Jost, John (1968-)

The works of John Jost—labeled and bound together by the theory of system justification—address the perception, maintenance, and passing on of existing social arrangements. Their key problem is the relationship of the individual to society as a whole, including the order and structure that constitute the background of the individual's relationship to his or her society, group, and self-concept.

Although John Jost was born in Canada, his experiences and schooling are American. It is indispensable to an understanding of his career to know that his father is a respected philosopher specializing in moral philosophy. John Jost also received a master's degree in philosophy, after receiving a bachelor's degree in psychology. His interest in philosophy manifests itself in many written reflections, as he reaches for Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Marx as intellectual resources, and in the openness with which Jost greets the developments of European social psychology.

Before finishing his philosophical studies, Jost matriculated at Yale University, where he became the last doctoral student of William J. McGuire. Jost's strong attachment to McGuire was highly facilitating: Jost found a tutor of social and political psychology who had a deep philosophical education, who was always thinking at a systems level of analysis, who proceeded very consciously in terms of methodology, and who was a firm proponent of empirical research.

The central idea of Jost's thesis was first published in 1994, a year before the defense of his dissertation. A special issue of the British Journal of Social Psychology devoted to stereotypes published his penetrating analysis (coauthored with Mahzarin Banaji) concerning the role of stereotyping in system justification and the production of false consciousness. The theory of system justification has contributed much to a functional analysis and characterization of stereotypes by highlighting their role in legitimizing the societal status quo.

After receiving his PhD at Yale University, Jost conducted postdoctoral research with Arie Kruglanski at the University of Maryland and then with Brenda Major at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He taught organizational behavior at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University between 1997 and 2003. After that, he became professor of social psychology at New York University.

Jost and a great number of collaborators have made significant and accelerating progress in determining, exposing, and clarifying the nature of system justification during the past 15 years. He pays special attention to the typical situation in which—under varying types of social relationships—people who are in a disadvantageous situation accept the inequalities of the system, rationalize their own disadvantageous situation to themselves and others, and acknowledge the superiority of those who are in a more favorable position. Jost reveals and interprets this phenomenon, applying it to better understand certain manifestations of psychological and political conservatism. During his research, the social applications and empirical tests of the theory are becoming more substantial and variegated, spanning the analysis of culture, ethnicity, power, economic organization, and political ideology.