A System Justification Theory of Entrepreneurial Attitudinal Change During a Crisis

Entrepreneurship resilience during a crisis is an important research area. However, prior research has not examined cognitive antecedents of entrepreneurial resilience. Using the 2014 oil price crisis in the Middle East as a natural experiment, we draw on system justification theory to understand why and how entrepreneurs differ in the extent of their attitudinal changes toward corruption. We find foreign entrepreneurs substantially increased their willingness to engage in corruption whereas local entrepreneurs did not. Among foreign entrepreneurs, corruption willingness increases more among those from countries where corruption is not the norm, than those from more corrupt home countries.

Do Members of Disadvantaged Groups Explain Group Status With Group Stereotypes?

Recent research on group attitudes in members of disadvantaged groups has provided evidence that group evaluations closely align with societal stigma, reflecting outgroup favoritism in members of those groups that are most strongly stigmatized. While outgroup favoritism is clearly evident among some groups, there is still debate about the psychological mechanisms underlying outgroup favoritism. The current research focuses on a less intensively examined aspect of outgroup favoritism, namely the use of status-legitimizing group stereotypes. We present data from members of four disadvantaged groups (i.e., persons who self-categorize as gay or lesbian, n = 205; Black or African American, n = 209; overweight n = 200, or are aged 60–75 years n = 205), who reported the perceived status of their ingroup and a comparison majority outgroup and provided explanations for their status perceptions. Contrary to assumptions from System Justification Theory, participants rarely explained perceived group status differences with group stereotypes, whereas they frequently explained ingroup disadvantage with perceived stigmatization and/or systemic reasons. Further exploratory analyses indicated that participants’ status explanations were related to measures of intergroup attitudes, ideological beliefs, stigma consciousness, and experienced discrimination. Our results highlight the need to develop a better understanding whether, under what circumstances, and with which consequences members of disadvantaged groups use group stereotypes as attributions of ingroup status and status differences.

Obstacles to Birth Surname Retention Upon Marriage: How Do Hostile Sexism and System Justification Predict Support for Marital Surname Change Among Women?

Despite the ongoing shift in societal norms and gender-discriminatory practices toward more equality, many heterosexual women worldwide, including in many Western societies, choose to replace their birth surname with the family name of their spouse upon marriage. Previous research has demonstrated that the adherence to sexist ideologies (i.e., a system of discriminatory gender-based beliefs) among women is associated with their greater endorsement of practices and policies that maintain gender inequality. By integrating the ideas from the system justification theory and the ambivalent sexism theory, we proposed that the more women adhere to hostile and benevolent sexist beliefs, the more likely they would be to justify existing gender relations in society, which in turn, would positively predict their support for traditional, husband-centered marital surname change. We further argued that hostile (as compared to benevolent) sexism could act as a particularly strong direct predictor of the support for marital surname change among women. We tested these possibilities across three cross-sectional studies conducted among women in Turkey (Study 1, N=118, self-identified feminist women; Study 2, N=131, female students) and the United States (Study 3, N=140, female students). Results of Studies 1 and 3 revealed that higher adherence to hostile (but not benevolent) sexism was associated with higher support for marital surname change indirectly through higher gender-based system justification. In Study 2, the hypothesized full mediation was not observed. Consistent with our predictions, in all three studies, hostile (but not benevolent) sexism was found to be a direct positive predictor of the support for marital surname change among women. We discuss the role of dominant ideologies surrounding marriage and inegalitarian naming conventions in different cultures as obstacles to women’s birth surname retention upon marriage.

“The New State That We Are Building”: Authoritarianism and System-Justification in an Illiberal Democracy

The authoritarian personality is characterized by unquestionining obedience and respect to authority. System justification theory (SJT) argues that people are motivated to defend, bolster, and justify aspects of existing social, economic, and political systems. Commitment to the status quo is also a key characteristic of the authoritarian personality. It can be argued that the social context matters for how an underlying latent authoritarian character is expressed. This means that authoritarian regimes could be expected to lead to increased authoritarianism and stronger system-justification. We investigated this hypothesis in two representative samples of Hungarians, collected before (2010) and after (2018) 8 years of Fidesz’ rule (N = 1,000 in both samples). Moreover, the strong version of SJT argues that members of disadvantaged groups are likely to experience the most cognitive dissonance and that the need to reduce this dissonance makes them the most supportive of the status quo. This argument dovetails nicely with claims made by the political opposition to Fidesz, according to which Fidesz is especially popular among low-status members of society. We found that measures assessing authoritarian tendencies did not change between 2010 and 2018. However, more specific beliefs and attitudes did change, and these effects were especially pronounced among Fidesz supporters. Their belief in a just world and a just system has grown stronger, while their attitudes toward migrants had hardened. Low status was associated with lower levels of system-justifying ideologies. However, low status Fidesz voters justified the system more than high status opposition voters in 2018, lending some support for the strong version of SJT. Our results suggest that beliefs and attitudes of Hungarians have changed between 2010 and 2018, and that political leadership played a crucial role in this.

Heteronormativity and the Justification of Gender Hierarchy: Investigating the Archival Data From 16 European Countries

Within the framework of the System Justification Theory, this study tested on the archival data from 16 European countries the general hypothesis that homonegativity (HN), as an expression of gender binarism and heteronormativity, works as a legitimizing myth of gender hierarchy. Specifically, we hypothesized that (1) system justification (SJ) would positively relate to HN and (2) this relation would depend on the country level of gender hierarchy, (3) on the gender of respondents, and (4) on the interaction between gender hierarchy and gender. We selected the Gender Equality Index (GEI) as an indicator of the gender hierarchy of the country system and the items from the European Social Survey-Round 9 (ESS-9) as the indicators of the gender of respondents and the levels of SJ and HN. The Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) partially confirmed the hypotheses, suggesting HN to work as a blatant prejudice and being more viable as a legitimizing myth in females from countries with higher gender hierarchy and in males from more gender-equal countries. In both cases, HN serves as a myth to justify the ontological premise of participants that the world is fair and to counteract the cognitive dissonance generated by the perception of a gender-unequal system (in the case of a woman) or by the perception of a gender-equal system that can threaten gender privileges (in the case of a man).

“He was Drugged up on Something...” Portrayals of Drugs and Violence on Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) as System Justification

We conducted a content analysis of the first two and last two seasons of the popular crime drama Crime Scene Investigation ( CSI), to determine the extent to which depictions of the intersection of substance use and violence were consistent with research. Using the lens of system justification theory, we find that CSI focuses on aspects of crime that preserve the status quo, specifically it overemphasizes the negative impact of illicit substances as opposed to legal substances (such as alcohol), and it emphasizes the psychopharmacological role of drugs in violent crime compared to systemic violence related to the illegality of drug markets, even though research demonstrates that systemic violence makes up a large proportion of substance-related homicides. Despite significant changes in drug policy that occurred during the time that CSI was on the air, we find these portrayals are largely unchanged between episodes that were broadcast between 2000–2002 versus those that aired 2014–2015.

Beliefs on Sexual Violence in the Context of System Justification Theory: The Role of Hostile Sexism and Beliefs in Biological Origins of Gender Differences

Estimates suggest that around 20% of women may have experienced rape. Various misconceptions about rape (i.e., rape myths) are closely related to victim blaming. In our studies we tested the link between system justification, beliefs in biological origins of gender differences, ambivalent sexism and beliefs concerning sexual violence. Study 1 was conducted among 433 Polish students. The sequential mediation analysis suggests that system justification predicts the level of rape myth acceptance through beliefs in biological origins of gender differences and then hostile (but not benevolent) sexism. In Study 2, conducted among 197 Polish students, we tested the relationship between beliefs in biological origins of gender differences and beliefs concerning sexual violence using experimental design. Contrary to our expectations, students who read the text about social origins of gender differences perceived the survivor of a hypothetical acquaintance rape as less credible, and proposed a lower sentence for a stranger rape perpetrator, compared to participants who read about biological origins of gender differences. We suspect that this is due to experiencing reactance when confronted with social explanations of gender differences. We discuss implications for research and policy.

The influence of in-group and out-group favouritism on the disciplinary practice of ethnic majority and minority preservice teachers

Teacher judgments and the disciplinary sanctioning of pupils can be understood as a function of the ethnic match, which means whether or not teachers and pupils have the same ethnic background. According to social identity theory, teachers should be motivated to protect positive self-esteem and therefore favour pupils of their ethnic in-group over pupils of their ethnic out-group. Following system justification theory however, it must be assumed that teachers also base their judgments and their disciplinary behaviour on the acceptance of social hierarchies. According to this theory, ethnic minority teachers should therefore favour ethnic majority pupils over ethnic minority pupils. We test these hypotheses by conducting an experimental study among 196 preservice teachers. The results suggest that ethnic majority participants do not discriminate against ethnic minority pupils. However, although ethnic minority participants seem to explicitly favour their in-group, they also implicitly tend to have more negative stereotypes about them. Moreover, the more negative explicit and implicit stereotypes ethnic minority participants have against pupils of their in-group, the more severely they punish pupils of their out-group. This could suggest that ethnic minority participants felt the desire to compensate for a negative view of their in-group by treating their out-group more harshly.

A new, established approach to managing misbehavior: system justification theory

PurposeThe status quo for managing deviant workplace behavior is underperforming. The current research offers a new approach for scholars and managers in approaching these misbehaviors. Namely, we outline how system justification theory, which holds that people are motivated to rationalize and justify the systems—including workplaces—to which they belong even when those systems disadvantage them or others, offers value in explaining and addressing the prevalence of such misbehaviors and contemporary failures in managing them.Design/methodology/approachThis conceptual research explores the situated role of onlookers to patterns of workplace misbehavior, like harassment. We explore existing scholarship on why and how onlookers respond to such actions, including cultural elements, and draw parallels between those accounts and the foundational concepts of system justification theory to demonstrate an unrealized theoretical overlap valuable for its immediate applications in research.FindingsThe current paper establishes clear links between system justification theory and efforts to manage misbehavior, establishing system justifications as freezing forces in the culture of a workplace that must be unfrozen to successfully implement strategies for managing misbehavior. Further, we describe how organizational onlookers to misbehavior are subject to system justifications, which limit prescribed means of stopping these patterns of wrongdoing.Originality/valueVery limited organizational scholarship has utilized system justification theory, despite calls for such applications. Given the existing shortcomings in scholarship and management approaches to workplace misbehavior, the current research breaks from the status quo and offers an established theory as a new way to approach these misbehaviors.

System Threat during a Pandemic: How Conspiracy Theories Help to Justify the System

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people have endorsed conspiracy theories about foreign governments yet shown increased trust and support for their own government. Whether there is a potential correlation between these social phenomena and the psychological mechanisms behind them is still unclear. Integrating insights from the existential threat model of conspiracy theories and system justification theory, two experimental studies were conducted to investigate whether belief in out-group conspiracy theories can play a mediating role in the effects of system threat on people's system justification beliefs against the background of the pandemic. The results show that system threat positively predicts individuals’ system-justifying belief, and belief in out-group conspiracy theories mediated this relationship.