Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-qc88w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-04T04:23:09.281Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What's so insidious about “Peace, Love, and Understanding”? A system justification perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2012

John T. Jost ,
Chadly Stern  and
David A. Kalkstein
John T. Jost
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY 10003. john.jost@nyu.edu http://www.psych.nyu.edu/psychology.html cds330@nyu.edu dak414@nyu.edu
Chadly Stern
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY 10003. john.jost@nyu.edu http://www.psych.nyu.edu/psychology.html cds330@nyu.edu dak414@nyu.edu
David A. Kalkstein
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY 10003. john.jost@nyu.edu http://www.psych.nyu.edu/psychology.html cds330@nyu.edu dak414@nyu.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We agree that promoting intergroup harmony “carries insidious, often unacknowledged, ‘system-justifying’ consequences” (sect. 4.1.3, para. 2) and identify several ways in which “benevolent” and “complementary” stereotypes, superordinate identification, intergroup contact, and prejudice reduction techniques can undermine social change motivation by reinforcing system-justifying beliefs. This may “keep the peace,” but it also prevents individuals and groups from tackling serious social problems, including inequality and oppression.

Information

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 35 , Issue 6 , December 2012 , pp. 438 - 439
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Allport, G. (1954) The nature of prejudice. Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Ashburn-Nardo, L., Knowles, M. L. & Monteith, M. J. (2003) Black Americans' implicit racial associations and their implications for inter-group judgment. Social Cognition 21:61–87.Google Scholar
Becker, J. C. & Wright, S. C. (2011) Yet another dark side of chivalry: Benevolent sexism undermines and hostile sexism motivates collective action for social change. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 101:62–77.Google Scholar
Calogero, R. M. & Jost, J. T. (2011) Self-subjugation among women: Exposure to sexist ideology, self-objectification, and the protective function of the need to avoid closure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 100:211–28.Google Scholar
Cheung, R. M., Noel, S. & Hardin, C. D. (2011) Adopting the system-justifying attitudes of others: Effects of trivial interpersonal connections in the context of social inclusion and exclusion. Social Cognition 29:255–69.Google Scholar
Dovidio, J. F., Gaertner, S. L. & Saguy, T. (2009) Commonality and the complexity of “we”: Social attitudes and social change. Personality and Social Psychology Review 13:3–20.Google Scholar
Glick, P. & Fiske, S. T. (2001) An ambivalent alliance: Hostile and benevolent sexism as complementary justifications for gender inequality. American Psychologist 56:109–18.Google Scholar
Henry, P. J. & Hardin, C. D. (2006) The contact hypothesis revisited: Status bias in the reduction of implicit prejudice in the United States and Lebanon. Psychological Science 17:862–68.Google Scholar
Jackman, M. R. (1994) The velvet glove: Paternalism and conflict in gender, class, and race relations. University of California Press.Google Scholar
Jost, J. T. (2001) Outgroup favoritism and the theory of system justification: An experimental paradigm for investigating the effects of socio-economic success on stereotype content. In: Cognitive social psychology: The Princeton symposium on the legacy and future of social cognition, ed. Moskowitz, G., pp. 89–102. Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Jost, J. T., Banaji, M. R. & Nosek, B. A. (2004) A decade of system justification theory: Accumulated evidence of conscious and unconscious bolstering of the status quo. Political Psychology 25:881–919.Google Scholar
Jost, J. T., Chaikalis-Petritsis, V., Abrams, D., Sidanius, J., van der Toorn, J. & Bratt, C. (2012) Why men (and women) do and don't rebel: System justification on the willingness to protest. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 38:197–208.Google Scholar
Jost, J. T. & Hamilton, D. L. (2005) Stereotypes in our culture. In: On the nature of prejudice: Fifty years after Allport, ed. Dovidio, J., Glick, P. & Rudman, L., pp. 208–24. Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jost, J. T. & Hunyady, O. (2002) The psychology of system justification and the palliative function of ideology. European Review of Social Psychology 13:111–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jost, J. T. & Kay, A. C. (2005) Exposure to benevolent sexism and complementary gender stereotypes: Consequences for specific and diffuse forms of system justification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88:498–509.Google Scholar
Jost, J. T., Kivetz, Y., Rubini, M., Guermandi, G. & Mosso, C. (2005) System-justifying functions of complementary regional and ethnic stereotypes: Cross-national evidence. Social Justice Research 18:305–33.Google Scholar
Kay, A. C. & Jost, J. T. (2003) Complementary justice: Effects of “poor but happy” and “poor but honest” stereotype exemplars on system justification and implicit activation of the justice motive. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 85:823–37.Google Scholar
Kay, A. C., Jost, J. T. & Young, S. (2005) Victim derogation and victim enhancement as alternate routes to system justification. Psychological Science 16:240–46.Google Scholar
Kay, A. C., Jost, J. T., Mandisodza, A. N., Sherman, S. J., Petrocelli, J. V. & Johnson, A. L. (2007) Panglossian ideology in the service of system justification: How complementary stereotypes help us to rationalize inequality. In: Advances in experimental social psychology, vol. 38, ed. Zanna, M. P., pp. 305–58. Academic Press.Google Scholar
Pettigrew, T. F. & Tropp, L. (2006) A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90:751–83.Google Scholar
Saguy, T. & Chernyak-Hai, L. (2012) Intergroup contact can undermine disadvantaged group members' attributions to discrimination. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48:714–20.Google Scholar
Saguy, T., Tausch, N., Dovidio, J. F. & Pratto, F. (2009) The irony of harmony: Intergroup contact can produce false expectations for equality. Psychological Science 20:114–21.Google Scholar
Wright, S. C., Taylor, D. M. & Moghaddam, F. M. (1990) Responding to membership in a disadvantaged group: From acceptance to collective protest. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 58:994–1003.Google Scholar