System Justification Theory

Historical Background and Outline

The origins of the social-psychological notion that people are motivated to believe that they live in an orderly, predictable, and just world can be traced to the 1950s and 1960s. One line of research important to the development of system justification theory concerned cognitive dissonance. According to this theory, people have a general need to bring their beliefs about what is correct into conformity with objective reality (as they encounter it) and will work to reduce dissonance either by modifying their beliefs or by attempting to modify reality. A second line of research, on the belief in a just world, suggested further that people are eager to convince themselves that beneficiaries are deserving of their benefits and victims are deserving of their suffering.

System justification theory builds on insights gained from research on cognitive dissonance and just world perspectives. According to cognitive dissonance theory, people who are most deprived should have the strongest needs to reduce dissonance and therefore to justify their own suffering. Indeed, system justification researchers have found that members of disadvantaged groups sometimes provide even stronger support for the social system and its authorities than do members of advantaged groups. In addition to extending and elaborating on insights of cognitive dissonance and just world theorists, system justification theorists address an even broader set of rationalizing mechanisms that are used to bolster the status quo, including stereotypes and full-fledged ideological belief systems as well as online appraisals that are used to justify specific events. The theory not only takes into account post hoc rationalizations of events for which people feel personally responsible, as also hypothesized by cognitive dissonance and just world theories, but also the rationalization of unintended (as well as intended) consequences of one's own behavior and the behavior of powerful others. Furthermore, the theory helps to explain how and why people come to embrace outcomes that were initially resisted or opposed as well as social and political events that appear to be inevitable but have not yet occurred.

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