According to SJT, people are driven by a system-oriented conscious or unconscious need to “protect, maintain, and prove existing social, economic, and political systems and arrangements” (Jost and Kay, 2010, p. 1148), which represents a kind of Different types of human motivation because it can only maintain the status quo (Jost and Banaji, 1994, p. 10). System principle theory attempts to understand how and why people provide cognitive and ideological support for the status quo, and what are the social and psychological consequences of maintaining the status quo, especially for members of disadvantaged groups (eg Jost & Banaji, 1994; Jost & Burgess, 2000 ). [Sources: 2, 4]
In Justification Theory, John Yost argues that we are motivated to defend the status quo because, in doing so, we satisfy basic psychological needs for confidence, security, and social acceptance. Systems rationale theory refers to the socio-psychological tendency to defend and strengthen the status quo, that is, to see it as good, just, legitimate, and desirable. According to the original formulation of the SJT (Jost and Banaji, 1994) and its subsequent refinements (for example, Jost et al., 2004), this system-oriented motivation seems to be rooted in epistemic needs (for example, to avoid uncertainty), existential needs (for example, to reduce stress and threat) and relationship needs (for example, to accept shared realities; Jost et al., 2008), which is most pronounced when people crave predictability and / or confidence within a strong system on which they depend (Jost, 2017). [Sources: 2, 4]
Systems rationale theory argues that people have a strong motivation to see themselves, their social groups and structures that favorably affect their lives, and therefore they tend to view prevailing status hierarchies as fundamentally fair. In short, according to SIMSA’s explanations, there is evidence that the system’s justifying effect may be an attempt by the disadvantaged to protect, defend and strengthen their social identity. The SJT postulates that an underlying ideology motivates justifying social order in a way that fosters an often unconscious belief in inferiority among people from disadvantaged groups [3]. This assumes that people are motivated to defend, justify, accept, rationalize and support the social, political and economic systems in which they live and work (Jost, 2020). [Sources: 2, 3, 4]
Therefore, when the status quo persists (that is, economic inequality increases), liberals show more zero-sum thinking, and when the status quo (that is, reduced social inequality) is questioned, conservatives show more zero-sum thinking. thinking. Similarly, studies 5A and 5B show that challenging the status quo to express problems will enhance conservatives’ zero-sum thinking, while maintaining the existing social structure to express problems will enhance liberals’ thinking. We predict that even considering the same issues, conservatives will show more zero-sum thinking than liberals when it comes to challenging the status quo, but when the status quo persists, the situation is the opposite. Instead, people focus on extreme dominance to justify punishment of female agents, and extreme weakness or inactivity to justify punishment of atypical men, because these gender rules legitimize and strengthen the gender status quo. . [Sources: 0, 7]
Although compared with liberals, conservatives are less likely to view the economic status quo as a zero sum, but they are more likely to view society’s challenges to the status quo as such [(101) = 0.61, <0.001]. Therefore, in Study 2, we studied the relationship between ideology and zero-sum thinking about social issues (the status quo in the United States is often questioned) and economic issues (the status quo is usually kept unchanged). People often defend the existing social system, which seems to be self-contradictory, even if it has individual and collective costs [1]. Since the justification system operates based on personal fear and lack of self-esteem, for example, if the narcissist believes that he is gaining personal gain, that is, he has the opportunity to rise to the highest level, it will encourage the narcissist to defend the hierarchy [19]. [Sources: 3, 7]
Change is especially difficult if there is an ideological system that proclaims an authoritarian culture of inequality, which, according to the SJT, tends to become entrenched as a culture of justification [6]. The nation’s connection with God further strengthens people’s confidence in the justification of the system [7]. However, the ongoing debate around this phenomenon is now focused on why the underprivileged generally remain so. [Sources: 3, 4]
It is important to understand the point of view of individuals on the significance and scale of systems, since they can serve as justifiers of systems of different degrees in relation to different systems [1]. Hence, it stresses the motivation of workers to maintain a social hierarchy (that is, our structure is motivational, not just cognitive). Rather, workers see the actor refuting stereotypes (especially their status components) as a violation of prescriptive and / or prescriptive rules; consequently, perceivers feel entitled to unleash their own prejudices and punish the atypical actor. [Sources: 0, 3]
In contrast, the backlash prevention model argues that people cannot do their best because a justified fear of social rejection undermines the perceived right and optimal self-regulation flame (high promotion, low warning). The preference is given to existing social, economic and political agreements, and the alternatives are denigrated, sometimes even to the detriment of individual and collective interests. [Sources: 0, 1]
First, the SIH specifically proposes that the violation of status, rather than any violation of roles or stereotypes, should provoke backlash. Courtesy bias – The tendency to express a more socially correct opinion about your true opinion so as not to offend someone. The tripping effect is the tendency to do (or believe) something because many other people do (or believe) the same thing. [Sources: 0, 1]
Irrational escalation is a phenomenon in which people justify an increase in investment based on previous cumulative investment despite new evidence that the decision was probably wrong. However, these theories overlap as they both focus on how stereotypical anxiety undermines people’s ability to give their best, even when it’s critical. The ambiguity effect is the tendency to avoid options for which the likelihood of a favorable outcome is unknown. [Sources: 0, 1]
— Slimane Zouggari
##### Sources #####
[0]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/systems-justification-theory
[1]: https://www.nextstageradicals.net/blog/cognitive-biases-hold-back-organisational-learning/
[2]: http://lex-biuro.pl/9zb5niis/social-justification-theory
[3]: https://mathias-sager.medium.com/why-people-justify-social-systems-that-disadvantage-them-58b9d9baf3de?source=post_internal_links———2——————————-
[4]: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00040/full
[5]: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3792282
[6]: https://econtent.hogrefe.com/doi/10.1027/2151-2604/a000299
[7]: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aay3761