Social hierarchies and system justification

Prejudice and social cognition

Hey all,

Welcome to Human Nature, the illustrated psychology newsletter.

Last time, we explored the way social identity forms part of our self-concept and how our level of group identification relates to discriminatory attitudes towards the outgroup.

Today we will dive into how people’s beliefs about their place in the social hierarchy and about the prevailing system relate to conflict and discrimination.

Social hierarchies and system justification

In every society, there exist social hierarchies that place the different groups that form it on a social standing in relation to each other. In most cases, majority groups have the advantage over the minorities, even though this isn’t always the case (for example, in the case of gender-based hierarchies). The level of conflict and discrimination between groups depends on people’s beliefs about both the legitimacy of their group’s status and its stability.

Tajfel and Turner (1979) argued that when people engage in social comparison, if they believe their group’s status is illegitimate and unstable (as in, that it can be changed), that’s when intergroup conflict is most likely to occur as low-status groups will be motivated to challenge the status quo. Although this can be a good thing and lead to social change, it can also reinforce the high-status group’s ingroup bias and help legitimise their status (Scheepers, Spears, Doosje & Manstead, 2006).

However, for members of low-status groups, social change is not the only option. There’s also the possibility of moving into the higher-status group—if the group allows it, that is. In other words, rather than fighting to improve the social standing of their entire group, individuals can try and bolster their identity by simply joining the winning team. Indeed, experiments have shown that this is most people’s preferred strategy even when the chances of upwards mobility are slim. It is only when chances of individual mobility are non-existent that people begin to push for social change (Wright, Taylor & Moghaddam, 1990; Reicher & Haslam, 2006).

System justification theory takes this outgroup favouritism tendency one step further and argues that some members of low-status groups are actually motivated to justify the system which puts their group at a disadvantage (Jost & Banaji, 1994). According to the authors of the theory, this is the only way to explain why certain members of low-status groups participate in negative stereotypes of their own group. It is thought that system justification increases when the social system is threatened or challenged, when that system is seen as strongly established or inevitable, and when people feel powerless against and dependent on the system (Jost, 2020).

Thank you for reading, see you next time.

Sources:

Social comparison and group interest in ingroup favouritism. (Tajfel & Turner, 1979).

Diversity in in-group bias: Structural factors, situational features, and social functions. (Scheepers, Spears, Doosje & Manstead, 2006).

Responding to membership in a disadvantaged group : from acceptance to collective protest. (Wright, Taylor & Moghaddam, 1990).

Rethinking the psychology of tyranny: the BBC prison study. (Reicher & Haslam, 2006).

A Theory of System Justification: A Précis. Why do we defend, bolster, and justify unjust social systems? (Jost, 2020).

It seems as if no matter how much progress is made on the path towards equality and tolerance, prejudice and discrimination stubbornly persist all across the world. However, in order to combat prejudice, we must first understand how it works. In this series of Human Nature, we explore the mechanisms behind prejudiced thinking and behaviour through the lens of social psychology.