Situationist Contributor John T. Jost and his co-authors Lindsay E. Rankin and Cheryl J. Wakslak recently published a fascinating article, titled “System Justification and the Meaning of Life: Are the Existential Benefits of Ideology Distributed Unequally Across Racial Groups?” 22, Social Justice Research 312 (2009). Here’s the abstract.
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In this research, we investigated the relations among system justification, religiosity, and subjective well-being in a sample of nationally representative low-income respondents in the United States. We hypothesized that ideological endorsement of the status quo would be associated with certain existential and other psychological benefits, but these would not necessarily be evenly distributed across racial groups. Results revealed that religiosity was positively associated with subjective well-being in general, but the relationship between system justification and well-being varied considerably as a function of racial group membership. For low-income European Americans, stronger endorsement of system justification as an ideology was associated with increased positive affect, decreased negative affect, and a wide range of existential benefits, including life satisfaction and a subjective sense of security, meaning, and mastery. These findings are consistent with the notion that system justification satisfies psychological needs for personal control and serves a palliative function for its adherents. However, many of these effects were considerably weakened or even reversed for African American respondents. Thus, the psychological benefits associated with religiosity existed for both racial groups, whereas the benefits of system justification were distributed unequally across racial groups.
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To read a sample of related Situationist posts, see “John Jost Speaks about His Own Research,” “The Situation of Ideology – Part I,” “The Situation of Ideology – Part II,” “Ideology is Back!,” “A System-Justification Primer,” “Barbara Ehrenreich on the Sources of and Problems with Dispositionism,” “The Motivated Situation of Inequality and Discrimination,” “John Jost on System Justification Theory,” “John Jost’s “System Justification and the Law” – Video,”
To review other Situationist posts about system justification or ideology, click here or here respectively.
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