier, less adequate cognitive structures’ (p. 26).
266 John T. Jost

philosophy and political science: Why do some women feel they are entitled to lower
salaries than men, why do people stay in harmful relationships, and why do some African
American children come to believe that white dolls are more attractive and desirable than
black dolls? Why do people blame victims of injustice and why do victims of injustice
sometimes blame themselves? Why do poor people often oppose the redistribution of
wealth? Why do we tolerate political and economic corruption? Why is it so difficult to get
people to stand up for themselves and each other, and why do we find personal and social
change to be so challenging, even painful? Is there a common denominator here – a hidden
factor that connects these seemingly unrelated phenomena? These questions have been
with me for over 25 years, and although I am not entirely satisfied with the answers I can
provide today, my students, collaborators, colleagues, and I have made significant
progress in addressing them. I can only hope that the answers will become clearer and
more definitive over the next 25 years. In the meantime, as Rilke (1929/1993) said, you
‘have to try to love the questions themselves’ (p. 35).

Major tenets of system justification theory

I have already alluded to the first major tenet of system justification theory, namely that
people are motivated (often implicitly rather than explicitly) to defend, justify, and bolster
aspects of the societal status quo, including existing social, economic, and political
systems, institutions, and arrangements (Jost et al., 2004). This is an important issue
because some accept that system-justifying beliefs and ideologies may be internalized
through a passive process of social learning but doubt that people are motivated to
engage in system justification (Huddy, 2004; Mitchell & Tetlock, 2009; Owuamalam,
Rubin, & Spears, 2018; Reicher, 2004; Rubin & Hewstone, 2004; Spears, Jetten, & Doosje,
2001). Initial scepticism was understandable, because we did not directly investigate the
motivational basis of system justification processes until several years after the theory was
first proposed (Jost et al., 2010; Kay et al., 2009; Liviatan & Jost, 2014). The evidence is by
now rather strong, it seems to me.

Motivational basis of system justification processes

There are at least five lines of evidence supporting the idea that system justification is a
motivated, goal-directed process (Jost et al., 2010): (1) The endorsement of system-
justifying beliefs, including beliefs associated with political conservatism, is linked to
individual differences in self-deception and motivated social cognition (Jost et al., 2003a,
b, 2010; Wojcik, Hovasapian, Graham, Motyl, & Ditto, 2015); (2) people often respond
defensively to threats, criticisms, and challenges directed at the overarching social system
(Jost et al., 2005; Kay et al., 2005; Ullrich & Cohrs, 2007) – unless they have the
opportunity to affirm the goodness of the system (Brescoll, Uhlmann, & Newman, 2013;
Cutright, Wu, Banfield, Kay, & Fitzsimons, 2011; Liviatan & Jost, 2014); (3) system-
justifying processes exhibit several ‘classic’ properties of goal pursuit (Jost, Pietrzak,
Liviatan, Mandisodza, & Napier, 2007; Jost et al., 2010); (4) people engage in selective,
biased information processing to reach system-supporting conclusions (Haines & Jost,
2000; Hennes, Ruisch, Feygina, Monteiro, & Jost, 2016; Ledgerwood, Mandisodza, Jost, &
Pohl, 2011; van der Toorn et al., 2011); and (5) people are willing to expend behavioural
effort in order to maintain the legitimacy of the socio-economic system (Ledgerwood
et al., 2011). Drawing on several of these ideas, Aaron Kay et al. (2009) conducted an
 Quarter century of system justification 267

elegant series of experiments documenting a motivated preference to ‘see the way things
are as the way they should be’ (p. 421).
However, this does not mean that people always or invariably perceive the societal
status quo as fair and just, as critics of system justification theory have sometimes alleged
(Desert & Leyens, 2006; Huddy, 2004; Reicher, 2004; Rubin & Hewstone, 2004; Sidanius,
Pratto, Van Laar, & Levin, 2004). As with all other motives in psychology, the strength of
system justification motivation is expected to vary according to situational and
dispositional factors. Through empirical investigations, social psychologists have
discovered a number of contextual or situational moderators – we might think of these
as ‘triggers’ of system justification processes (Jost & Hunyady, 2005; Jost & van der Toorn,
2012; Kay & Friesen, 2011; Kay & Zanna, 2009). One trigger, already alluded to above, is
exposure to system criticism, challenge, and threat. At least 38 experiments published
between 2005 and 2017 demonstrate that exposure to system criticism or threat can
increase system-justifying responses in a variety of ways (see Table 1). These include
complementary stereotypic differentiation of advantaged groups as agentic (but not
communal) and disadvantaged groups as communal (but not agentic); backlash against
feminists and women who defy gender stereotypes; preferences for domestic over foreign
consumer products; and tolerance for civilian casualties during war and decreased
support for hate crimes policies among chronically high system-justifiers. In the long term,
it stands to reason that critiques of the system are useful and effective in delegitimizing the
way things are and bringing about a desire for social change, but in the short term, they
often elicit defensiveness and resistance.2
There are other moderators of system justification as well. People are more accepting
of unwelcome social and political outcomes – such as restrictions on their freedoms and
various forms of disadvantageous inequality – when these are perceived as inevitable or
inescapable (Kay et al., 2002; Laurin, Gaucher, & Kay, 2013; Laurin, Kay, & Fitzsimons,
2012; Laurin, Shepherd, & Kay, 2010). For instance, Kristin Laurin (2018) demonstrated
that US citizens – Democrats and Republicans alike – evaluated Donald Trump’s election
more favourably 1 week after his inauguration, compared to just 1 week before. Another
moderator of system justification is perceived longevity. Blanchar and Eidelman (2013)
found that people were more supportive of the caste system in India – and the capitalist
system in the United States and the United Kingdom – when they were made to feel that
these systems were traditional and longstanding, rather than fairly recent in history.
Several studies indicate that people are also more likely to justify social, economic, and
political systems to the extent that they feel especially powerless or dependent on those
systems. van der Toorn et al. (2011), for instance, observed that perceived dependence
on educational authorities, government, and the police predicted high levels of
institutional trust, confidence, and deference. van der Toorn et al. (2015) demonstrated
that thinking intently about feelings of powerlessness increased the tendency to legitimize
racial disparities in criminal sentencing, the unequal distribution of wealth in society, and
the gender wage gap – even when system-challenging explanations for inequality, such as
discrimination, were made cognitively available.

2
A timely example is that of the American quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, who is unemployed by the National Football League
because of a decision he made to protest police brutality, ‘taking a knee’ rather than standing with his hand on his heart during the
playing of the national anthem, declaring that ‘I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black
people and people of color’. Consistent with the notion that people respond defensively to criticisms of the social system,
Kaepernick faced massive backlash – strongly motivated, widespread, passionate, public, and private forms of attack and
derision.
 268

Table 1. Experimental evidence of motivated system defensiveness (38 studies published between 2005 and 2017)

Citation Operationalization of system threat Observed effect(s) of system threat

Jost et al. (2005, Study 3) Reading about the deterioration of Israeli society (vs. Complementary stereotypic differentiation of high-status
John T. Jost

functioning well) (Ashkenazi) and low-status (Sephardic) Jews; Ashkenazi

were judged as more intelligent, ambitious, and agentic,
whereas Sephardim were judged as more friendly,
traditional, and communal (by both groups)
Kay et al. (2005) Reading about the deterioration of American society (vs. Powerful people judged as more intelligent and
functioning well) independent but less happy (i.e., enhancement on traits
seen as causally related to power, downgrading on
status-irrelevant traits)
Kay et al. (2005) Reading about the deterioration of American society (vs. Obese people judged as lazier but more sociable (i.e.,
functioning well) derogation on traits seen as causally related to obesity,
enhancement on status-irrelevant traits)
Ullrich and Cohrs (2007) Reminder of terror attacks in Madrid (vs. dangers Increased legitimacy of the existing sociopolitical system
unrelated to terrorism or the system) in Germany (general system justification)
Ullrich and Cohrs (2007) Reminder of 9/11 or Madrid terror attacks (vs. issues Increased legitimacy of the existing sociopolitical system
related to the internet) in Germany (general system justification)
Ullrich and Cohrs (2007) Reminder of 9/11 or Madrid terror attacks (vs. issues Increased legitimacy of the existing sociopolitical system
related to the internet) in Germany (general system justification)
Lau, Kay, and Spencer Reading an essay describing Canadian society as Men expressed more romantic interest in women
(2008) deteriorating (vs. functioning well) adhering to stereotypical norms associated with
benevolent sexism (but not other women)
Kay et al. (2009, Study 4) Reading about the deterioration of Canadian society (vs. Greater ‘injunctification’ (i.e., going from ‘is’ to ‘ought’,
functioning well) judging the current representation of women in politics
as desirable)
Banfield, Kay, Cutright, Reading a paragraph derogating the ‘American way of life’ Increased preference for domestic over foreign
Wu, and Fitzsimons (vs. essay about US geography) consumer products, especially among chronically low
(2011, Study 2) system-justifiers

Continued
Table 1. (Continued)

Citation Operationalization of system threat Observed effect(s) of system threat

Banfield et al. (2011) Experimental instruction to recall many (vs. few) reasons Increased preference for domestic over foreign
for why the United States has ‘the best way of life’ consumer products, especially among chronically low
system-justifiers
Cutright et al. (2011) Reading about the deterioration of American society (vs. Increased preference for domestic over foreign
functioning well) consumer products, especially among chronically low
system-justifiers
Cutright et al. (2011) Reading about the deterioration of American society (vs. Increased preference for domestic over foreign
mortality salience and dental pain priming conditions) consumer products, especially among chronically low
system-justifiers
Cutright et al. (2011) Reading about the deterioration of American society (vs. Derogation of the author among chronically high system-
an essay about US geography) justifiers; increased preference for domestic over
foreign consumer products among chronically low
system-justifiers
Cutright et al. (2011) Reading about the deterioration of American society (vs. Increased preference for products with American
an essay about US geography) symbols among chronically high system-justifiers;
increased preference for domestic over foreign
consumer products among chronically low system-
justifiers
Day, Kay, Holmes, and Reading an essay alleging systematic discrimination (vs. no Increased endorsement of monogamous ideology among
Napier (2011) discrimination) against Arab Canadians men
Day et al. (2011) Reading about the deterioration of Canadian society (vs. Increased endorsement of monogamous ideology among
functioning well) men
Day et al. (2011) Reading an essay describing the institution of committed Increased endorsement of the existing sociopolitical
relationships as unstable, fragile (vs. stable, strong) system in Canada (general system justification)
Laurin, Kay, and Shepherd Reading an essay alleging pervasive gender discrimination Women stereotyped women as more communal; men
(2011, Study 1) in Canada (vs. a new water system in Hungary) stereotyped men as more agentic
Quarter century of system justification

Continued
269
 270
Table 1. (Continued)

Citation Operationalization of system threat Observed effect(s) of system threat

Ledgerwood et al. (2011, Reading about the deterioration of American society (vs. Scientific evidence was judged as stronger when it
John T. Jost

Study 1) functioning well) established (vs. undermined) a perceived (meritocratic)

connection between hard work and economic success
Mallett et al. (2011, Study Reading about the deterioration of American society (vs. Decreased support for hate crimes policies among high
4) functioning well) (but not low) system-justifiers
Wakslak, Jost, and Bauer Reading an essay describing (1) American society as Increased support of small-scale (high school) and large-
(2011) deteriorating, or (2) the high school hierarchy as unfair scale (national) systems in both system threat
(vs. no essay control condition) conditions
Wakslak et al. (2011) Reading an essay describing (1) American society as Increased support of small-scale (nuclear family) and
deteriorating, or (2) the nuclear family as unstable (vs. large-scale (national) systems, in both system threat
no essay control condition) conditions
Rudman, Moss-Racusin, Reading about the deterioration of American society (vs. Backlash against women who defy stereotypes; an agentic
Phelan, and Nauts (2012, functioning well or a writing control condition) woman (but not an agentic man) was judged as more
Study 4) dominant but less likable and less employable
Brescoll et al. (2013) Reading about the deterioration of American society (vs. Men and women endorsed biological essentialism about
functioning well, a memory control condition, or a ‘no gender more strongly and were more likely to state that
essay’ control condition) gender differences are immutable
Brescoll et al. (2013) Reading about the deterioration of American society (vs. Men and women endorsed essentialist explanations for
functioning well and a ‘counter-arguing’ control gender differences more strongly
condition)
Brescoll et al. (2013) Reading about the deterioration of American society (vs. Men and women endorsed sociocultural and biological
functioning well) explanations for gender differences more strongly when
they were framed as immutable (vs. mutable)
Friedman and Sutton Newspaper articles concerning civilian deaths arising Increased tolerance of civilian casualties as a result of war
(2013) from the Afghanistan war flanked by luxury among political conservatives (but not liberals)
advertisements (priming conspicuous consumption and,
by extension, inequality) vs. no advertisements

Continued
Table 1. (Continued)

Citation Operationalization of system threat Observed effect(s) of system threat

Liviatan and Jost (2014) Reading speech transcript criticizing the economic and Response facilitation of legitimacy-related (vs. unrelated)
political system in the United States (vs. the economic words in the context of a computerized lexical decision
and political system in Star Trek and the system of task
research in geology)
Liviatan and Jost (2014) Reading speech transcript criticizing the economic and Response facilitation of legitimacy-related (vs. unrelated)
political system in the United States (vs. the lack of words in the context of a computerized lexical decision
creativity among Americans as a group and the system of task
research in geology)
Liviatan and Jost (2014) Reading speech transcript criticizing the economic and Response facilitation of legitimacy-related (vs. unrelated)
political system in the United States (vs. the system of words in the context of a computerized lexical decision
research in geology) task before but not after having the opportunity to
affirm the goodness of the US system
Liviatan and Jost (2014) Reading speech transcript criticizing the economic and Response facilitation of positive (vs. negative) adjectives in
political system in the United States (vs. the system of the context of a sequential evaluation priming task
research in geology) following exposure to system-relevant (vs. irrelevant)
images
van der Toorn et al. (2014) Reading about the deterioration of American society (vs. Reduction of ideological gap in national attachment;
functioning well) liberals expressed stronger national identification
van der Toorn et al. (2014) Reading about a failure of US justice system in which a Reduction of ideological gap in national attachment;
white-collar criminal was to be released because of a liberals expressed stronger identification with America
technicality (vs. prosecuted) (but not the arts)
Yeung, Kay, and Peach Reading about the deterioration of Canadian society (vs. Increased ideological disagreement with identical
(2014, Study 1) functioning well) statements made by a woman who was described as a
‘feminist’ (vs. not)

Continued
Quarter century of system justification
271
 272
John T. Jost

Table 1. (Continued)

Citation Operationalization of system threat Observed effect(s) of system threat

Jolley, Douglas, and Sutton Reading about the deterioration of UK society (vs. Increased endorsement of real-world conspiracy
(2018) functioning well) theories and general notions of conspiracy
Jolley et al. (2018) Reading about the deterioration of UK society (vs. Increased general system justification – but only for
functioning well) participants who were exposed to conspiracy theories
Jolley et al. (2018) Reading about the deterioration of UK society (vs. Increased tendency to blame societal problems on
functioning well) individuals and small groups rather than institutional and
system causes and increased general system justification
– but only for participants who were exposed to
conspiracy theories
van der Toorn, Jost, and Reading about the deterioration of American society (vs. Increased general system justification among adolescents
Loffredo (2017a) health threats associated with cell phone use or a and self-identification as more politically conservative
control passage about house plants) (and less liberal)

Note.. This table is adapted from Jost, Gaucher, and Stern (2015, Table 12.2); it has been updated and expanded to include a number of more recent studies.
 Quarter century of system justification 273

4.0

3.5

3.0

2.5

2.0

1.5

1.0
Atheist Agnostic Buddhist Jewish Catholic Protestant

Figure 2. General system justification scores as a function of religious denomination. Note: This figure is
based on data from Jost et al. (2014, table 9). Religious people were more likely than non-religious people
to agree that ‘Our society is getting worse every year’, but they scored higher on the other seven items
included in Kay and Jost’s (2003) General System Justification Scale. Means shown here are a composite of
those seven items, aggregating across participants from the same religious group who answered different
items. Approximately 7,000 people (total) responded to each item.

The palliative function of system justification

Another major tenet of the theory is that system justification serves the palliative function
of making people feel better about the societal status quo (Jost & Hunyady, 2002; see also
Hammond & Sibley, 2011; Napier, Thorisdottir, & Jost, 2010; Vargas-Salfate, Paez, Khan,
Liu, & Gil de Z ~ iga, 2018a). The idea is somewhat reminiscent of Karl Marx’s famous quip
un
that religious ideology is the ‘opiate of the masses’ – that it placates and palliates. Indeed, a
large-scale internet survey conducted by Jost et al. (2014) demonstrated that religious
people, especially Catholics and Protestants, tend to score higher than Agnostics and
Atheists on a measure of general system justification, which includes items such as ‘My
country is the best country in the world to live in’ and ‘Everyone has a fair shot at wealth
and happiness’, as shown in Figure 2 (see also van der Toorn et al., 2017b). Furthermore,
religious people and those who justify the socio-economic system generally report feeling
more positive affect and less negative affect and profess more satisfaction with their own
life situations (e.g., Jost, Pelham, Sheldon, & Sullivan, 2003c; Jost, Wakslak, & Tyler,
2008b; Kluegel & Smith, 1986; Rankin, Jost, & Wakslak, 2009).
At the same time, the emotional ‘benefits’ of system justification come with a cost in
terms of decreased potential for social change and the remediation of inequality. Wakslak,
Jost, Tyler, and Chen (2007) observed that system-justifying ideologies – whether
measured or manipulated through a mindset-priming technique – were associated with
lowered emotional distress. Random assignment to a high system justification condition in
which participants were primed with ‘rags-to-riches’, ‘anyone can succeed if they try hard
enough’ stories (vs. a control condition) led to reductions in negative affect and moral
outrage, which made people less enthusiastic about volunteering or donating money to
help the disadvantaged.
Jaime Napier and I hypothesized that – insofar as political conservatism is a system-
justifying ideology – conservatives should report being happier than liberals, on average.
Using data from the American National Election Studies (ANES), we confirmed that – even
after adjusting for income, age, marital status, religiosity, and other demographic
characteristics – conservatives scored significantly higher than liberals on measures of
274 John T. Jost

subjective well-being, including self-reported happiness and life satisfaction. This

ideological gap in subjective well-being was mediated by the belief that inequality in
society is fair and justified. We replicated these results in 9 Western European countries
using data from the World Values Survey, so this is by no means a purely American
phenomenon. We also hypothesized that – if conservatives legitimize economic
inequality to a greater degree than liberals do – their subjective well-being should be
less affected by the steep increase in income inequality in the United States over the
preceding 30 years. After plotting the self-reported happiness levels of liberals and
conservatives against scores on the Gini index (a macroeconomic indicator of income
inequality), we discovered that increasing inequality was associated with decreased
happiness in general, adjusting for demographic factors, but that the decrease was
significantly steeper for liberals, apparently because they lack conservatives’ ‘ideological
buffer’ against the negative hedonic effects of inequality (Napier & Jost, 2008).
Wojcik et al. (2015) subsequently challenged the notion that conservatives are
‘happier’ than liberals and presented evidence based on language use and smiling in
photographs to conclude that liberals were in fact happier than conservatives. The
problem with their critique is that it misses entirely the distinction between subjective
and objective well-being. We did not claim on the basis of system justification theory that
conservatives were thriving in any objective sense (as in Aristotle’s concept of
Eudaimonia) or that conservative societies make people genuinely happier than liberal,
social-democratic societies (they do not; see Okulicz-Kozaryn, Holmes, & Avery, 2014).
On the contrary, we argued that because of social psychological processes such as
rationalization of inequality, conservatives are less subjectively affected by social
injustices and therefore report being happier. Thus, the findings of Wojcik and colleagues
are interesting, but they do not provide evidence against the hypothesis that system
justification serves a palliative function. In any case, it is quite possible that liberals and
leftists – because they are more sensitive to social injustices – are more prone to
‘depressive realism’ than conservatives and rightists (see Alloy & Abramson, 1988), and in
some cases sensitivity and exposure to injustice may contribute to objective as well as
subjective distress (e.g., Suppes, Napier, & van der Toorn, 2018).
System justification not only decreases negative affect and increases satisfaction with
the status quo, it diminishes support for system-challenging protest activity (Jost, Becker,
Osborne, & Badaan, 2017a; Jost et al., 2012) and the ‘will to power’ among members of
disadvantaged groups (H€assler, Shnabel, Ullrich, Arditti-Vogel, & SimanTov-Nachlieli,
2018). For instance, an experiment conducted in Germany revealed that when young
women were exposed to relatively subtle, ‘benevolent’ justifications for sexism, they
subsequently expressed more positive affect, scored higher on gender-specific system
justification, and were less willing to participate in collective action on behalf of women
(Becker & Wright, 2011). A nationally representative study of New Zealanders indicated
that system justification was associated with reduced distress as well as an attenuation of
the relationship between relative deprivation and willingness to protest on behalf of one’s
group (Osborne & Sibley, 2013; see also Osborne, Sengupta, & Sibley, 2019).

Epistemic, existential, and relational needs underlying system justification motivation

Given the social and psychological costs of system justification, it is important to ask why
people would engage in system justification. Jost and Hunyady (2002) initially offered an
explanation in terms of the ‘palliative function’ of system justification (see also Kluegel &
Smith, 1986), but this was problematic, because, as Elster (1982) pointed out, ‘the
 Quarter century of system justification 275

beneficial consequences of. . . illusions’ cannot necessarily ‘serve to explain them’ (p.
136).3 Subsequently, we proposed that system justification addresses – at least
subjectively, if not objectively – underlying epistemic motives to reduce uncertainty
and ambiguity; existential motives to assuage threat and insecurity; and relational motives
to coordinate social relationships and achieve a sense of shared reality (Jost & Hunyady,
2005; Jost, Ledgerwood, & Hardin, 2008a). The point may be easier to grasp in its negative
form: To truly challenge the status quo, to engage in sustained and profound forms of
protest, one must be willing and able to tolerate a great deal of uncertainty, potential
threats to one’s safety and security, and the risk of being alienated or cut off from friends,
family members, and others in mainstream society (Jost et al., 2017a). It is no wonder that
stress and burnout rates among political activists are notoriously high (e.g., Chen &
Gorski, 2015).
There is indeed evidence that situational and dispositional variability in needs to
reduce uncertainty, threat, and social discord affects the strength of system justification
tendencies. For example, laboratory manipulations of cognitive load, time pressure,
distraction, and alcohol intoxication promote an affinity for conservative, system-
justifying attitudes (Eidelman, Crandall, Goodman, & Blanchar, 2012; Friesen, Kay,
Eibach, & Galinsky, 2014; Hansson, Keating, & Terry, 1974; Lammers & Proulx, 2013;
Rock & Janoff-Bulman, 2010; Rutjens & Loseman, 2010; Skitka, Mullen, Griffin,
Hutchinson, & Chamberlin, 2002; van Berkel, Crandall, Eidelman, & Blanchar, 2015).
Hussak and Cimpian (2015) argue that system justification reflects a heuristic cognitive
process, such that a ‘sociopolitical arrangement that is explained in inherent [i.e.,
simplistic, intrinsic, or essentialistic] terms is also likely to be seen as reasonable and fair’
(p. 741). Likewise, a number of experimental and archival studies demonstrate that
objectively threatening circumstances, such as death reminders and terrorist attacks, tend
to increase support for conservative, system-justifying positions (Bonanno & Jost, 2006;
Echebarria-Echabe & Fernandez-Guede, 2006; Economou & Kollias, 2015; Gailliot,
Schmeichel, & Baumeister, 2006; Nail, McGregor, Drinkwater, Steele, & Thompson, 2009;
Sch€uller, 2015; Thorisdottir & Jost, 2011; Ullrich & Cohrs, 2007; van de Vyver, Houston,
Abrams, & Vasiljevic, 2016). Finally, some experiments suggest that relational threats,
such as social exclusion, increase system justification tendencies (Hess & Ledgerwood,
2014) – especially when one is motivated to share reality with high system-justifiers
(Cheung, Noel, & Hardin, 2011; Jost et al., 2008a).
In terms of dispositional variability, Hennes, Nam, Stern, and Jost (2012) administered
a survey containing items from individual difference scales of epistemic, existential, and
relational motives and observed that respondents who scored lower on the personal need
for cognition and higher on death anxiety and the need to share reality were more
politically conservative and endorsed both general and economic forms of system
justification to a higher degree. These respondents were also more likely to endorse
conservative positions on issues of climate change, health care reform, and immigration
policy – and in all cases these effects were mediated by economic system justification.
Finally, they were more supportive of the politically conservative Tea Party movement
and less supportive of the progressive Occupy Wall Street movement – and these effects,
too, were mediated by economic system justification.
Very similar effects were observed in a study conducted in Argentina (Jost et al.,
2017b). People who scored higher on the need for cognitive closure, the need to share

3
I thank Melvin Lerner for first bringing this issue to my attention in the context of system justification theory.
276 John T. Jost

Figure 3. Evidence that economic system justification mediated the effects of epistemic, existential, and
relational needs on right-wing orientation and political preferences in Argentina. Note: This figure was
prepared by Edgardo Etchezahar and is adapted from Jost et al. (2017b, figure 1). Entries are standardized
regression coefficients. Political orientation is scored so that higher numbers indicate stronger right-wing
(vs. left-wing) orientation. The two outcome variables are continuous measures of support for centre-
right President Macri and the centre-left opposition party (FPV). Non-significant paths (not shown) were
fixed to zero. The model provided an adequate fit to the data: AGFI = .949, CFI = .963, IFI = .964,
RMSEA = .062 (.032–.092), Χ2 = 26,721; df = 11; p = .005; X2/df = 2,429. We tested indirect effects
(with 95% confidence intervals) using a bootstrapping analysis and found that economic system
justification mediated the effects of death anxiety, shared reality, and need for cognitive closure on
political orientation. Political orientation mediated the effects of economic system justification on support
for Macri and FPV.

reality, and death anxiety scored higher on economic system justification and right-wing
(vs. left-wing) orientation. Furthermore, system justification mediated the effects of
epistemic, existential, and relational motives on right-wing orientation and support for
President Mauricio Macri in the preceding election (as well as rejection of the centre-left
opposition party). These relationships are depicted in Figure 3.

Implications for the study of intergroup relations

We know – from more than a century of writings on ethnocentrism – that people
frequently favour their own groups over others (Brewer & Campbell, 1976; Summer,
1906; Tajfel & Turner, 1979), and there is some indication that this favouritism may
enhance self-esteem (Crocker & Luhtanen, 1990; Fein & Spencer, 1997). We also know
that it can contribute to subtle (or not so subtle) forms of prejudice, hostility, and
discrimination (Allport, 1979; Greenwald & Pettigrew, 2014; Tajfel, 1981). These are
important facts about intergroup relations, but they are facts that apply more broadly to
members of advantaged groups than to disadvantaged groups.
From the perspective of system justification theory, this is because – for members of
advantaged groups – system justification is consistent with ego and group justification
motives to maintain or enhance personal and collective self-esteem, respectively. For
members of advantaged groups, therefore, it appears that system justification is positively
associated with self-esteem, ingroup favouritism, and psychological well-being (Jost &
Thompson, 2000). For members of disadvantaged groups, however, system justification
conflicts with ego and group justification motives (Jost, Burgess, & Mosso, 2001; Pratto,
Sidanius, & Levin, 2006; Zimmerman & Reyna, 2013). Therefore, it does not follow from
the logic of system justification theory that the disadvantaged are usually or typically
more likely than the advantaged to support the overarching social system, which is a view
 Quarter century of system justification 277

that has been repeatedly misattributed to us (Brandt, 2013; Caricati, 2017; Owuamalam,
Rubin, & Spears, 2016b; Owuamalam et al., 2018; Vargas-Salfate, Paez, Liu, Pratto, & Gil
de Zun~iga, 2018b). On the contrary, system justification on the part of the disadvantaged is
typically attenuated by countervailing motives for ego and group justification, as Jost et al.
(2001) pointed out long ago. What is remarkable to me is that disadvantaged groups – such
as members of the working class – subscribe to the legitimacy of the status quo as much as
they do (Jost, 2017; see also Manstead, 2018). This is what needs to be understood and
overcome – if one hopes for an end to unnecessary social and economic suffering, as I do.
For those who are disadvantaged by the status quo, system justification comes with
social and psychological costs. It tends to be negatively associated with self-esteem,
ingroup favouritism, and long-term psychological well-being – measured in terms of
depression, neuroticism, ambivalence, and stigma internalization (Godfrey, Santos, &
Burson, in press; Jost & Thompson, 2000; Pacilli, Taurino, Jost, & van der Toorn, 2011). A
study of gay men in Chile found that system justification was associated with internalized
homonegativity, which was associated with increased symptoms of anxiety and
depression. At the same time, after adjusting for these deleterious effects, system
justification also served the palliative function of reducing anxiety and depression
(Bahamondes-Correa, 2016). These findings were replicated and extended in several
studies conducted in the United States in which lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender
individuals who minimized discrimination against their own groups exhibited more
internalized homonegativity but also benefitted in terms of mental and physical health
(Suppes et al., 2018). Thus, system justification is both a threat to the well-being of
members of disadvantaged groups and a way of coping with that threat.
Indeed, as noted at the outset of this article, system justification theory was initially
developed to explain why members of disadvantaged groups often (but not always)
exhibit outgroup favouritism by expressing more positive attitudes about other groups
that are higher in status or power than their own group. Although Spears et al. (2001)
argued, on the basis of social identity theory, that it is very rare for the disadvantaged to
internalize a sense of inferiority, studies using the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and other
implicit methods that mitigate social desirability concerns to at least some degree reveal
that sizeable proportions of members of disadvantaged groups – often 40% or 50% or even
more – exhibit implicit (or indirect) biases against their own group and in favour of more
advantaged outgroup members.4 For instance, poor people and obese people implicitly
evaluate rich people and normal weight people more favourably than their own groups
(Horwitz & Dovidio, 2017; Rudman, Feinberg, & Fairchild, 2002); many gay men and
lesbians implicitly evaluate straight people more favourably than their own groups
(Hoffarth & Jost, 2017; Jost et al., 2004); in Chile Hispanics and dark-skinned Morenos
implicitly evaluate Caucasians and light-skinned Blancos more favourably than their own
groups (Uhlmann, Dasgupta, Elgueta, Greenwald, & Swanson, 2002); Black and Coloured
Children favour Whites in South Africa (Newheiser, Dunham, Merrill, Hoosain, & Olson,
2014); in the United States, minority college students implicitly evaluate White students
more favourably than their own groups (Ashburn-Nardo, Knowles, & Monteith, 2003;

4
For reasons that are unclear to me, Brown (2010) strenuously resists the notion that implicit measures of attitudes can provide
evidence of outgroup bias (pp. 239–241), but in the same book he spends several pages describing studies leading to the same
conclusion, namely that there is a ‘consistent tendency for children from (dominant) majority groups to show strong ingroup
identification and preference, whilst the identification of children from (subordinate) minority groups with their ingroup was much
weaker and often paralleled by evaluative preferences for stimuli symbolic of the majority group’ (p. 116). Perhaps he believes that
members of disadvantaged groups exhibit outgroup bias regularly as children but never as adults?
278 John T. Jost

Jost, Pelham, & Carvallo, 2002; Jost et al., 2004). Furthermore, several studies find that the
magnitude of implicit outgroup bias on the part of the disadvantaged is positively
correlated with individuals’ scores on measures of system justification and conservatism,
as predicted by system justification theory (Ashburn-Nardo et al., 2003; Hoffarth & Jost,
2017; Jost et al., 2004).

Additional questions, criticisms, and answers

When I contemplate the various critiques of system justification theory that have been
expressed over the years, I take solace in T.S. Eliot’s observation that ‘criticism is as
inevitable as breathing’. It is difficult to know, as an author, how and when to respond to
one’s critics; too little responsiveness may be taken as aloofness or dismissiveness, and too
much is sure to come off as defensive. After a quarter century of research on system
justification theory, this may be an appropriate time to take stock of questions and
criticisms that have accumulated over the years and to answer them in some way.
I have already addressed two major objections, namely that (1) although people may
adopt system-justifying beliefs through social learning mechanisms, there is no evidence
that they are motivated to engage in system justification, and (2) the theory fails to specify
situational and dispositional moderators of system justification. In response to the first, I
summarized five types of evidence suggesting that system justification is a goal-directed
process linked to self-deception, defensive motivation, biased information processing,
behavioural effort, and other properties of goal pursuit (Jost et al., 2010). In response to
the second criticism, I mentioned a number of situational moderators, including exposure
to system criticism or threat, perceptions of system inevitability or inescapability,
perceptions of historical longevity, and feelings of powerlessness or dependence (see also
Friesen, Laurin, Shepherd, Gaucher, & Kay, 2019; Jost & van der Toorn, 2012). I have also
described work on dispositional moderators of system justification, such as epistemic,
existential, and relational motives to reduce uncertainty, threat, and social discord
(Hennes et al., 2012; Jost et al., 2017b).
There are more recent objections to system justification theory that I have yet to
respond to – and I would like to take the opportunity to do so here. Let us begin with a
multi-pronged critique by Owuamalam et al. (2018), who argued that system justification
on the part of disadvantaged group members may be explained (on the basis of social
identity theory rather than system justification theory) in terms of (1) ‘a passive reflection
of social reality’, (2) ‘a form of in-group bias (at the superordinate level)’, and (3) ‘the hope
that in-group advancement is possible in the future within the prevailing system’ (p. 91).
In addition to these three proposals, I will address several other critiques of system
justification theory – nearly all of which have been framed as defences of social identity
theory (Brewer, 2007; Caricati, 2017; Caricati & Sollami, 2018; Desert & Leyens, 2006;
Haslam, Turner, Oakes, Reynolds, & Doosje, 2002; Jetten, Haslam, & Barlow, 2012;
Reicher, 2004; Reynolds, Jones, O’Brien, & Subasic, 2013; Rubin & Hewstone, 2004;
Spears et al., 2001).

Does system justification merely reflect the passive reflection of ‘social reality’?
The concept of ‘social reality constraints’ has played a central role in several critiques of
system justification theory (Brewer, 2007; Rubin & Hewstone, 2004; Spears et al., 2001),
which were addressed in detail by Jost (2011). Nevertheless, Owuamalam et al. (2018)
argued once again that ‘people may reflect the reality of social hierarchies by
 Quarter century of system justification 279

acknowledging that, on specific status-related dimensions, high-status outgroups are

better than low-status in-groups’ (p. 93) and that system justification motivation is not
required to explain this phenomenon. Fifteen years ago, Rubin and Hewstone (2004)
compared the plight of those who are disadvantaged in society to a losing football team
that must ‘admit that they lost the game and that the other team won’ and argued that ‘this
response is simply the passive reflection of the current status quo, as specified in a socially
shared reality’ (p. 831).
To my mind, this drastically misrepresents the psychology of system justification; poor
people, women, and sexual minorities, among others, do not feel as if they ‘played’ and
‘lost’. The position taken by Rubin and Hewstone (2004) – and echoed by Owuamalam
et al. (2018) – trivializes (and therefore seriously mischaracterizes) problems of social and
economic inequality – and ignores the many ways in which inequality is legitimated in
society (Costa-Lopes, Dovidio, Pereira, & Jost, 2013). I do agree that some cases of system
justification are passive (and non-conscious) rather than active (and conscious). As
Hochschild (1981) pointed out, ‘Some people enthusiastically endorse the status quo;
some passively acquiesce in it; some strongly oppose it; and some are simply indifferent to
it’ (pp. 262–263). Nevertheless, I disagree with several other assumptions made by Rubin
and Hewstone (2004) and Owuamalam et al. (2018).
We know from extensive sociological research that contemporary societies fail to
provide a ‘level playing field’ for rich and poor, men and women, racial and ethnic
majorities and minorities, and so on. In such contexts the act of ‘admitting defeat’ – or
‘acknowledging objective differences’, as Marilynn Brewer (2007, p. 733), put it – does
reflect an ideological process of taking for granted (consciously or non-consciously) the
legitimacy of the status quo, even if it involves nothing more than ‘complicitous silence’
(Bourdieu, 1986, p. 188; see also Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Zelditch, 2001). Likewise, in a
football game, ‘admitting defeat’ assumes the legitimacy of the league, rules of
competition, the referees’ authority and conduct, and the other team’s behaviour (Jost,
2011). Otherwise, the ‘losing team’ would not say ‘we lost’; they would say, ‘We were
cheated!’ When the disadvantaged assume that they are not as smart or hard-working or
competent or deserving as members of advantaged groups, they are indeed granting
legitimacy to (and reinforcing) status and power differences in society. van Knippenberg
(1984) made this point 35 years ago, when he wrote that ‘The perceptions and
evaluations of the higher status group can thus be seen as containing the implicit claim
that the distribution of outcomes is legitimate’ (p. 573).
Social psychologists ought to perceive a world of difference between ‘admitting defeat’
and exhibiting what Lewin (1941/1948) referred to as ‘group self-hatred’. The fact that
members of disadvantaged groups often harbour implicit associations linking their own
kind to words and images that are unpleasant and even disgusting tells us something
important about the effects of hierarchical social systems on our conscious and
unconscious minds (Jost et al., 2004). So, too, does the fact that moral outrage and protest
activity are surprisingly rare among society’s ‘losers’ (Jost et al., 2017a). Even during
periods of widespread discontent, a very small minority of citizens takes to the streets, and
they often face tremendous backlash for doing so (e.g., see Langer et al., in press).

Does system justification merely reflect (unrealistic) optimism?

If Owuamalam et al.’s (2018) first criticism is that system justification on the part of the
disadvantaged simply reflects an incontrovertible ‘social reality’, their second criticism
seems to be that it reflects optimism that ‘in-group advancement is possible. . . within the
280 John T. Jost

prevailing system’ (p. 91), however unrealistic that optimism may be. This is a surprisingly
popular explanation on the right (e.g., David Brooks, Marco Rubio) and left (e.g., Michael
Moore, Bill Maher, and Stephen Colbert) for why poor people oppose wealth
redistribution, namely that they keep the faith that under capitalism they will become
rich 1 day. This could indeed be one of many reasons why people engage in system
justification, so I do not regard it as a sound criticism of the theory.5
Nevertheless, Jost et al. (2017b) re-analysed data from a small but nationally
representative sample of low-income Americans surveyed by Rankin et al. (2009) and
found little evidence that most expected to become rich. Only 24% agreed that ‘I believe
that one day I may become rich’, whereas 47% disagreed and 29% were unsure. Most
importantly, those who were financially optimistic scored no higher on general system
justification, nor did they identify as more conservative or more supportive of the
Republican Party, in comparison with those who were not so optimistic (see Jost et al.,
2017b). Thus, contrary to Owuamalam and colleagues’ supposition, the perceived
likelihood of future success – however realistic or unrealistic – does not seem to account
for system justification in the economic sphere.

Is system justification merely a form of ingroup bias (at the superordinate level)?
Owuamalam et al. (2018, p. 91) also claimed that system justification should be regarded
as ‘a form of in-group bias (at the superordinate level)’ – perhaps something akin to
nationalism or patriotism, which we have addressed from a system justification
perspective (see van der Toorn, Nail, Liviatan, & Jost, 2014). Owuamalam and
colleagues’ criticism is essentially the same one raised by Reynolds et al. (2013), namely
that people are merely motivated by self-interest considerations at whichever level of
identification is most salient, so that ‘the question. . . isn’t so much “why do low status
groups act against their self-interest?” but “when and why do members of low status
groups define themselves at the level of the system?”’ (p. 241). There are really two issues
here: (1) whether system justification is based on self-categorization processes at a higher
level of group identification, such as the nation state, and (2) whether system justification
reflects self-interested (and group-interested) behaviour at this higher level of identifica-
tion. These are both interesting questions, but I see several major problems with the
overall argument when it is wielded as a critique of system justification theory.6

5
Another possibility, which is consistent with the emphasis in social identity theory on beliefs about social mobility (Hogg &
Abrams, 1988), is that people perceive the social system as more legitimate to the extent that it allows for (some) people to
improve upon their situation. This idea strikes me as perfectly compatible with system justification theory (see also Day & Fiske,
2017; Garc
ıa-S
anchez et al., 2018), especially if one is willing to grant that people might be motivated to exaggerate the degree
of social mobility in capitalist society. Therefore, this possibility cannot provide the basis for a sound criticism of the theory either. As
Hogg and Abrams (1988) pointed out, ‘it may be to the advantage of high-status groups to foster social mobility belief systems (or
“false consciousness”, in Marxist terms) among low-status groups as this inhibits the perception of conflict of interests and
weakens the cohesiveness and ability to act collectively of those groups’ (p. 56).
6
Robbie Sutton has astutely identified other serious problems with the Owuamalam et al. (2018) critique, writing that ‘the claim
that social systems can be a superordinate level of identification is conceptually suspect’: ‘One can be a member or exemplar of a
group (individuals are related to social groups taxonomically), but only part of, or affected by, a system (individuals are related to
social systems partonomically). . . it is coherent to say in some cases, a collective (e.g., the United States) can be viewed either as a
system or as a group [but this] does not logically entail that any given system can be seen as a collective, or therefore as a group. To
highlight this issue, the ‘system’ at issue in a paper published by Owuamalam, Rubin, and Issmer (2016a) is a university-ranking
system. This cannot meaningfully be seen as any kind of collective, let alone a group to which one might belong. Rather, it is a social
institution or practice that is exogenous to the groups affected by it, yet in which they (are forced to) participate, and upon which
they depend. Owuamalam et al.’s conception of a social system is a shape-shifter: to make some points, they conceptualize
systems as groups, but to make others, they conceptualize them as social practices. (I’m also not sure that this rating system can
properly be described as a social system: it seems rather to be a metric that is used within a system for various purposes)’.
 Quarter century of system justification 281

For one thing – as in the case of the ‘football’ analogy, it seriously mischaracterizes the
plight of the working class to state that a poor person’s decision, for instance, to enlist in
the military – which may be explained by the fact that other educational or economic
opportunities are unavailable – merely reflects ‘self-interest’ exercised at the level of
national identification. According to the New York Times, ‘since the draft was abolished in
1973, the [U.S.] has begun developing what could be called a warrior. . . caste’ that
depends almost exclusively upon the sacrifices of the working class (Halbfinger &
Holmes, 2003). Needless to say, many thousands have died in action since then. But this
only scratches the surface of the myriad ways in which the circumstances of poor people
are exploited by those who benefit from the status quo (e.g., Durrheim et al., 2014) – and
the ways in which ideological manipulation can lead members of the working class to
develop false and self-defeating beliefs about both political and economic matters (e.g.,
Bartels, 2008; Gilens, 1999; Graetz & Shapiro, 2006; Lukes, 2011).
In addition, there are psychological costs that Reynolds et al. (2013) and Owuamalam
et al. (2018), among others, continue to ignore. Members of racial, ethnic, and sexual
minorities who ‘buy into’ the legitimacy of the status quo often suffer in terms of self-
esteem, depression, anxiety, neuroticism, and other mental health problems (Bahamon-
des-Correa, 2016; Godfrey et al., in press; Jost & Thompson, 2000; Suppes et al., 2018).
Thus, to suggest that system justification on the part of the disadvantaged serves rational
self-interest is, at best, incomplete and, at worst, completely misleading.
Furthermore, any ‘explanation’ in terms of social identification alone is question-
begging: To understand working-class conservatism in these terms, we would need to
know why poor people would ‘identify with’ rich people (like Country Club Republicans)
in the first place. System justification theory highlights the fact that ‘outgroup favouritism’
in situations such as this reflects an ideological process that is akin to false consciousness
and the internalization of inferiority (Jost et al., 2004). This is not to say that that there is
no relationship between levels of group identification and ideological processes such as
system justification. As Shayo (2009) demonstrated, poor people around the world
identify more strongly with their nation (and less strongly with their social class) in
comparison with rich people, and those who identify more strongly with the nation are
less supportive of economic redistribution than those who do not. These are important
discoveries that, to my mind, highlight the ways in which processes of social identification
and system justification are intertwined.

Does working-class conservatism reflect a process of dissonance reduction?

In an ambitious effort to ground the Marxian analysis of false consciousness in research on
cognitive dissonance, the social theorist Jon Elster (1982) proposed that the ‘interest of
the upper class is better served by the lower classes spontaneously inventing an ideology
justifying their inferior status’ that may serve ‘the interest of the lower classes in the sense
of leading to dissonance reduction’ although it ‘is contrary to their interest’ in the sense
that it could produce ‘excessive meekness’ (p. 142). This formulation struck me as
fascinating – and supportive of Robert E. Lane’s (1959/2004) conclusions from interviews
conducted with blue-collar workers who found ‘it less punishing to think of themselves as
correctly placed by a just society than to think of themselves as exploited, or victimized by
an unjust society’ (p. 227). It also fit with classic demonstrations of cognitive dissonance
theory, including cases of fraternity pledges who were badly ‘hazed’ becoming fanatical
supporters of the Greek system (Aronson & Mills, 1959; Gerard & Mathewson, 1966).
282 John T. Jost

Inspired by these examples, Jost et al. (2003c) explored the hypothesis – which was a
hybrid of cognitive dissonance and system justification perspectives – that people who
were most disadvantaged by the status quo would have the strongest need to justify
existing social systems, authorities, and outcomes. They obtained some evidence from
public opinion surveys suggesting that low-income European Americans, African
Americans, and Latinos were more likely than others to trust the government, support
restrictions on criticizing it, and believe that society is meritocratic and that economic
inequality is legitimate and necessary. These findings were broadly consistent with the
notion derived from dissonance theory that those who suffer most intensely from a given
state of affairs would be especially motivated to justify it (see also Henry & Saul, 2006;
Sengupta, Osborne, & Sibley, 2015). A few studies have recently picked up on this idea,
suggesting that the palliative effects of system justification may be stronger for the
disadvantaged than the advantaged, at least under some circumstances (Sengupta,
Greaves, Osborne, & Sibley, 2017; Vargas-Salfate, 2017).
It is important to keep in mind, however, that Jost et al. (2003c) explicitly pointed out
that ‘economic and other theories of material and symbolic self-interest may be said to
account for the “baseline”’ (p. 14) and emphasized that: ‘To be clear, we are not arguing
that members of disadvantaged groups are always (or even ordinarily) the most likely ones
to provide ideological support for the system. In fact, to the extent that system justification
conflicts with motives for self-enhancement, self-interest, and ingroup favoritism among
members of disadvantaged groups. . . it should often be tempered by these other motives’
(p. 17). Thus, we never regarded dissonance reduction as the ‘engine’ of system
justification, as an increasing number of scholars appear to have mistakenly assumed
(Brandt, 2013; Caricati, 2017; Caricati & Sollami, 2018; Owuamalam et al., 2016b;
Owuamalam, Rubin, & Spears, 2018, 2019; Vargas-Salfate et al., 2018b).
Brandt (2013) went so far as to rename the strong, dissonance-based hypothesis the
‘status–legitimacy hypothesis’ and apply it to other domains – such as gender and
education – that were not part of the original research programme. His analyses revealed
few differences in terms of group status with respect to trust in government and other
institutions and concluded that the phenomenon ‘may be a random event without need of
a theoretical explanation’ (p. 2). Brandt found scant evidence of enhanced system
justification among the disadvantaged – but he also found little or no consistent evidence
of group-based self-interest. His null results are therefore equally at odds with theories of
realistic group conflict, social identification, and social dominance (see Caricati & Sollami,
2018; Vargas-Salfate et al., 2018b). As I have argued elsewhere (Jost, 2017), we must still
confront a fundamental question in social science: Why is it that members of the working
class are just as likely – or, in other cases, almost as likely – as the middle and upper classes
to defend and justify the societal status quo?7
Working-class conservatism may indeed have little or nothing to do with cognitive
dissonance reduction, as Owuamalam et al. (2016b, 2018) have argued. However, their
conceptual analysis is deeply confused. They conflate ‘self-interest’ with ‘self-relevance’
when they suggest that there is an incompatibility between cognitive dissonance theory
and the hypothesis that system justification motivation among members of disadvantaged
groups ‘should be apparent only when their personal and group interests are relatively
weak’, because ‘dissonance should be greatest when dissonance-arousing cognitions are

7
Zhang and Zhong (in press) provide evidence from China that adults who are lower (vs. higher) in income and education tend to
have more children at an earlier age, and this renders them more dependent on governmental support and therefore more likely to
defend and justify the authority of the Chinese government.
 Quarter century of system justification 283

self-relevant and important’ (p. 92). I agree that people are only motivated to justify the
status quo when it is personally relevant (see Kay et al., 2002), but it is na€ıve to assume
that the only people who defend and justify the capitalist system, for instance, are those
who benefit from the system or are otherwise motivated by self-interest (or, for that
matter, only those who identify with the group of ‘capitalists’).
Furthermore, Owuamalam et al. (2018) confuse social stability – which is known to
increase system justification tendencies (Laurin et al., 2013) – with a lack of choice when
they write: ‘If the system is perceived to be stable, then the potential for uncertainty and
associated dissonance will be low, and so the motive for system justification should be
weak and relatively ineffective’, but ‘if the system is perceived to be unstable, then the
potential for uncertainty and thus cognitive dissonance is high, and the system-
justification motive should be strong and more effective’ (p. 95). I see no reason from a
cognitive dissonance perspective why a highly stable social system – such as capitalism –
would fail to inspire motives for justification, as long as citizens feel that they are choosing
to participate in it – as opposed to being coerced (as in a totalitarian system).8
An anonymous reviewer, who later identified himself as Robbie Sutton, listed a number
of other problems with Owuamalam et al.’s (2018) argument that ‘“contrary” to SJT, when
social arrangements are stable in the short term but not long term, people justify them more,
because they have greater hope for improved status’. Problems with this argumentation
include the following: (1) It is incoherent to ‘to talk about stability through time as anything
other than stability in the long term, because “stable, but only in the short term” seems
oxymoronic’; (2) Owuamalam et al. make a strong distinction between short-term and long-
term stability, but ‘the cited study operationalizes stability as stability per se: the stability
factor has two levels, high (university rankings don’t fluctuate year to year) and low (they go
up and down year to year). It doesn’t have an orthogonal manipulation of short vs. long-term
stability’; (3) ‘the manipulation refers to more or less stochastic fluctuations through time
and not about the likelihood of progress: for one group to systematically improve its
position, of the kind that interested Tajfel’; (4) ‘the manipulation does not refer to any change
in the system. It just refers to the hierarchical position of groups within the system’; and (5)
Owuamalam et al. ‘also describe the university system ranking system as “legitimate”, which
they describe as a precondition for [system justification] effects, but no effort is made to
manipulate the legitimacy of the university ranking system: the legitimacy of the ranking
system is rather a DV’. I, for one, find these criticisms of Owuamalam et al.’s (2018) work to
be rather compelling, and I hope they will address them.

No, seriously, why are conservatives happier than liberals?

As noted above, Napier and Jost (2008) found that, in comparison with liberals, political
conservatives report greater happiness and personal satisfaction and that this ‘happiness
gap’ is mediated, in part, by the justification of inequality. This pattern of results has been
replicated many times over (Bixter, 2015; Burton, Plaks, & Peterson, 2015; Butz, Kieslich,
& Bless, 2017; Choma, Busseri, & Sadava, 2009; Cichocka & Jost, 2014; Newman, Schwarz,
Graham, & Stone, 2018; Okulicz-Kozaryn et al., 2014; Onraet, Van Assche, Roets,

8
Owuamalam et al. (2018) also claim it is inconsistent with system justification theory to propose that ‘a rejection [of the social
system] is likely to be regarded as being unrealistic because it implies a revolution and anarchy that could invoke much greater
uncertainty and threat’ (p. 94), but it is not. This is precisely why I argue that challenging the system – and pushing for social change
– aggravates feelings of uncertainty and threat and triggers backlash (Hennes et al., 2012; Jost & Hunyady, 2005; Jost et al.,
2008a, 2017b).
284 John T. Jost

Haesevoets, & Van Hiel, 2016; Schlenker, Chambers, & Le, 2012; Wojcik et al., 2015).
These replications have not, however, prevented critics from disputing the basic notion
that system justification serves a palliative function. Jetten et al. (2012), for instance,
claim that the happiness gap between liberals and conservatives is attributable to the fact
that conservatives are wealthier and this ‘gives them access to more group memberships’,
and this, in turn, makes them happier. These authors conclude that ‘what makes
conservatives happy is not conservative ideology but rather material advantage’ (p. 7).
Jetten et al.’s (2012) alternative explanation simply cannot account for the findings of
Napier and Jost (2008), because we adjusted statistically for personal income in all of our
analyses, and the happiness gap remained significant. To delve deeper into the issue, Butz
et al. (2017) analysed data from a nationally representative sample in Germany and found
that the justification of social and economic inequality mediated the relationship between
conservatism and life satisfaction, providing clear support for system justification theory,
whereas other variables that were proposed as alternative explanations – such as number
of group memberships (Jetten et al., 2012) and general optimism (Schlenker et al., 2012)
– did not.

Can system justification theory account for the occurrence of social change?
Some critics allege that system justification theory – by seeking to understand the
motivation to preserve the status quo – is incapable of explaining protest and social
change (Desert & Leyens, 2006; Haslam et al., 2002; Reicher, 2004; Sidanius et al., 2004;
Spears et al., 2001). But system justification theory does not suggest that social change is
impossible, only that it is difficult – for psychological as well as other reasons (Jost, 2015).
As Bruno Bettelheim observed, ‘Most people want to make sure that tomorrow is just like
yesterday’.
Reicher (2004) claimed that ‘revolt’, ‘resistance’, and ‘countermobilization’ are
‘equally’ present in human society, in comparison with social stasis (p. 941), but this is
unrealistic. According to public opinion data from the World Values Survey, less than one
in five citizens of North America, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand have ever
participated in a political demonstration – and more than a third say that they would never
do so (Jost et al., 2017a, p. 100). I suppose that Reicher may have been channelling
Foucault, who wrote: ‘As soon as there is a power relation, there is a possibility of
resistance. We can never be ensnared by power: we can always modify its grip in
determinate conditions and according to a precise strategy’ and ‘The struggle is
everywhere. . . at every moment, we move from rebellion to domination, from domination
to rebellion’ (Fontana & Bertani, 2003, p. 280).
I agree that there is indeed always the possibility of resistance, but this is very different
from suggesting that, in practice, defenders and challengers of the societal status quo are on
equal footing; they are not, for social and psychological as well as historical, economic, and
institutional reasons. To my mind, Gramsci was much closer to the mark than Foucault when
he observed that the ‘great mass of people hesitate and lose heart when they think of what a
radical change might bring. . .. [and] only imagine the present being torn to pieces’. And so
was Simone de Beauvoir, who unlike Foucault recognized that a ‘real repression – or
oppression – of the self is always possible’ (Kruks, 2006, p. 58). Research programmes on self-
objectification and body shame among women show that Beauvoir was right (e.g., Calogero,
2013; Calogero & Jost, 2011; Fredrickson, Roberts, Noll, Quinn, & Twenge, 1998).
Nevertheless, there are several ways of accounting for social change from the
perspective of system justification theory (Gaucher & Jost, 2011). To begin with, there are
 Quarter century of system justification 285

other motives identified by the theory – such as ego and group justification (as well as
motives for accuracy, justice, and system improvement) – that may very well trump
system justification motives in some situations (Day & Fiske, 2017; Johnson & Fujita, 2012;
McCall, Burk, Laperriere, & Richeson, 2017). And, although I share Lewin’s (1947)
conviction that resistance to change is all too common in human affairs, when regime
change is perceived as extremely likely (or inevitable), many people will begin to justify
the newly emerging status quo (Kay et al., 2002; Laurin, 2018; Laurin et al., 2012). Thus,
Kuran (1991) describes ‘revolutionary bandwagons’, in which Eastern Europeans, among
others, ‘displayed a remarkable tolerance for tyranny and inefficiency’, remaining ‘docile,
submissive, and even outwardly supportive of the status quo’ for decades before the
seeming ‘invulnerability of the status quo’ was finally shattered in 1989 (pp. 25–26).
In addition, it follows from system justification theory that people will be less defensive
and more open to new possibilities when potential changes to the status quo are
described as ‘system-sanctioned’, that is, congruent rather than incongruent with the
preservation of the overarching system, as we have found in the case of pro-environmental
initiatives (Feygina, Jost, & Goldsmith, 2010). Another possibility is suggested by the work
of Fernando et al. (2018), which suggests that the act of engaging in utopian thinking (and
mentally contrasting the actual vs. ideal state of society) may decrease system justification
and increase the motivation for social change. When John Lennon implored us to,
‘Imagine no possessions. . . no need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man, imagine all
the people sharing all the world’, he knew full well that the exercise would inspire a more
critical perspective on the status quo. He may also have anticipated that the song would
provoke the kind of system-justifying backlash expressed by Haidt (2012): ‘It’s a vision of
heaven for liberals, but conservatives believe it would quickly descend into hell. I think
conservatives are on to something’ (p. 311).
Jost et al. (2017a) explicitly incorporated system justification motivation in a model of
collective action, pointing out that the Social Identity Model of Collective Action (SIMCA)
ignores ideological and system-level factors, because it conceptualizes protest exclusively
in terms of ingroup/outgroup dynamics (van Zomeren, Postmes, & Spears, 2008). As a
result, it overlooks important political and psychological differences between system-
challenging and system-supporting collective action. Abrams and Grant (2012) proposed
a more comprehensive model in which preferences for social change mediated the effects
of group identification and feelings of relative deprivation on support for Scottish
nationalism. This makes it clearer that social identity and system justification approaches
to collective action are complementary and mutually informative. In studies conducted in
New Zealand and the United States, Osborne, Jost, Becker, Badaan, and Sibley (in press)
tested an integrative model that also incorporated variables from both theories. Among
other things, they found that for members of low-status and high-status groups alike (1)
system justification was negatively associated with system-challenging collective action
(e.g., support for the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement) and positively associated with
system-supporting collective action (e.g., support for the ‘All Lives Matter’ movement),
and (2) group identification, perceptions of injustice, and anger mediated the effects of
system justification on collective action intentions.

Additional applications to the study of social and political behaviour

System justification theory, as I conceive of it, is highly ‘practical’ or ‘relevant’ in the
Lewinian sense that it is useful for diagnosing and addressing social problems, including
many problems that apologists for the status quo would prefer to ignore. These include
286 John T. Jost

racism, colorism, sexism, classism, self-objectification, tolerance of corruption, legitima-

tion of social and economic inequality, hostility towards immigrants, scepticism about
climate change, and acceptance of environmentally harmful industrial practices, among
many other things (e.g., Brescoll et al., 2013; Calogero & Jost, 2011; Chapleau & Oswald,
2014; Choma & Prusaczyk, 2018; Feygina et al., 2010; Garcıa-Sanchez et al., 2018; H€assler
et al., 2018; Hennes et al., 2016; Intawan & Nicholson, 2018; Jost, 2015; Jost & Kay, 2005;
Kay & Jost, 2003; Napier & Jost, 2008; Napier et al., 2010; Pacilli et al., 2011; Shepherd &
Kay, 2012; Tan, Liu, Huang, Zheng, & Liang, 2016; Vainio, M€akiniemi, & Paloniemi, 2014;
van der Toorn et al., 2011, 2015). Throughout this article I have sought to provide
examples of the ways in which system justification theory can be applied to better
understand societal phenomena. Before closing, I would like to say a bit more about
applications to the study of political behaviour in particular.
There are many consequences of system justification motivation for political
behaviour, including participation (and lack of participation) in collective action (Jost
et al., 2017a; Langer et al., in press) and support for versus opposition to specific political
candidates (Azevedo, Jost, & Rothmund, 2017), parties (Jost et al., 2017b), and
movements (Hennes et al., 2012). Studies conducted all over the world reveal that
system justification is almost always positively associated with the endorsement of
politically conservative or right-wing ideologies. This is consistent with the notion that
conservatism is an ideology that seeks to maintain the status quo and that rightists, more
than leftists, perceive existing social and economic inequalities as legitimate and desirable
(Jost et al., 2003a,b, 2004, 2009, 2017b). As shown in Table 2, there are rather strong
positive correlations (often .4 or higher) between system justification and right-wing
conservatism in Argentina, Finland, Hungary, Lebanon, New Zealand, Sweden, the United
Kingdom, and the United States. The correlations are somewhat weaker in Germany,
Poland, and Latvia although they remain positive and statistically significant in nearly all
cases.
Thus far, the only country in which we have observed a significant negative
correlation between system justification and conservatism is France, where we see that
general system justification is associated with liberal-socialist (rather than conservative)
attitudes – and low rather than high levels of authoritarianism and hostility towards
immigrants. Thus, it would appear that the Enlightenment ideals of ‘liberte, egalite,
fraternite’ are very well entrenched in France, to the point that they represent the societal
status quo. We have not been able to collect data in Cuba or other longstanding socialist
countries, but in those contexts we would expect a strong correlation between system
justification and left-wing orientation.
Shortly before the 2016 US presidential election, Azevedo et al. (2017) conducted a
nationally representative survey of 1,500 Americans, administering general, economic,
and gender-specific system justification scales. A number of observations follow from an
inspection of the major correlates of these three forms of system justification, as shown in
Figures 4–6. To begin with, general, economic, and gender-specific system justification
scores were strongly and positively intercorrelated (with rs ranging from .33 to .58).
Furthermore, all three were modestly and positively correlated with right-wing
authoritarianism (.08 ≤ r ≤ .43), social dominance orientation (.15 ≤ r ≤ .57), national
identification (.21 ≤ r ≤ .35), and a wide variety of symbolic and operational measures of
social and economic conservatism (.13 ≤ r ≤ .65). Income and education were positively
correlated with all three types of system justification, but only weakly so (with rs ranging
from .17 to .21 and .05 to .12, respectively).
Table 2. Correlations between system justification and political orientation in 12 different countries

Political
System justification orientation Correlation Sample size
Sample description measure measure (r) (N) Citation/source

Argentina: Convenience Spanish translation of Left–right self- .416*** 328 Badaan et al. (2018)
sample of adults in economic system placement
Buenos Aires justification scale (Jost &
Argentina: Students from Thompson, 2000) .412*** 373
the University of Buenos
Aires
Finland: Students from Finnish translation of .440*** 350 Vainio et al. (2014)
universities in Helsinki General System
and Tampere Justification Scale (Kay &
Jost, 2003)
France: Nationally French translation of .170*** 22,277 Pavlos Vasilopoulos (personal
representative sample General System correspondence)
(2017 French Election Justification Scale (Kay &
Study) Jost, 2003)
Germany: Nationally German translation of .086* 757
representative sample General System
(YouGov online panel) Justification Scale (Kay &
Jost, 2003)
Hungary: National sample Hungarian translation of .312*** 931 Anna Kende (personal
(demographically similar General System correspondence)
to the adult population) Justification Scale (Kay &
Jost, 2003)
Hungarian translation of .235***
economic system
justification scale (Jost &
Thompson, 2000)
Quarter century of system justification

Continued
287
Table 2. (Continued)
288

Political
System justification orientation Correlation Sample size
Sample description measure measure (r) (N) Citation/source
John T. Jost

National sample Hungarian translation of .369*** 1,005

(demographically similar General System Liberal– .303***
to the adult population) Justification Scale (Kay & conservative
Jost, 2003) self-placement
Latvia: Convenience General System Left–right self- .228*** 251 Dimdins, Sandgren, and Montgomery
sample of adults Justification (6-item placement (2016)
scale)
Lebanon: Nationally Lebanese translation of .231*** 500 Badaan et al. (2018)
representative sample General System Self-reported .305***
Justification Scale (Kay & social
Jost, 2003) conservatism
(liberal–
conservative)
Self-reported .417***
economic
conservatism
(liberal–
conservative)
New Zealand: NZAVS General system Liberal– .243*** 6,476 Danny Osborne (personal
(2011–2012) justification (4-item conservative correspondence)
scale) self-placement
.362*** 6,555

Continued
Table 2. (Continued)

Political
System justification orientation Correlation Sample size
Sample description measure measure (r) (N) Citation/source

Left–right self-
placement
NZAVS (2012–2013) Liberal– .222*** 11,121
conservative
self-placement
Left–right self- .351*** 11,163
placement
NZAVS (2013–2014) Liberal– .259*** 16,133
conservative
self-placement
Left–right self- .421*** 16,048
placement
NZAVS (2014–2015) Liberal– .291*** 14,562
conservative
self-placement
Left–right self- .468*** 14,612
placement
NZAVS (2015–2016) Liberal– .321*** 12,764
conservative
self-placement
Left–right self- .495*** 12,749
placement
NZAVS (2016–2017) Liberal– .326*** 20,396
Ethnic system justification conservative .324*** 20,761
(2-item scale) self-placement
Gender system .316*** 20,751
Quarter century of system justification

justification (2-item
scale)
289

Continued
 290

Table 2. (Continued)

Political
System justification orientation Correlation Sample size
John T. Jost

Sample description measure measure (r) (N) Citation/source

Economic system .324*** 20,235

justification (1-item
scale)
General system Left–right self- .455*** 20,048
justification (4-item placement
scale)
Ethnic system justification .410*** 20,400
(2-item scale)
Gender system .487*** 20,391
justification (2-item
scale)
Economic system .391*** 19,899
justification (1-item
scale)
Poland: Nationally Polish translation of Self-reported .108* 501 Cichocka and Jost (2014)
representative sample of General System social,
internet users Justification Scale (Kay & economic, and
Nationally representative Jost, 2003) overall political .099** 1,038 Aleksandra Cichocka (personal
sample of Polish adults conservatism correspondence)
Left–right self- .068* 1,108
placement
Sweden: Lund University Swedish translation of .712*** 332 Nilsson & Jost (under review)
Students General System
Justification Scale (Kay &
Jost, 2003)

Continued
Table 2. (Continued)

Political
System justification orientation Correlation Sample size
Sample description measure measure (r) (N) Citation/source

Swedish translation of .748***

economic system
justification scale (Jost &
Thompson, 2000)
Convenience sample of Swedish translation of .518*** 398 Artur Nilsson (personal
adults General System correspondence)
Justification Scale (Kay &
Jost, 2003)
Liberal– .114* 383
conservative
self-placement
Convenience sample of Left–right self- .194*** 418
adults placement
Convenience sample of General system .525*** 320 Dimdins et al. (2016)
adults justification (6-item
scale)
United Kingdom: YouGov General System Left–right self- .372*** 1,853 SMaPP
panel of social media Justification Scale (Kay & placement
users (SoMA) Jost, 2003)
Prolific Academic Survey General System Political party .369*** 332 Zmigrod, Rentfrow, and Robbins
Justification Scale (Kay & affiliation (2018)
Jost, 2003) adapted to
British context

Continued
Quarter century of system justification
291
Table 2. (Continued)
292

Political
System justification orientation Correlation Sample size
Sample description measure measure (r) (N) Citation/source
John T. Jost

United States: Mechanical General System Liberal– .358*** 181 Hennes et al. (2012)
Turk workers Justification Scale (Kay & conservative
Jost, 2003) self-placement
Economic system .594***
justification scale (Jost &
Thompson, 2000)
NYU students (2004– General System .335*** 9,487 Jost et al. (2017b)
2016) Justification Scale (Kay &
Jost, 2003)
Economic system .429*** 9,761
justification scale (Jost &
Thompson, 2000)
Nationally representative General System .237*** 3,329 SMaPP
panel survey (YouGov Justification Scale (Kay &
2016 US Elections) Jost, 2003)
Nationally representative General System .152*** 1,500 Azevedo et al. (2017)
sample (SSI) Justification Scale (Kay &
Jost, 2003)
Economic system .532***
justification scale (Jost &
Thompson, 2000)
Gender-specific system .455***
justification scale (Jost
and Kay, 2005)

Continued
Table 2. (Continued)

Political
System justification orientation Correlation Sample size
Sample description measure measure (r) (N) Citation/source

Non-representative General System .166*** 2,119 Azevedo and Rothmund (2018)

replication sample (SSI) Justification Scale (Kay &
Jost, 2003)
Economic system .612***
justification scale (Jost &
Thompson, 2000)
Gender-specific system .478***
justification scale (Jost
and Kay, 2005)
NYU students General System .266*** 218 Nilsson & Jost (under review)
Justification Scale (Kay &
Jost, 2003)
Economic system .445*** 385
justification scale (Jost &
Thompson, 2000)
Online survey of adults General System .256*** 352
Justification Scale (Kay & Issue-based .307***
Jost, 2003) conservatism
Economic system Liberal– .497***
justification scale (Jost & conservative
Thompson, 2000) self-placement
Issue-based .590***
conservatism

Continued
Quarter century of system justification
293
 294
John T. Jost

Table 2. (Continued)

Political
System justification orientation Correlation Sample size
Sample description measure measure (r) (N) Citation/source

MTurk Sample 2017 General System Liberal/left-wing .402*** 1,511 Danny Osborne (personal
Justification Scale (Kay & vs. correspondence)
Jost, 2003) conservative/
right-wing self-
placement

Note.. NZAVS, New Zealand Attitudes and Values Survey (nationally representative panel survey); SSI, Survey Sampling International; SMaPP, Social Media and
Political Participation Laboratory at New York University.
*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.
 Quarter century of system justification 295

Figure 4. Correlates of General System Justification in a Nationally Representative Sample of

Americans Shortly Before the 2016 US Presidential Election (N = 1,500). Source: This figure was prepared
by Flavio Azevedo and is based on data from Azevedo et al. (2017).
296 John T. Jost

Figure 5. Correlates of Economic System Justification in a Nationally Representative Sample of

Americans Shortly Before the 2016 US Presidential Election (N = 1,500). Source: This figure was prepared
by Flavio Azevedo and is based on data from Azevedo et al. (2017).
 Quarter century of system justification 297

Figure 6. Correlates of Gender-Specific System Justification in a Nationally Representative Sample of

Americans Shortly Before the 2016 US Presidential Election (N = 1,500). Source: This figure was prepared
by Flavio Azevedo and is based on data from Azevedo et al. (2017).
298 John T. Jost

Figure 7. Correlations Between Economic System Justification and Voting Preferences in a Nationally
Representative Sample of Americans Shortly Before the 2016 US Presidential Election (N = 1,500) at
Various Levels of Income (Top) and Education (Bottom). Source: This figure was prepared by Flavio
Azevedo and is based on data from Azevedo et al. (2017). [Colour figure can be viewed at
wileyonlinelibrary.com]

We found that economic and gender-specific (but not general) system justification
predicted resistance to system-challenging social movements such as Occupy Wall Street,
Black Lives Matter, feminism, environmentalism, and even the 1960s civil rights
 Quarter century of system justification 299

Figure 8. Correlations Between Gender-Specific System Justification and Voting Preferences in a

Nationally Representative Sample of Americans Shortly Before the 2016 US Presidential Election
(N = 1,500) at Various Levels of Income (Top) and Education (Bottom). Source: This figure was prepared
by Flavio Azevedo and is based on data from Azevedo et al. (2017). [Colour figure can be viewed at
wileyonlinelibrary.com]

movement (with rs ranging from .27 to .47). All three types of system justification were
negatively correlated with justice sensitivity from the perspectives of victims, observers,
beneficiaries, and perpetrators ( .47 ≤ r ≤ .12). This finding is important because it
speaks to a major difference between just world and system justification theories (Jost &
van der Toorn, 2012). Whereas Lerner (1980) argued that genuine concerns for justice
(inspired by the ‘justice motive’) should be positively associated with the belief in a just
300 John T. Jost

Figure 9. Correlations Between General System Justification and Voting Preferences in a Nationally
Representative Sample of Americans Shortly Before the 2016 US Presidential Election (N = 1,500) at
Various Levels of Income (Top) and Education (Bottom). Source: This figure was prepared by Flavio
Azevedo and is based on data from Azevedo et al. (2017). [Colour figure can be viewed at
wileyonlinelibrary.com]
 Quarter century of system justification 301

world and victim-blaming tendencies, it follows from system justification theory that there
would be a negative association between the motivation to justify the societal status quo
and sensitivity to potential injustices. This is indeed what we see in Figures 4–6.
Azevedo et al. (2017) observed that general system justification was unrelated to
candidate liking in 2016, but economic and gender-specific system justification were
positively associated with liking for Donald Trump (.39 ≤ r ≤ .40) and negatively
associated with liking for Hillary Clinton ( .40 ≤ r ≤ .32). At every level of income and
education, economic and gender-specific system justification were positively associated
with support for Trump and negatively associated with support for Clinton (see Figures 7
and 8). However, this was not the case for general system justification (see Figure 9).
When the three types of system justification were entered into a multiple regression,
general system justification was actually associated with a preference for Clinton (the
more ‘mainstream’ candidate) over Trump (the more disruptive and less traditional
candidate). Thus, Trump supporters clearly did reject the ‘status quo’ of Democratic
governance under President Obama (and Secretary of State Clinton), but – like
conservatives in general – they strongly justified existing economic and gender-based
disparities. Trump voters may have been frustrated by the consequences of global
competition under capitalism, but there was no evidence that they blamed the economic
system itself for their frustration.

Concluding remarks
Social psychologists under the sweeping influence of social identity theory have long
assumed that ‘dominant group members are motivated to maintain the status quo and so to
perceive it as legitimate, whereas subordinate group members are motivated to enhance
their social identity and act toward change, perceiving the status quo as illegitimate’
(DeMoulin, Leyens, & Dovidio, 2009, p. 13). As a first pass at conceiving of the relationship
between motivated social cognition and political ideology, this strikes me as a reasonable
enough approximation of reality. But it hardly tells the whole story. When we look back at
social history, we see a great many cases of ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’ members of
advantaged groups fighting to change the status quo so as to increase social, economic,
and political equality, and a great many cases of ‘conservative’ members of disadvantaged
groups defending the legitimacy of the status quo. Anything like a complete account of
social and political psychology must account for these phenomena as well. This is why I
believe that we need a theory of system justification as well as a theory of social
identification.
I would like to close with a specific example. On 11 September 1964, the Beatles – led
by 23-year-old John Lennon – refused to obey the tenets of racial segregation at a concert in
Florida (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eWECN9-sY4). We should ask how
four very young White men achieved such a high degree of moral clarity on racial issues
more than 50 years ago, when so many Americans accepted the status quo of segregation.
It would be too crude to suggest that because the Beatles were British rather than
American, it was purely a matter of ingroup favouritism (or outgroup derogation) at the
level of nation states, because the Beatles loved many things about the United States and
criticized many things about the United Kingdom. They were hardly known as high
system-justifiers in any context. Lennon, for instance, returned his MBE (Member of the
Order of the British Empire) to the Queen of England in 1969 to protest the Vietnam War.
At the same time, I would suggest that in 1964 it must have helped to see the American
system from the outside, rather than from within it, where one depends upon – and is
302 John T. Jost

therefore tempted to defend and justify (or at least tolerate) the status quo and to
downplay its shortcomings. Perhaps it is this critical perspicacity that we should actively
cultivate, both individually and collectively, lest we remain complicit – silently or
otherwise – in the various social injustices that afflict the institutions and arrangements
that provide the setting for our few moments in history.

Acknowledgements
This article is dedicated to the memory of Morton Deutsch (1920–2017), who was an
inspiration, a mentor of sorts, and – thanks to Madeline Heilman and Harvey Hornstein – a
family friend. It is based loosely on presentations given at meetings of the American
Psychological Association (APA), Eastern Psychological Association (EPA), and the Social
Psychology Section of the German Society for Psychology. Some of the ideas contained herein
were also presented at Yale University, the University of Missouri at Columbia, Saint Joseph’s
University, the University of Nevada at Reno, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. I am
grateful for the constructive feedback and engagement I received on each of those occasions. I
also wish to thank Flavio Azevedo, Aleksandra Cichocka, Anna Kende, Artur Nilsson, Danny
Osborne, Tobias Rothmund, and Pavlos Vasilopoulos for sharing their data with me; Dominic
Abrams, Flavio Azevedo, Vivienne Badaan, Dean Baltiansky, David Caicedo, Aleksandra
Cichocka, Shahrzad Goudarzi, P.J. Henry, Gy€ orgy Hunyady, Lawrence J. Jost, Benjamin
Saunders, Robbie Sutton, and Jussi Valtonen for providing extremely helpful comments on an
earlier draft; and Dean Baltiansky for compiling the reference section. I was supported in part
by National Science Foundation Award # BCS-1627691 during the writing of this article.

References
Abrams, D., & Grant, P. R. (2012). Testing the social identity relative deprivation (SIRD) model of
social change: The political rise of Scottish nationalism. British Journal of Social Psychology,
51, 674–689. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8309.2011.02032.x
Ali, S., Ohls, C., Parker, G., & Walker, R. (2018). Rationalizing poverty in New York: Tales from the
middle class. Journal of Poverty, 22, 310–333. https://doi.org/10.1080/10875549.2017.
1419530
Alloy, L. B., & Abramson, L. Y. (1988). Depressive realism: Four theoretical perspectives. In L. B.
Alloy (Ed.), Cognitive processes in depression (pp. 223–265). New York, NY: Guilford.
Allport, G. (1979). The nature of prejudice. Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley. (Original work
published 1954)
Aronson, E., & Mills, J. (1959). The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group. Journal of
Abnormal and Social Psychology, 59, 177–181. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0047195
Ashburn-Nardo, L., Knowles, M. L., & Monteith, M. J. (2003). Black Americans’ implicit racial
associations and their implications for intergroup judgment. Social Cognition, 21, 61–87.
https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.21.1.61.21192
Azevedo, F., Jost, J. T., & Rothmund, T. (2017). “Making America great again”: System justification in
the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 3, 231–240.
https://doi.org/10.1037/tps0000122
Azevedo, F., & Rothmund, T. (2018). The political psychology of the U.S. 2016 presidential election.
Manuscript in preparation.
Badaan, V., Jost, J. T., Osborne, D., Sibley, C. G., Ungaretti, J., Etchezahar, E., & Hennes, E. (2018).
Social protest and its discontents: A system justification perspective. Contention: The
Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Protest, 6, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.3167/cont.2018.
060102
 Quarter century of system justification 303

Bahamondes-Correa, J. (2016). System justification’s opposite effects on psychological wellbeing:

Testing a moderated mediation model in a gay men and lesbian sample in Chile. Journal of
Homosexuality, 63, 1537–1555. https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2016.1223351
Banfield, J. C., Kay, A. C., Cutright, K. M., Wu, E. C., & Fitzsimons, G. J. (2011). A person by situation
account of motivated system defense. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2, 212–
219. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550610386809
Bartels, L. (2008). Unequal democracy: The political economy of the gilded age. New York, NY:
Russell Sage Foundation.
Becker, J. C., & Wright, S. C. (2011). Yet another dark side of chivalry: Benevolent sexism
undermines and hostile sexism motivates collective action for social change. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 101, 62–77. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022615
Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of
knowledge. Garden City, NY: Anchor.
Bixter, M. T. (2015). Happiness, political orientation, and religiosity. Personality and Individual
Differences, 72(1), 7–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.08.010
Blanchar, J. C., & Eidelman, S. (2013). Perceived system longevity increases system justification and
the legitimacy of inequality. European Journal of Social Psychology, 43, 238–245. https://doi.
org/10.1002/ejsp.1960
Bonanno, G. A., & Jost, J. T. (2006). Conservative shift among high-exposure survivors of the
September 11th terrorist attacks. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 28, 311–323. https://d
oi.org/10.1207/s15324834basp2804_4
Bourdieu, P. (1986). Outline of a theory of practice. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
(Original work published 1977)
Brandt, M. J. (2013). Do the disadvantaged legitimize the social system? A large-scale test of the status
legitimacy hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104, 765–785. https://d
oi.org/10.1037/a0031751
Brandt, M. J., & Reyna, C. (2013). Individual differences in the resistance to social change and
acceptance of inequality predict system legitimacy differently depending on the social structure.
European Journal of Personality, 31, 266–278.
Brescoll, V. L., Uhlmann, E. L., & Newman, G. E. (2013). The effects of system-justifying motives on
endorsement of essentialist explanations for gender differences. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 105, 891–908. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034701
Brewer, M. B. (2007). The importance of being we: Human nature and intergroup relations.
American Psychologist, 62, 728–738. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.62.8.728
Brewer, M. B., & Campbell, D. T. (1976). Ethnocentrism and intergroup attitudes: East African
evidence. Oxford, UK: Sage.
Brown, R. J. (1986). Social psychology (2nd ed.). New York, NY: The Free Press.
Brown, R. (2010). Prejudice: Its social psychology (2nd ed.). West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
Burton, C. M., Plaks, J. E., & Peterson, J. B. (2015). Why do conservatives report being happier than
liberals? The contribution of neuroticism. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 3(1), 89–
102. https://doi.org/10.5964/jspp.v3i1.117
Butz, S., Kieslich, P. J., & Bless, H. (2017). Why are conservatives happier than liberals? Comparing
different explanations based on system justification, multiple group membership, and positive
adjustment. European Journal of Social Psychology, 47, 362–372. https://doi.org/10.1002/
ejsp.2283
Calogero, R. M. (2013). On objects and actions: Situating self-objectification in a system justification
context. In S. Gervais (Ed.), Nebraska motivation symposium: Vol. 60. Perspectives on
motivation (pp. 97–126). New York, NY: Springer.
Calogero, R. M., & Jost, J. T. (2011). Self-subjugation among women: Exposure to sexist ideology,
self-objectification, and the protective function of the need to avoid closure. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 100(2), 211–228. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021864
304 John T. Jost

Caricati, L. (2017). Testing the status-legitimacy hypothesis: A multilevel modeling approach to the
perception of legitimacy in income distribution in 36 nations. Journal of Social Psychology,
157, 532–540. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2016.1242472
Caricati, L., & Sollami, A. (2018). Contrasting explanations for status-legitimacy effects based on
system justification theory and social identity theory. Journal of Theoretical Social Psychology,
2, 13–25. https://doi.org/10.1002/jts5.15
Chapleau, K. M., & Oswald, D. L. (2014). A system justification view of sexual violence: Legitimizing
gender inequality and reduced moral outrage are connected to greater rape myth acceptance.
Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 15(2), 204–218. https://doi.org/10.1080/15299732.2014.
867573
Chen, C. W., & Gorski, P. C. (2015). Burnout in social justice and human rights activists: Symptoms,
causes and implications. Journal of Human Rights Practice, 7, 366–390. https://doi.org/10.
1093/jhuman/huv011
Cheung, R. M., Noel, S., & Hardin, C. D. (2011). Adopting the system-justifying attitudes of others:
Effects of trivial interpersonal connections in the context of social inclusion and exclusion.
Social Cognition, 29, 255–269. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2011.29.3.255
Choma, B. L., Busseri, M. A., & Sadava, S. W. (2009). Liberal and conservative political ideologies:
Different routes to happiness? Journal of Research in Personality, 43, 502–505. https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.jrp.2008.12.016
Choma, B. L., & Prusaczyk, E. (2018). The effects of system justifying beliefs on skin-tone
surveillance, skin-color dissatisfaction, and skin-bleaching behavior. Psychology of Women
Quarterly, 42(2), 162–177. https://doi.org/10.1177/0361684317747845
Cichocka, A., & Jost, J. T. (2014). Stripped of illusions? Exploring system justification processes in
capitalist and post-Communist societies. International Journal of Psychology, 49, 6–29.
https://doi.org/10.1002/ijop.12011
Costa-Lopes, R., Dovidio, J. F., Pereira, C. R., & Jost, J. T. (2013). Social psychological perspectives on
the legitimation of social inequality: Past, present, and future. European Journal of Social
Psychology, 43, 229–237. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.1966
Crocker, J., & Luhtanen, R. (1990). Collective self-esteem and ingroup bias. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 58(1), 60–67. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.58.1.60
Cunningham, F. (1987). False consciousness. In F. Cunningham (Ed.), Democratic theory and
socialism (pp. 236–267). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Cutright, K. M., Wu, E. C., Banfield, J. C., Kay, A. C., & Fitzsimons, G. J. (2011). When your world
must be defended: Choosing products to justify the system. Journal of Consumer Research, 38,
62–77. https://doi.org/10.1086/658469
Day, M. V., & Fiske, S. T. (2017). Movin’ on up? How perceptions of social mobility affect our
willingness to defend the system. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 8, 267–274.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550616678454
Day, M. V., Kay, A. C., Holmes, J. G., & Napier, J. L. (2011). System justification and the defense of
committed relationship ideology. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101, 291–306.
https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023197
DeMoulin, S., Leyens, J. P., & Dovidio, J. F. (2009). Intergroup misunderstandings: Interactions and
divergences in realities, goals, and strategies. In S. DeMoulin, J. P. Leyens & J. F. Dovidio (Eds.),
Intergroup misunderstandings: Impact of divergent social realities (pp. 1–20). New York, NY:
Psychology Press.
Desert, M., & Leyens, J. P. (2006). Social comparisons across cultures I: Gender stereotypes in high
and low power distance cultures. In S. Guimond (Ed.), Social comparison and social
psychology: Understanding cognition, intergroup relations, and culture (pp. 303–317). New
York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Deutsch, M. (1974). Awakening the sense of injustice. In M. Lerner & M. Ross (Eds.), The quest for
justice. New York, NY: Holt.
 Quarter century of system justification 305

Dimdins, G., Sandgren, M., & Montgomery, H. (2016). Psychological variables underlying political
orientations in an old and a new democracy: A comparative study between Sweden and Latvia.
Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 57, 437–445. https://doi.org/10.1111/sjop.12314
Durrheim, K., Jacobs, N., & Dixon, J. (2014). Explaining the paradoxical effects of intergroup
contact: Paternalistic relations and system justification in domestic labour in South Africa.
International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 41, 150–164. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
ijintrel.2013.11.006
Echebarria-Echabe, A., & Fernandez-Guede, E. (2006). Effects of terrorism on attitudes and
ideological orientation. European Journal of Social Psychology, 36(2), 259–265. https://doi.
org/10.1002/(ISSN)1099-0992
Economou, A., & Kollias, C. (2015). Terrorism and political self-placement in European Union
countries. Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy, 21(2), 217–238.
Eidelman, S., Crandall, C. S., Goodman, J. A., & Blanchar, J. C. (2012). Low-effort thought promotes
political conservatism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 808–820. https://doi.
org/10.1177/0146167212439213
Elster, J. (1982). Belief, bias, and ideology. In M. Hollis & S. Lukes (Eds.), Rationality and relativism
(pp. 123–148). Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Fein, S., & Spencer, S. J. (1997). Prejudice as self-image maintenance: Affirming the self through
derogating others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73(1), 31–44. https://doi.org/
10.1037/0022-3514.73.1.31
Fernando, J. W., Burden, N., Ferguson, A., O’Brien, L. V., Judge, M., & Kashima, Y. (2018). Functions
of utopia: How utopian thinking motivates societal engagement. Personality and Social
Psychology Bulletin, 44, 779–792. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167217748604
Feygina, I., Jost, J. T., & Goldsmith, R. (2010). System justification, the denial of global warming, and
the possibility of “system-sanctioned change”. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36,
326–338. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167209351435
Fiori, G. (1973). Antonio Gramsci: Life of a revolutionary. New York, NY: Schocken.
Fontana, A., & Bertani, M. (2003). Situating the lectures. In M. Foucault (Ed.), Society must be
defended: Lectures at the Coll ege de France, 1975–76 (pp. 273–293). New York, NY: Picador.
Fredrickson, B. L., Roberts, T. A., Noll, S. M., Quinn, D. M., & Twenge, J. M. (1998). That swimsuit
becomes you: Sex differences in self-objectification, restrained eating, and math performance.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 269–284. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-
3514.75.1.269
Friedman, R. S., & Sutton, B. (2013). Selling the war? System-justifying effects of commercial
advertising on civilian casualty tolerance. Political Psychology, 34, 351–367. https://doi.org/10.
1111/pops.12001
Friesen, J. P., Kay, A. C., Eibach, R. P., & Galinsky, A. D. (2014). Seeking structure in social
organization: Compensatory control and the psychological advantages of hierarchy. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 106, 590–609. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035620
Friesen, J. P., Laurin, K., Shepherd, S., Gaucher, D., & Kay, A. C. (2019). System justification:
Experimental evidence, its contextual nature, and implications for social change. British
Journal of Social Psychology, 58, 315–339. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12278
Gailliot, M. T., Schmeichel, B. J., & Baumeister, R. F. (2006). Self-regulatory processes defend against
the threat of death: Effects of self-control depletion and trait self-control on thoughts and fears of
dying. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 49–62. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-
3514.91.1.49
Garcıa-Sanchez, E., van der Toorn, J., Rodrıguez-Bail
on, R., & Willis, G. B. (2018). The vicious cycle of
economic inequality: The role of ideology in shaping the relationship between “what is” and
“what ought to be” in 41 countries. Social Psychological and Personality Science. https://doi.
org/10.1177/1948550618811500
Gaucher, D., & Jost, J. T. (2011). Difficulties awakening the sense of injustice and overcoming
oppression: On the soporific effects of system justification. In P. T. Coleman (Ed.), Conflict,
306 John T. Jost

interdependence, and justice: The intellectual legacy of Morton Deutsch (pp. 227–246). New
York, NY: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9994-8
Gerard, H. B., & Mathewson, G. C. (1966). The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group: A
replication. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2, 278–287. https://doi.org/10.1016/
0022-1031(66)90084-9
Gilens, M. (1999). Why Americans hate welfare: Race, media, and the politics of antipoverty
policy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/
9780226293660.001.0001
Godfrey, E. B., Santos, C. E., & Burson, E. (in press). For better or worse? System-justifying beliefs in
sixth-grade predict trajectories of self-esteem and behavior across early adolescence. Child
Development.
Godfrey, E. B., & Wolf, S. (2016). Developing critical consciousness or justifying the system? A
qualitative analysis of attributions for poverty and wealth among low-income racial/ethnic
minority and immigrant women. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 22, 93–
103. https://doi.org/10.1037/cdp0000048
Graetz, M. J., & Shapiro, I. (2006). Death by a thousand cuts: The fight over taxing inherited wealth.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Greenwald, A. G., & Pettigrew, T. F. (2014). With malice toward none and charity for some: Ingroup
favoritism enables discrimination. American Psychologist, 69, 669–684. https://doi.org/10.
1037/a0036056
Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. New
York: Vintage Press.
Haines, E. L., & Jost, J. T. (2000). Placating the powerless: Effects of legitimate and illegitimate
explanation on affect, memory, and stereotyping. Social Justice Research, 13, 219–236.
https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026481205719
Halbfinger, D., & Holmes, S. (2003). A nation at war: The troops; military mirrors a working-class
America. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/30/us/a-nation-
at-war-the-troops-military-mirrors-a-working-class-america.html
Hammond, M. D., & Sibley, C. G. (2011). Why are benevolent sexists happier? Sex Roles: A Journal of
Research, 65, 332–343. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-011-0017-2
Hansson, R. O., Keating, J. P., & Terry, C. (1974). The effects of mandatory time limits in the voting
booth on liberal-conservative voting patterns. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 4, 336–
342. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1974.tb02605.x
Haslam, S. A., Turner, J. C., Oakes, P. J., Reynolds, K. J., & Doosje, B. (2002). From personal pictures
in the head to collective tools in the world: How shared stereotypes allow groups to represent
and change social reality. In C. McGarty, V. Yzerbyt & R. Spears (Eds.), Stereotypes as
explanation: The formation of meaningful beliefs about social groups (pp. 157–185).
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511489877
H€assler, T., Shnabel, N., Ullrich, J., Arditti-Vogel, A., & SimanTov-Nachlieli, I. (2018). Individual
differences in system justification predict power and morality-related needs in advantaged and
disadvantaged groups in response to group disparity. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations,
in press.
Hennes, E. P., Nam, H. H., Stern, C., & Jost, J. T. (2012). Not all ideologies are created equal:
Epistemic, existential, and relational needs predict system-justifying attitudes. Social Cognition,
30, 669–688. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2012.30.6.669
Hennes, E. P., Ruisch, B., Feygina, I., Monteiro, C., & Jost, J. T. (2016). Motivated recall in the service
of the economic system: The case of anthropogenic climate change. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: General, 145, 755–771. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000148
Henry, P. J., & Saul, A. (2006). The development of system justification in the developing world.
Social Justice Research, 19, 365–378. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-006-0012-x
Hess, Y. D., & Ledgerwood, A. (2014). Bolstering system-justifying beliefs in response to social
exclusion. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 17(4), 494–508. https://doi.org/10.1177/
1368430213510572
 Quarter century of system justification 307

Hewstone, M., & Ward, C. (1985). Ethnocentrism and causal attribution in Southeast Asia. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 614–623. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.48.3.614
Hinkle, S., & Brown, R. (1990). Intergroup comparisons and social identity: Some links and lacunae.
In D. Abrams & M. A. Hogg (Eds.), Social identity theory: Constructive and critical advances.
London, UK: Harvester.
Hochschild, J. L. (1981). What’s fair? American beliefs about distributive justice. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard.
Hoffarth, M., & Jost, J. T. (2017). When ideology contradicts self-interest: Conservative opposition to
same-sex marriage among sexual minorities – A commentary on Pinsof and Haselton (2016).
Psychological Science, 28, 1521–1524. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617694866
Hogg, M. A., & Abrams, D. (1988). Social identifications: A social psychology of intergroup
relations and group processes. London, UK: Routledge.
Horwitz, S. R., & Dovidio, J. F. (2017). The rich – love them or hate them? Divergent implicit and
explicit attitudes toward the wealthy. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 20(1), 3–31.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430215596075
Huddy, L. (2004). Contrasting theoretical approaches to intergroup relations. Political Psychology,
25, 947–967. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2004.00404.x
Hussak, L. J., & Cimpian, A. (2015). An early-emerging explanatory heuristic promotes support for
the status quo. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109, 739–752. https://doi.org/10.
1037/pspa0000033
Intawan, C., & Nicholson, S. P. (2018). My trust in government is implicit: Automatic trust in
government and system support. The Journal of Politics, 80, 601–614. https://doi.org/10.1086/
694785
Jetten, J., Haslam, S. A., & Barlow, F. K. (2012). Bringing back the system: One reason why
conservatives are happier than liberals is that higher socioeconomic status gives them access to
more group memberships. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 4(1), 6–13.
Johnson, I. R., & Fujita, K. (2012). Change we can believe in: Using perceptions of changeability to
promote system-change motives over system-justification motives in information search.
Psychological Science, 23, 133–140. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611423670
Jolley, D., Douglas, K. M., & Sutton, R. M. (2018). Blaming a few bad apples to save a threatened
barrel: The system-justifying function of conspiracy theories. Political Psychology, 39, 465–
478. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12404
Jost, J. T. (1995). Negative illusions: Conceptual clarification and psychological evidence
concerning false consciousness. Political Psychology, 16, 397–424. https://doi.org/10.2307/
3791837
Jost, J. T. (1997). An experimental replication of the depressed entitlement effect among women.
Psychology of Women Quarterly, 21, 387–393. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.1997.tb
00120.x
Jost, J. T. (2001). Outgroup favoritism and the theory of system justification: An experimental
paradigm for investigating the effects of socio-economic success on stereotype content. In G.
Moskowitz (Ed.), Cognitive social psychology: The Princeton symposium on the legacy and
future of social cognition (pp. 89–102). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Jost, J. T. (2011). System justification theory as compliment, complement, and corrective to theories
of social identification and social dominance. In D. Dunning (Ed.), Social motivation (pp. 223–
263). New York, NY: Psychology Press.
Jost, J. T. (2015). Resistance to change: A social psychological perspective. Social Research: An
International Quarterly, 82, 607–636.
Jost, J. T. (2017). Working class conservatism: A system justification perspective. Current Opinion
in Psychology, 18, 73–78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.08.020
Jost, J. T., & Banaji, M. R. (1994). The role of stereotyping in system-justification and the production
of false consciousness. British Journal of Social Psychology, 33, 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1111/
j.2044-8309.1994.tb01008.x
308 John T. Jost

Jost, J. T., Banaji, M. R., & Nosek, B. A. (2004). A decade of system justification theory: Accumulated
evidence of conscious and unconscious bolstering of the status quo. Political Psychology, 25,
881–919. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2004.00402.x
Jost, J. T., Becker, J., Osborne, D., & Badaan, V. (2017a). Missing in (collective) action: Ideology,
system justification, and the motivational antecedents of protest behavior. Current Directions in
Psychological Science, 26, 99–108. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721417690633
Jost, J. T., Blount, S., Pfeffer, J., & Hunyady, G. (2003a). Fair market ideology: Its cognitive-
motivational underpinnings. Research in Organizational Behavior, 25, 53–91. https://doi.org/
10.1016/S0191-3085(03)25002-4
Jost, J. T., Burgess, D., & Mosso, C. (2001). Conflicts of legitimation among self, group, and system:
The integrative potential of system justification theory. In J. T. Jost & B. Major (Eds.), The
psychology of legitimacy: Emerging perspectives on ideology, justice, and intergroup
relations (pp. 363–388). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Jost, J. T., Chaikalis-Petritsis, V., Abrams, D., Sidanius, J., van der Toorn, J., & Bratt, C. (2012). Why
men (and women) do and don’t rebel: Effects of system justification on willingness to protest.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 197–208. https://doi.org/10.1177/014616
7211422544
Jost, J. T., Federico, C. M., & Napier, J. L. (2009). Political ideology: Its structure, functions, and
elective affinities. Annual Review of Psychology, 60, 307–337. https://doi.org/10.1146/annure
v.psych.60.110707.163600
Jost, J. T., Gaucher, D., & Stern, C. (2015). “The world isn’t fair”: A system justification perspective
on social stratification and inequality. In J. F. Dovidio & J. A. Simpson (Eds.), APA handbook of
personality and social psychology, Vol. 2 (pp. 317–340). Washington, DC: APA.
Jost, J. T., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A. W., & Sulloway, F. (2003b). Political conservatism as motivated
social cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 339–375. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.
129.3.339
Jost, J. T., & Hamilton, D. L. (2005). Stereotypes in our culture. In J. Dovidio, P. Glick & L. Rudman
(Eds.), On the nature of prejudice: Fifty years after allport (pp. 208–224). Oxford, UK:
Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470773963
Jost, J. T., Hawkins, C. B., Nosek, B. A., Hennes, E. P., Stern, C., Gosling, S. D., & Graham, J. (2014).
Belief in a just god (and a just society): A system justification perspective on religious ideology.
Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 34, 56–81. https://doi.org/10.1037/
a0033220
Jost, J. T., & Hunyady, O. (2002). The psychology of system justification and the palliative function of
ideology. European Review of Social Psychology, 13, 111–153.
Jost, J. T., & Hunyady, O. (2005). Antecedents and consequences of system-justifying ideologies.
Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 260–265. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0963-
7214.2005.00377.x
Jost, J. T., & Kay, A. C. (2005). Exposure to benevolent sexism and complementary gender
stereotypes: Consequences for specific and diffuse forms of system justification. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 498–509.
Jost, J. T., Kivetz, Y., Rubini, M., Guermandi, G., & Mosso, C. (2005). System-justifying functions of
complementary regional and ethnic stereotypes: Cross-national evidence. Social Justice
Research, 18, 305–333. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-005-6827-z
Jost, J. T., Langer, M., Badaan, V., Azevedo, F., Etchezahar, E., Ungaretti, J., & Hennes, E. (2017b).
Ideology and the limits of self-interest: System justification motivation and conservative
advantages in mass politics. Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 3, e1–e26. https://
doi.org/10.1037/tps0000127
Jost, J. T., Ledgerwood, A., & Hardin, C. D. (2008a). Shared reality, system justification, and the
relational basis of ideological beliefs. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2, 171–186.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2007.00056.x
Jost, J. T., Liviatan, I., van der Toorn, J., Ledgerwood, A., Mandisodza, A., & Nosek, B. A. (2010).
System justification: How do we know it’s motivated? In R. C. Bobocel, A. C. Kay, M. Zanna &
 Quarter century of system justification 309

J. Olson (Eds.), The psychology of justice and legitimacy: The Ontario symposium, Vol. 11 (pp.
173–203). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Jost, J. T., & Major, B. (2001). Emerging perspectives on the psychology of legitimacy. In J. T. Jost & B.
Major (Eds.), The psychology of legitimacy: Emerging perspectives on ideology, justice, and
intergroup relations (pp. 3–30). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Jost, J. T., Pelham, B. W., & Carvallo, M. (2002). Non-conscious forms of system justification: Implicit
and behavioral preferences for higher status groups. Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology, 38, 586–602. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-1031(02)00505-X
Jost, J. T., Pelham, B. W., Sheldon, O., & Sullivan, B. N. (2003c). Social inequality and the reduction of
ideological dissonance on behalf of the system: Evidence of enhanced system justification among
the disadvantaged. European Journal of Social Psychology, 33, 13–36. https://doi.org/10.
1002/(ISSN)1099-0992
Jost, J. T., Pietrzak, J., Liviatan, I., Mandisodza, A. N., & Napier, J. L. (2007). System justification as
conscious and nonconscious goal pursuit. In J. Y. Shah & W. L. Gardner (Eds.), Handbook of
motivation science (pp. 591–605). New York, NY: Guilford.
Jost, J. T., Sapolsky, R., & Nam, H. H. (2018). Speculations on the evolutionary origins of system
justification. Evolutionary Psychology, April-June 2018, 1–21.
Jost, J. T., & Thompson, E. P. (2000). Group-based dominance and opposition to equality as
independent predictors of self-esteem, ethnocentrism, and social policy attitudes among African
Americans and European Americans. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 36, 209–232.
https://doi.org/10.1006/jesp.1999.1403
Jost, J. T., & van der Toorn, J. (2012). System justification theory. In P. A. M. van Lange, A. W.
Kruglanski & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of theories of social psychology, Vol. 2 (pp. 313–
343). London, UK: Sage. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446249222
Jost, J. T., Wakslak, C., & Tyler, T. R. (2008b). System justification theory and the alleviation of
emotional distress: Palliative effects of ideology in an arbitrary social hierarchy and in society. In
K. Hegtvedt & J. Clay-Warner (Eds.), Justice: Advances in group processes, Vol. 25 (pp. 181–
211). Bingley, UK: JAI/Emerald. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0882-6145(08)25012-5
Kay, A. C., & Friesen, J. (2011). On social stability and social change: Understanding when system
justification does and does not occur. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20, 360–
364. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721411422059
Kay, A. C., Gaucher, D., Peach, J. M., Laurin, K., Friesen, J., Zanna, M. P., & Spencer, S. J. (2009).
Inequality, discrimination, and the power of the status quo: Direct evidence for a motivation to
see the way things are as the way they should be. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
97, 421–434. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015997
Kay, A. C., Jimenez, M. C., & Jost, J. T. (2002). Sour grapes, sweet lemons, and the anticipatory
rationalization of the status quo. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 1300–1312.
https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672022812014
Kay, A. C., & Jost, J. T. (2003). Complementary justice: Effects of “poor but happy” and “poor but
honest” stereotype exemplars on system justification and implicit activation of the justice
motive. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 823–837.
Kay, A. C., Jost, J. T., & Young, S. (2005). Victim derogation and victim enhancement as alternate
routes to system justification. Psychological Science, 16, 240–246. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.
0956-7976.2005.00810.x
Kay, A. C., & Zanna, M. P. (2009). A contextual analysis of the system justification motive and its
societal consequences. In J. T. Jost, A. C. Kay & H. Thorisdottir (Eds.), Social and psychological
bases of ideology and system justification (pp. 158–181). New York, NY: Oxford University
Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195320916.001.0001
Kluegel, J. R., & Smith, E. R. (1986). Beliefs without inequality: Americans’ view of what is and
what ought to be. Hawthorne, NJ: Aldine de Gruyter.
Kruks, S. (2006). Reading Beauvoir with and against Foucault. In L. J. Marso & P. Moynagh (Eds.),
Simone de Beauvoir’s political thinking (pp. 55–71). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
310 John T. Jost

Kuran, T. (1991). Now out of never: The element of surprise in the East European revolution of 1989.
World Politics, 44, 7–48. https://doi.org/10.2307/2010422
Lammers, J., & Proulx, T. (2013). Writing autobiographical narratives increases political
conservatism. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49, 684–691. https://doi.org/10.
1016/j.jesp.2013.03.008
Lane, R. E. (2004). The fear of equality. In J. T. Jost & J. Sidanius (Eds.), Political psychology (pp. 217–
229). New York: Psychology Press/Taylor & Francis. (Original work published 1959)
Langer, M., Jost, J. T., Bonneau, R., Metzger, M. M., Noorbaloochi, S., & Penfold-Brown, D. (in press).
Digital dissent: An analysis of the motivational contents of tweets from an Occupy Wall Street
demonstration. Motivation Science, forthcoming.
Lau, G. P., Kay, A. C., & Spencer, S. J. (2008). Loving those who justify inequality: The effects of
system threat on attraction to women who embody benevolent sexist ideals. Psychological
Science, 19, 20–21.
Laurin, K. (2018). Inaugurating rationalization: Three field studies find increased rationalization
when anticipated realities become current. Psychological Science, 29(4), 483–495. https://doi.
org/10.1177/0956797617738814
Laurin, K., Gaucher, D., & Kay, A. C. (2013). Stability and the justification of social inequality.
European Journal of Social Psychology, 43, 246–254. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.1949
Laurin, K., Kay, A. C., & Fitzsimons, G. J. (2012). Reactance versus rationalization: Divergent
responses to policies that constrain freedom. Psychological Science, 23, 205–209. https://doi.
org/10.1177/0956797611429468
Laurin, K., Kay, A. C., & Shepherd, S. (2011). Self-stereotyping as a route to system justification.
Social Cognition, 29, 360–375. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2011.29.3.360
Laurin, K., Shepherd, S., & Kay, A. C. (2010). Restricted emigration, system inescapability, and
defense of the status quo: System-justifying consequences of restricted exit opportunities.
Psychological Science, 21, 1075–1082. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610375448
Ledgerwood, A., Mandisodza, A., Jost, J. T., & Pohl, M. (2011). Working for the system: Motivated
defense of meritocratic beliefs. Social Cognition, 29, 323–340.
Lerner, M. J. (1980). The belief in a just world: A fundamental delusion. New York, NY: Plenum.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0448-5
Lewin, K. (1947). Field theory in social science. New York, NY: Harper & Row.
Lewin, K. (1948). Self-hatred among Jews. In K. Lewin (Ed.), Resolving social conflicts (pp. 186–
200). New York, NY: Harper. (Original work published 1941)
Liviatan, I., & Jost, J. T. (2014). A social-cognitive analysis of system justification goal striving. Social
Cognition, 32, 95–129. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2014.32.2.95
Lovibond, S. (1989). Feminism and postmodernism. New Left Review I/178, November-December
issue, 5-28.
Lukes, S. (2011). In defense of “false consciousness.” University of Chicago Legal Forum, 2011, 19–
28.
Mallett, R. K., Huntsinger, J. R., & Swim, J. K. (2011). The role of system-justification motivation,
group status and system threat in directing support for hate crimes legislation. Journal of
Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 384–390. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2010.10.014
Manstead, A. S. R. (2018). The psychology of social class: How socioeconomic status impacts
thought, feelings, and behavior. British Journal of Social Psychology, 57, 267–291. https://doi.
org/10.1111/bjso.12251
McCall, L., Burk, D., Laperriere, M., & Richeson, J. A. (2017). Exposure to rising inequality shapes
Americans’ opportunity beliefs and policy support. Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, 114, 9593–9598. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1706253114
Mitchell, G., & Tetlock, P. E. (2009). Disentangling reasons and rationalizations: Exploring perceived
fairness in hypothetical societies. In J. T. Jost, A. C. Kay & H. Thorisdottir (Eds.), Social and
psychological bases of ideology and system justification (pp. 126–158). New York, NY: Oxford
University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195320916.001.0001
 Quarter century of system justification 311

Monteith, M. J., Burns, M. D., Rupp, D. E., & Mihalec-Adkins, B. P. (2016). Out of work and out of
luck? Layoffs, system justification, and hiring decisions for people who have been laid off. Social
Psychological and Personality Science, 7(1), 77–84. https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506155
99827
Nail, P. R., McGregor, I., Drinkwater, A. E., Steele, G. M., & Thompson, A. W. (2009). Threat causes
liberals to think like conservatives. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 901–907.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2009.04.013
Napier, J. L., & Jost, J. T. (2008). Why are conservatives happier than liberals? Psychological Science,
19, 565–572. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02124.x
Napier, J. L., Thorisdottir, H., & Jost, J. T. (2010). The joy of sexism? A multinational investigation of
hostile and benevolent justifications for gender inequality and their relation to subjective well-
being. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, 62, 405–419. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-009-
9712-7
Newheiser, A. K., Dunham, Y., Merrill, A., Hoosain, L., & Olson, K. R. (2014). Preference for high
status predicts implicit outgroup bias among children from low-status groups. Developmental
Psychology, 50, 1081–1090. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035054
Newman, D. B., Schwarz, N., Graham, J., & Stone, A. A. (2018). Conservatives report greater
meaning in life than liberals. Social Psychological and Personality Science. https://doi.org/10.
1177/1948550618768241
Nilsson, A., & Jost, J. T. (under review). Revisiting polarity theory: Humanism, normativism, and the
bipolar structure of left-right ideology in the U.S. and Sweden.
O’Brien, L. T., Major, B. N., & Gilbert, P. N. (2012). Gender differences in entitlement: The role of
system-justifying beliefs. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 34, 136–145. https://doi.org/10.
1080/01973533.2012.655630
Okulicz-Kozaryn, A., Holmes, I. V., & Avery, D. R. (2014). The subjective well-being political
paradox: Happy welfare states and unhappy liberals. Journal of Applied Psychology, 99, 1300–
1308. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037654
Onraet, E., Van Assche, J., Roets, A., Haesevoets, T., & Van Hiel, A. (2016). The happiness gap
between conservatives and liberals depends on country-level threat: A worldwide multilevel
study. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 8(1), 11–19.
Osborne, D., Jost, J. T., Becker, J. C., Badaan, V., & Sibley, C. G. (In press). Protesting to challenge or
defend the system? A system justification perspective on collective action. European Journal of
Social Psychology.
Osborne, D., Sengupta, N., & Sibley, C. G. (2019). System justification theory at 25: Evaluating a
paradigm shift in psychology and looking towards the future. British Journal of Social
Psychology, 58, 340–361. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12302
Osborne, D., & Sibley, C. G. (2013). Through rose-colored glasses: System-justifying beliefs dampen
the effects of relative deprivation on well-being and political mobilization. Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin, 39, 991–1004. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167213487997
Owuamalam, C. K., Rubin, M., & Issmer, C. (2016a). Reactions to group devaluation and social
inequality: A comparison of social identity and system justification predictions. Cogent
Psychology, 3, 1188442.
Owuamalam, C. K., Rubin, M., & Spears, R. (2016b). The system justification conundrum: Re-
examining the cognitive dissonance basis for system justification. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1–4.
Owuamalam, C. K., Rubin, M., & Spears, R. (2018). Addressing evidential and theoretical
inconsistencies in system-justification theory with a social identity model of system attitudes.
Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27, 91–96. https://doi.org/10.1177/
0963721417737136
Owuamalam, C. K., Rubin, M., & Spears, R. (2019). Revisiting 25 years of system motivation
explanation for system justification from the perspective of social identity model of system
attitudes. British Journal of Social Psychology, 58, 362–381. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12285
Pacilli, M. G., Taurino, A., Jost, J. T., & van der Toorn, J. (2011). System justification, right-wing
conservatism, and internalized homophobia: Gay and lesbian attitudes toward same-sex
312 John T. Jost

parenting in Italy. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, 65, 580–595. https://doi.org/10.1007/

s11199-011-9969-5
Pratto, F., Sidanius, J., & Levin, S. (2006). Social dominance theory and the dynamics of intergroup
relations: Taking stock and looking forward. European Review of Social Psychology, 17, 271–
320. https://doi.org/10.1080/10463280601055772
Rankin, L., Jost, J. T., & Wakslak, C. J. (2009). System justification and the meaning of life: Are the
existential benefits of ideology distributed unevenly across racial groups? Social Justice
Research, 22, 312–333. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-009-0100-9
Reicher, S. (2004). The context of social identity: Domination, resistance, and change. Political
Psychology, 20, 921–945. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2004.00403.x
Reynolds, K. J., Jones, B. M., O’Brien, K., & Subasic, E. (2013). Theories of socio-political change and
the dynamics of sub-group versus superordinate interests. European Psychologist, 18, 235–244.
https://doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040/a000159
Rilke, R. M. (1993). Letters to a young poet. (M.D. Herter Norton, Trans.) New York, NY: W.W.
Norton. (Original work published 1929)
Rock, M. S., & Janoff-Bulman, R. (2010). Where do we draw our lines? Politics, rigidity, and the role of
self-regulation. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 1(1), 26–33. https://doi.org/10.
1177/1948550609347386
Rubin, M., & Hewstone, M. (2004). Social identity, system justification, and social dominance:
Commentary on Reicher, Jost et al., and Sidanius et al. Political Psychology, 25, 823–844.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2004.00400.x
Rudman, L. A., Feinberg, J., & Fairchild, K. (2002). Minority members’ implicit attitudes: Automatic
ingroup bias as a function of group status. Social Cognition, 20, 294–320. https://doi.org/10.
1521/soco.20.4.294.19908
Rudman, L. A., Moss-Racusin, C. A., Phelan, J. E., & Nauts, S. (2012). Status incongruity and backlash
effects: Defending the gender hierarchy motivates prejudice against female leaders. Journal of
Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 165–179. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2011.10.008
Rutjens, B. T., & Loseman, A. (2010). The society-supporting self: System justification and cultural
worldview defense as different forms of self-regulation. Group Processes & Intergroup
Relations, 13(2), 241–250. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430209351703
Schlenker, B. R., Chambers, J. R., & Le, B. M. (2012). Conservatives are happier than liberals, but
why? Political ideology, personality, and life satisfaction. Journal of Research in Personality, 46,
127–146. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2011.12.009
Sch€uller, S. (2015). The 9/11 conservative shift. Economics Letters, 135, 80–84. https://doi.org/10.
1016/j.econlet.2015.07.031
Sengupta, N. K., Greaves, L. M., Osborne, D., & Sibley, C. G. (2017). The sigh of the oppressed: The
palliative effects of ideology are stronger for people living in highly unequal neighbourhoods.
British Journal of Social Psychology, 56, 437–454. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12192
Sengupta, N. K., Osborne, D., & Sibley, C. G. (2015). The status-legitimacy hypothesis revisited:
Ethnic-group differences in general and dimension-specific legitimacy. British Journal of Social
Psychology, 54, 324–340. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12080
Shayo, M. (2009). A model of social identity with an application to political economy: Nation, class,
and redistribution. American Political Science Review, 103, 147–174. https://doi.org/10.1017/
S0003055409090194
Shepherd, S., & Kay, A. C. (2012). On the perpetuation of ignorance: System dependence, system
justification, and the motivated avoidance of sociopolitical information. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 102, 264–280. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026272
Sidanius, J., Pratto, F., Van Laar, C., & Levin, S. (2004). Social dominance theory: Its agenda and method.
Political Psychology, 25, 845–880. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2004.00401.x
Skitka, L. J., Mullen, E., Griffin, T., Hutchinson, S., & Chamberlin, B. (2002). Dispositions, scripts, or
motivated correction? Understanding ideological differences in explanations for social
problems. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 470–487. https://doi.org/10.
1037/0022-3514.83.2.470
 Quarter century of system justification 313

Spears, R., Jetten, J., & Doosje, B. (2001). The (il)legitimacy of ingroup bias: From social reality to
social resistance. In J. T. Jost & B. Major (Eds.), The psychology of legitimacy: Emerging
perspectives on ideology, justice, and intergroup relations (pp. 332–362). New York, NY:
Cambridge University Press.
Summer, W. G. (1906). Folkways: A study of the sociological importance of usages, manners,
customs, mores, and morals. Boston, MA: Athenaeum Press.
Suppes, A., Napier, J. L., & van der Toorn, J. (2018). The palliative effects of system justification on
the health and happiness of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals. Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167218785156 [Epub ahead of print]
Tajfel, H. (1981). Human groups and social categories. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge Press.
Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S.
Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33–47). Monterey, CA:
Brooks/Cole.
Tan, X., Liu, L., Huang, Z., & Zheng, W. (2017). Working for the hierarchical system: The role of
meritocratic ideology in the endorsement of corruption. Political Psychology, 38, 469–479.
https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12341
Tan, X., Liu, L., Huang, Z., Zheng, W., & Liang, Y. (2016). The effects of general system justification
on corruption perception and intent. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1107. https://doi.org/10.
3389/fpsyg.2016.01107
Thorisdottir, H., & Jost, J. T. (2011). Motivated closed-mindedness mediates the effect of threat on
political conservatism. Political Psychology, 32, 785–811. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-
9221.2011.00840.x
Uhlmann, E., Dasgupta, N., Elgueta, A., Greenwald, A. G., & Swanson, J. (2002). Subgroup prejudice
based on skin color among Hispanics in the United States and Latin America. Social Cognition,
20, 198–226. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.20.3.198.21104
Ullrich, J., & Cohrs, J. C. (2007). Terrorism salience increases system justification: Experimental
evidence. Social Justice Research, 20, 117–139. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-007-0035-y
Vainio, A., M€akiniemi, J.-P., & Paloniemi, R. (2014). System justification and the perception of food
risks. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 17, 509–523. https://doi.org/10.1177/
1368430213503502
van Berkel, L., Crandall, C. S., Eidelman, S., & Blanchar, J. C. (2015). Hierarchy, dominance, and
deliberation: Egalitarian values require mental effort. Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin, 41, 1207–1222. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167215591961
van Knippenberg, A. F. M. (1984). Intergroup differences in group perceptions. In H. Tajfel (Ed.),
The social dimension: European developments in social psychology, Vol. 2 (pp. 560–578).
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511759154
van der Toorn, J., Feinberg, M., Jost, J. T., Kay, A. C., Tyler, T. R., Willer, R., & Wilmuth, C. (2015). A
sense of powerlessness fosters system justification: Implications for the legitimation of authority,
hierarchy, and government. Political Psychology, 36, 93–110. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.
12183
van der Toorn, J., Jost, J. T., & Loffredo, B. (2017a). Conservative ideological shift among adolescents
in response to system threat. Zeitschrift fur € Psychologie, 225, 357–362. https://doi.org/10.
1027/2151-2604/a000299
van der Toorn, J., Jost, J. T., Packer, D., Noorbaloochi, S., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2017b). In defense of
tradition: Religiosity, conservatism, and opposition to same-sex marriage in North America.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43, 1455–1468. https://doi.org/10.1177/
0146167217718523
van der Toorn, J., Nail, P., Liviatan, I., & Jost, J. T. (2014). My country, right or wrong: Does activating
system justification motivation eliminate the liberal-conservative gap in patriotism? Journal of
Experimental Social Psychology, 54, 50–60. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2014.04.003
van der Toorn, J., Tyler, T. R., & Jost, J. T. (2011). More than fair: Outcome dependence, system
justification, and the perceived legitimacy of authority. Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology, 47, 127–138. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2010.09.003
314 John T. Jost

van de Vyver, J., Houston, D. M., Abrams, D., & Vasiljevic, M. (2016). Boosting belligerence: How the
July 7, 2005, London bombings affected liberals’ moral foundations and prejudice. Psychological
Science, 27, 169–177. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615615584
van Zomeren, M., Postmes, T., & Spears, R. (2008). Toward an integrative social identity model of
collective action: A quantitative research synthesis of three social psychological perspectives.
Psychological Bulletin, 134, 504–535. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.134.4.504
Vargas-Salfate, S. (2017). The palliative function of hostile sexism among high and low-status Chilean
students. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 1733. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01733
Vargas-Salfate, S., Paez, D., Khan, S. S., Liu, J. H., & Gil de Z ~ iga, H. (2018a). System justification
un
enhances well-being: A longitudinal analysis of the palliative function of system justification in 18
countries. British Journal of Social Psychology, 57, 567–590. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.
12254
Vargas-Salfate, S., Paez, D., Liu, J. H., Pratto, F., & Gil de Z
un~ iga, H. (2018b). A comparison of social
dominance theory and system justification: The role of social status in 19 nations. Personality
and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44, 1060–1076. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167218757455
Wakslak, C. J., Jost, J. T., & Bauer, P. (2011). Spreading rationalization: Increased support for large-
scale and small-scale social systems following system threat. Social Cognition, 29, 288–302.
https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2011.29.3.288
Wakslak, C., Jost, J. T., Tyler, T. R., & Chen, E. (2007). Moral outrage mediates the dampening effect
of system justification on support for redistributive social policies. Psychological Science, 18,
267–274. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01887.x
Wojcik, S. P., Hovasapian, A., Graham, J., Motyl, M., & Ditto, P. H. (2015). Conservatives report, but
liberals display, greater happiness. Science, 347, 1243–1246. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.
1260817
Yeung, A. W. Y., Kay, A. C., & Peach, J. M. (2014). Anti-feminist backlash: The role of system
justification in the rejection of feminism. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 17, 474–484.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430213514121
Zelditch, M. (2001). Theories of legitimacy. In J. T. Jost & B. Major (Eds.), The psychology of
legitimacy: Emerging perspectives on ideology, justice, and intergroup relations (pp. 33–53).
New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Zhang, J., & Zhong, Z. (in press). Life history and system justification: Higher individual fertility and
lower provincial life expectancy correlate with stronger progovernment attitudes in China.
Political Psychology.
Zimmerman, J. L., & Reyna, C. (2013). The meaning and role of ideology in system justification and
resistance for high- and low-status people. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 105,
1–23. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032967
Zmigrod, L., Rentfrow, P. J., & Robbins, T. W. (2018). Cognitive underpinnings of nationalistic
ideology in the context of Brexit. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115,
E4532–E4540. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1708960115

Received 29 June 2018; revised version received 29 October 2018