Exposure to benevolent sexism and complementary gender stereotypes: consequences for specific and diffuse forms of system justification

Many have suggested that complementary gender stereotypes of men as agentic (but not communal) and women as communal (but not agentic) serve to increase system justification, but direct experimental support has been lacking. The authors exposed people to specific types of gender-related beliefs and subsequently asked them to complete measures of gender-specific or diffuse system justification. In Studies 1 and 2, activating (a) communal or complementary (communal + agentic) gender stereotypes or (b) benevolent or complementary (benevolent + hostile) sexist items increased support for the status quo among women. In Study 3, activating stereotypes of men as agentic also increased system justification among men and women, but only when women's characteristics were associated with higher status. Results suggest that complementary stereotypes psychologically offset the one-sided advantage of any single group and contribute to an image of society in which everyone benefits through a balanced dispersion of benefits.     

Social inequality and the reduction of ideological dissonance on behalf of the system: evidence of enhanced system justification among the disadvantaged

According to system justification theory, people are motivated to preserve the belief that existing social arrangements are fair, legitimate, justifiable, and necessary. The strongest form of this hypothesis, which draws on the logic of cognitive dissonance theory, holds that people who are most disadvantaged by the status quo would have the greatest psychological need to reduce ideological dissonance and would therefore be most likely to support, defend, and justify existing social systems, authorities, and outcomes. Variations on this hypothesis were tested in five US national survey studies. We found that (a) low‐income respondents and African Americans were more likely than others to support limitations on the rights of citizens and media representatives to criticize the government; (b) low‐income Latinos were more likely to trust in US government officials and to believe that ‘the government is run for the benefit of all’ than were high‐income Latinos; (c) low‐income respondents were more likely than high‐income respondents to believe that large differences in pay are necessary to foster motivation and effort; (d) Southerners in the USA were more likely to endorse meritocratic belief systems than were Northerners and poor and Southern African Americans were more likely to subscribe to meritocratic ideologies than were African Americans who were more affluent and from the North; (e) low‐income respondents and African Americans were more likely than others to believe that economic inequality is legitimate and necessary; and (f) stronger endorsement of meritocratic ideology was associated with greater satisfaction with one's own economic situation. Taken together, these findings are consistent with the dissonance‐based argument that people who suffer the most from a given state of affairs are paradoxically the least likely to question, challenge, reject, or change it. Implications for theories of system justification, cognitive dissonance, and social change are also discussed. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the Grammar of Politics—or Why Conservatives Prefer Nouns

Previous research indicates that political conservatism is associated with epistemic needs for structure and certainty (Jost et al., 2003) and that nouns elicit clearer and more definite perceptions of reality than other parts of speech (Carnaghi et al., 2008). We therefore hypothesized that conservatives would exhibit preferences for nouns (vs. verbs and adjectives), insofar as nouns are better suited to satisfy epistemic needs. In Study 1, we observed that social conservatism was associated with noun preferences in Polish and that personal need for structure accounted for the association between ideology and grammatical preferences. In Study 2, conducted in Arabic, social conservatism was associated with a preference for the use of nominal sentences (composed of nouns only) over verbal sentences (which included verbs and adjectives). In Study 3, we found that more conservative U.S. presidents used greater proportions of nouns in major speeches, and this effect was related to integrative complexity. We discuss the possibility that conservative ideology is linked to grammatical preferences that foster feelings of stability and predictability.     

Authoritarianism as a Group Phenomenon

A model of authoritarianism on a group level of analysis based on Duckitt's concept of authoritarianism is presented. This conceptualization is called group authoritarianism (GA), which is defined as the belief about the appropriate relationship that should exist between groups and their individual members. The process model of group authoritarianism connects traditional authoritarianism theories with the Social Identity Approach. According to this model group-authoritarianism reflects the situation-specific activation of an authoritarian disposition in group contexts. Thus, group authoritarianism provides a perspective according to which personality characteristics and general psychological mechanisms described by Social-Identity Theory (SIT) and Self-Categorization Theory (SCT) interact in predicting intergroup hostility and intergroup discrimination. This article describes the development of a group authoritarianism scale as well as an experimental study that tests the main assumption of the group authoritarianism process model. The results confirm the reliability and validity of the group authoritarianism scales and the main hypothesis of the group authoritarianism model.     

Moral outrage mediates the dampening effect of system justification on support for redistributive social policies

To understand how and why people tolerate ongoing social and economic inequality, we conducted two studies investigating the hypothesis that system justification is associated with reduced emotional distress and a lack of support for helping the disadvantaged. In Study 1, we found that the endorsement of a system-justifying ideology was negatively associated with moral outrage, existential guilt, and support for helping the disadvantaged. In Study 2, the induction of a system-justification mind-set through exposure to "rags-to-riches" narratives decreased moral outrage, negative affect, and therefore intentions to help the disadvantaged. In both studies, moral outrage (outward-focused distress) was found to mediate the dampening effect of system justification on support for redistribution, whereas existential guilt (Study 1) or negative affect in general (Study 2; inward-focused distress) did not. Thus, system-justifying ideology appears to undercut the redistribution of social and economic resources by alleviating moral outrage.     

Application of the Theory of Planned Behavior to Adolescents’ Condom Use: A Panel Study1

The authors report a longitudinal study of factors determining use of condoms with new sexual partners in a representative sample of 650 German youth. Measures derived from the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1985) were obtained in 2 waves separated by 1 year. Consistent with the theory, intentions to use condoms could be predicted from attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control with respect to this behavior; and actual condom use was strongly related to intentions and perceptions of control assessed in Wave 2. Due to changes in beliefs and attitudes over time, only about 10% of the variance in reported condom use was accounted for by intentions and perceived control assessed 1 year earlier. Reported condom use was found to exert a direct effect on later intentions, unmediated by their hypothesized antecedents. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Birth Control Versus AIDS Prevention: A Hierarchical Model of Condom Use Among Young People1

The authors report the results of a nationwide survey of young people in Germany which applied the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1985, 1991) to condom use for purposes of birth control and with new sexual partners (to prevent AIDS). A hierarchical model, in which the 2 functions of condom use were treated as separate 2nd-order factors, was found to be superior to a single-factor model. The hierarchical model also provided evidence for the convergent and discriminant validities of indicators used to assess the constructs in the theory of planned behavior. Attitudes, subjective norms, and perceptions of behavioral control all made significant contributions to the predictions of intentions, accounting for 62.0% and 70.9% of the variance for birth control and AIDS prevention, respectively. Perceived behavioral control carried most of the weight in the former prediction, while attitudes carried most of the weight in the latter. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Complementary justice: effects of "poor but happy" and "poor but honest" stereotype exemplars on system justification and implicit activation of the justice motive

It was hypothesized that exposure to complementary representations of the poor as happier and more honest than the rich would lead to increased support for the status quo. In Study 1, exposure to "poor but happy" and "rich but miserable" stereotype exemplars led people to score higher on a general measure of system justification, compared with people who were exposed to noncomplementary exemplars. Study 2 replicated this effect with "poor but honest" and "rich but dishonest" complementary stereotypes. In Studies 3 and 4, exposure to noncomplementary stereotype exemplars implicitly activated justice concerns, as indicated by faster reaction times to justice-related than neutral words in a lexical decision task. Evidence also suggested that the Protestant work ethic may moderate the effects of stereotype exposure on explicit system justification (but not implicit activation).