Eva A. Garcia Ferres & Matthew Baldwin
When We Legitimize Bad Systems: Distinguishing Tacit and Bolstering Forms of System Justification
Contact at: egarciaferres@ufl.edu
A substantial portion of the System Justification literature has conflated the legitimation of the status quo with positive evaluations of socio-political systems. We propose a distinction between people鈥檚 opinions on how good or bad a system is (system evaluation) and how willing they are to support, or challenge said system (motivation orientation). This distinction allows us to distinguish between people who are motivated to support a system they view as positive (bolstering system justification), and those who are motivated to support a system they deem harmful (tacit system justification). In two pre-registered correlational studies (N = 320) we find evidence for this 2-dimensional map of system evaluations and motivation orientations. Only participants with a negative evaluation of the system and a motive to challenge the status quo report a significantly lower tendency to tacitly justify the system. In addition, we find evidence for the differentiation of bolstering and tacit forms of system justification, whereby the former predicts higher subjective well-being, and the latter predicts greater hopelessness for social change and lack of personal control over the system. Our research informs how people think about the status quo, and why they may often stand behind harmful systems. In addition, our results highlight the limited conditions under which people may challenge the status quo.
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