jost_j_t_kay_a_c_thorisdottir_n_social_and_psychological_bas

least sometimes, the uncertainty management model may better predict cultural worldview defense than a viable alternative model. I now turn to a discussion of these findings.

UNCERTAINTY AND TERROR MANAGEMENT

The uncertainty management model provides an important social psychological explanation of people’s reactions to violations and bolstering of their cultural worldviews. However, when developing a theoretical framework (and our work is clearly work in progress), it is crucial to test the model against other accounts. In a 2005 publication, we set out to achieve this goal (Van den Bos et al., 2005). Toward this end, we contrasted the predictions of uncertainty management theories, suggesting that personal uncertainty is one of the key determinants of people’s reactions toward transgressions and upholding of cultural norms and values, with another important framework that I admire and that has been very important for the understanding of ideology and system justification: TMT. An extensive review of this theoretical framework is beyond the limits of this chapter, and I refer the reader to Anson et al. (this volume) and other published reviews to gain further insight into the details of TMT (see, e.g., Greenberg, Solomon, & Pyszczynski, 1997; Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 1999; Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 1991). This section focuses on one of the core topics of the theory: namely, that TMT highlights the impact of mortality salience as a key antecedent of people’s reactions to upholding and violations of cultural norms and values (see, e.g., Greenberg et al., 1997; Rosenblatt et al., 1989).

Combining insights from the terror management studies we conducted (Van den Bos & Miedema, 2000) with insights from our earlier work on the social psychology of fairness judgments (e.g., Van den Bos, Lind, Vermunt, & Wilke, 1997; Van den Bos, Wilke, & Lind, 1998) led to the proposition that important elements of TMT seemed to fit into a broader framework of uncertainty management (Van den Bos, 2004; Van den Bos & Lind, 2002). Furthermore, this proposition converged with ideas aired in other papers published around the same time (especially Martin, 1999; McGregor et al., 2001). I argued, therefore, that it would be interesting to investigate within one experimental set-up the impact on worldview defense reactions of both uncertainty and mortality salience, the latter being another, perhaps even more influential antecedent of people’s reactions toward transgressions and upholding of cultural norms and values (cf. Greenberg et al., 1997; Pyszczynski et al., 1999; Solomon et al., 1991).

In fact, the manipulation described earlier to make personal uncertainty salient in experiments (van den Bos, 2001) was inspired by the mortality salience

manipulations most often used in terror management studies. That is, in most previousterrormanagementstudies,participantsinmortalitysalientconditions are asked to respond to two open-ended questions concerning their thoughts and feelings about their death (e.g.,Arndt, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Schimel, 1999; Dechesne et al., 2000; Greenberg et al., 1990; Harmon-Jones, Simon, Greenberg, Pyszczynski, Solomon, & McGregor, 1997; Van den Bos & Miedema, 2000): “Please briefly describe the emotions that the thought of your death arouses in you,” and “Please write down, as specifically as you can, what you think physically will happen to you as you die.”

In all five experiments reported (Van den Bos et al., 2005), we compared conditions in which participants were asked to complete the two mortality questions with conditions in which they were asked the two questions pertaining to personal uncertainty (Van den Bos, 2001). By replacing “death” with “uncertain” in the most commonly used manipulations of mortality salience, and leaving everything else the same, the uncertainty salience conditions were constructed in such a way that they very closely resembled the mortality salience conditions. As a result, the influence these two types of conditions may have on people’s reactions toward transgressions and upholding of important cultural norms and values could be investigated in a scientifically important way to yield a very clean comparison between the two types of conditions. In two of the experiments, we also had a third condition in which participants thought about watching television (an issue that typically does not induce mortality or uncertainty thoughts among student participants and that did not instigate these thoughts among our participants).

In all five experiments, the salience manipulation was followed by having participants respond to worldview-supportive or worldview-threatening experiences. In some experiments, this constituted experiences of fair or unfair treatment, such as giving or withholding voice from participants or having them respond to accurate or inaccurate procedures. Earlier research findings had shown that both mortality salience (Van den Bos & Miedema, 2000) and uncertainty salience (Van den Bos, 2001) may moderate people’s affective reactions toward fair and unfair events. In other experiments, participants read and responded to articles in which a student from an important rival university was either positive or negative about the participants’ own university. Earlier terror management research had suggested that praise of students’ own university constitutes a bolstering of their cultural worldviews, whereas criticism of the university represents a violation of participants’ worldviews, and had shown that mortality salience moderates students’ reactions to praise and criticism pertaining to their university (e.g., Dechesne et al., 2000).

In all experiments, we assessed participants’ affective reactions to the worldview-supportive or worldview-threatening experiences. In some of our experiments, we also measured to what extent participants agreed or disagreed with the opinions aired in the articles or during the fairness experiences. Agreement or disagreement with opinions aired often is used in terror management research to assess worldview defense (see, e.g., Dechesne et al., 2000).

What is interesting is that all five experiments reported (Van den Bos et al., 2005) show that both mortality and uncertainty salience influence people’s reactions to violations and bolstering of their cultural worldviews, yielding evidence for both terror and uncertainty management theories. Interestingly, the five experiments consistently reveal that uncertainty salience has a bigger impact on people’s reactions than mortality salience. The consistent findings of all five experiments indicate that mortality salience is important in predicting people’s reactions to cultural worldview defense, but that uncertainty salience can be even more important—and, in fact, was more important in all studies presented (Van den Bos et al., 2005). The results thus provide supportive evidence for uncertainty management model’s reasoning that uncertainty-related thought is a key cause of people’s reactions toward events that bolster or threaten people’s cultural worldviews, and even suggest (see also Martin, 1999; McGregor et al., 2001) that uncertainty salience, at least sometimes, can be a more important cause of people’s reactions to these experiences than a strong other account (viz. TMT).

Even more interestingly, in all five experiments, uncertainty salience did not instigate death-related thoughts. Furthermore, in four out of five experiments, we found that, among participants in whom mortality salience spontaneously triggered uncertainty-related thought, reactions were more strongly influenced by the fairness or ingroup information manipulations. In contrast, for participants in whom mortality salience did not spontaneously activate uncertainty-related thought, weaker or nonsignificant differences between the procedure or ingroup information conditions were obtained. These findings show that—although mortality salience effects may not always be purely the result of uncertainty concerns (see, e.g., Landau et al., 2004; Routledge, Arndt, & Goldenberg, 2004)—at least sometimes it may be the uncertainty component of mortality salience manipulations that drives people’s reactions to violations or bolstering of cultural worldviews. This suggests that, at least sometimes, processes of uncertainty management may be underlying the effects reported in the terror management literature. At a minimum, our (Van den Bos et al., 2005) findings indicate that uncertainty management processes are important when trying to understand the social psychology of people’s worldviews.

I emphasize here that we remain very enthusiastic about TMT and believe that those social-cultural issues the theory studies are important, insightful, and among the best in modern social psychology (Van den Bos, 2004; Van den Bos & Miedema, 2000). Therefore, my purpose is certainly not to falsify or attack TMT. Rather, I want to see how and to what extent we can build on and extend the theory to encompass other issues (such as personal uncertainty) previously not explicitly explored by the theory. It is my belief that only such an open attitude may further the social psychology of ideology, system justification, and related issues (Van den Bos & Lind, in press).

Many issues pertaining to the relationship between uncertainty and terror management processes remain to be investigated. For example, ironically, it could be argued that the fact that one day we will die is the only certainty we humans have. This indeed may be the case, but contemplating your own death may still induce feelings of personal uncertainty (Van den Bos et al., 2005) and hence may trigger cultural worldview defense reactions.

Perhaps more interestingly, terror management researchers have failed to replicate stronger effects on worldview defense measures following uncertainty as opposed to mortality salience, and have found stronger effects for mortality salience instead (see, e.g., Landau et al., 2004). This may have something to do with the different sets of dependent variables used in the two studies (Landau et al., 2004; Van den Bos et al., 2005). It could also be that cross-cultural differences between the United States (where most terror management studies, including the Landau et al. work, have been done) and the Netherlands (where we have collected our data) may be partly responsible for these differential findings. Recent data suggest that occasionally quite different fairness effects can be found in these two countries (Van den Bos, Stein, Brockner, Steiner, Van Yperen, & Dekker, 2007).

I would applaud future research that focuses on the appropriate issue of when uncertainty is a prime determinant of cultural worldview defense and when other concerns (such as terror management processes) may be a stronger determinant. Furthermore, it is important to examine in considerably more detail the precise social psychological processes and mechanisms that may explain why uncertainty salience and mortality salience yield such strong effects on people’s reactions to fair and unfair events and other events that bolster or threaten their cultural worldviews (Van den Bos & Lind, in press). Helpful in this respect may be consideration of the many complex issues that terror management theorists have thoroughly explored and explained well (such as the proximal/distal and conscious/nonconscious distinctions, and the underlying processes of worldview defense; Pyszczynski et al., 1999). These issues may help to formulate and test models of psychological processes that underlie the empirical findings reviewed here.

I emphasize here that the point of our research (Van den Bos et al., 2005) was not to argue that uncertainty salience always will or should instigate stronger effects than mortality salience concerns. I would regard it as unfortunate if the science of cultural worldview defense and the social psychology of the uncertain and mortal self were to focus too much on conducting “horse races” to see which type of salience (uncertainty or mortality salience) wins most frequently (Van den Bos & Lind, in press). Instead, I believe, as do others (e.g., Heine, Proulx, & Vohs, 2006), that it is far better to focus on investigating the social psychological processes and mechanisms that explain why and when uncertainty salience, mortality salience, or other stimuli (see, e.g., Miedema, Van den Bos, & Vermunt, 2006) lead to strong effects on people’s reactions to fair and unfair events and on their reactions to other events that bolster or threaten their cultural worldviews. That said, the results discussed in this section suggest that, at least sometimes, the uncertainty management account may work pretty well and that uncertainty management processes may be definitely worthwhile to study when one is interested in the social-cognitive and epistemic bases of ideology and system justification. We now turn to a further examination of the social psychological processes of uncertainty management.

THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF UNCERTAINTY MANAGEMENT: AFFECTIVE-EXPERIENTIAL PROCESSES

Much work has been conducted to explain the social psychological processes that may underlie uncertainty management effects (see, e.g., Hogg, 2000, 2004, 2005; Martin, 1999; McGregor et al., 2001; Murray, Rose, Bellavia, Holmes, & Garrett Kusche, 2002; Sorrentino & Roney, 1999; Van den Bos & Lind, 2002; Weary et al., 2001). My research group focuses especially on how these processes and effects may pertain to the social psychology of fairness judgments (e.g., Maas & Van den Bos, 2006a; Van den Bos et al., in press). In the next two sections, I discuss recent research lines that may be conducive to our understanding of the social psychology of uncertainty management processes.

One very interesting line of work in this respect has been developed by Marjolein Maas. A core assumption driving the line of research by Maas and Van den Bos (2006a) was that personal uncertainty often leads people to react more strongly toward fair and unfair events because being uncertain or being reminded about things one is uncertain about may instigate strong affective-experiential processes. Thus, in terms of cognitive-experiential selftheory (Epstein, 1994; Epstein & Pacini, 1999), the idea was that experiencing feelings of uncertainty may lead people to start processing information they subsequently receive in experiential-intuitive ways.

In correspondence with other lines of research (e.g., Chaiken & Trope, 1999; Shweder & Haidt, 1993; Smith & DeCoster, 2000; Strack & Deutsch, 2004), cognitive-experiential self-theory distinguishes between two conceptual systems that people use to process information, namely experiential-intuitive and rational-cognitive systems (Epstein, 1994; Epstein & Pacini, 1999). The experiential way of processing information is intuitive, preconsciously encodes information into concrete images or metaphors, and makes associative connections. In experiential modes, events are experienced passively, and people can be seized by their emotions. The rational way of processing information, on the other hand, is analytic, encodes information in abstract ways, is based on making logical cause-and-effect connections, and requires intentional, effortful processing. In rational modes of information processing, people experience events actively and consciously while thinking things over and making justifications for what happened in these events, and in these modes, people are in control of their thoughts.

Cognitive-experiential self-theory also assumes that the operation of experiential mindsets is intimately associated with affect-related experiences (see, e.g., Epstein & Pacini, 1999). If experiential mindsets indeed make people’s fairness reactions more susceptible to affect-related processes, then the intensity with which people react affectively to daily life events (Larsen, Diener, & Cropanzano, 1987; Larsen, Diener, & Emmons, 1986) should interact with people’s mindsets. Earlier fairness studies have shown that individual differences in affect intensity can moderate people’s fairness reactions (Van den Bos, Maas, Waldring, & Semin, 2003). Integrating this line of work with cognitive-experiential self-theory led Maas and Van den Bos (2006a) to predict that, under conditions of uncertainty, individual differences in affect intensity (Larsen et al., 1986, 1987) should moderate people’s fairness reactions, especially when they use experiential (as opposed to rationalistic) modes of information processing.

Introducing a new manipulation of experiential versus rationalistic mindsets to the research literature, the findings of the studies reported by Maas and Van den Bos (2006a) indeed suggest that, in uncertain conditions, people who use experiential mindsets react more strongly toward fair and unfair events when they score high on the affect intensity scale (compared to those who use rationalistic mindsets and/or who score low on affect intensity).

As noted by Kay and colleagues (2007), several social psychological theories assume that human beings are motivated to believe in a predictable and controllable social world (Allport, 1966; Janoff-Bulman & Yopyk, 2004; Kluegel & Smith, 1986; Langer, 1975; Lerner, 1980; Major, 1994; Plaks, Grant, & Dweck, 2005). This motivation is thought to be so strong that when people encounter evidence that some events are uncontrollable, chaotic, or randomly

determined, they generally respond by construing things as to minimize the threat to feelings of controllability (Hafer & Bègue, 2005). Building and extending on this line of reasoning, another paper suggests that the combination of individual differences in affect intensity and experiential or rationalistic mindsets influences how people respond toward innocent victims of crimes or other misfortunes (Maas & Van den Bos, 2006b). These findings thus suggest that focusing on affect intensity (e.g., Larsen et al., 1986, 1987) and experiential versus rationalistic mindsets (e.g., Epstein, 1994; Epstein & Pacini, 1999) may be important when trying to understand the cognitive and epistemic bases of ideology and system justification (e.g., Jost & Banaji, 1994; Jost, Fitzsimons, & Kay, 2004), as well as how people use their beliefs in a just world to cope with the uncertainties they encounter (e.g., Lerner, 1980; Van den Bos & Lind, 2002).

Interesting in this respect is that the research findings we reported (Van den Bos, Euwema, et al., 2007, Study 2; Van den Bos, Van Ameijde, & Van Gorp, 2006, Study 1) show that individual differences in emotional uncertainty (as measured by the scale developed by Greco & Roger, 2001) moderated people’s worldview reactions toward homeless individuals (Van den Bos, Euwema, et al., 2007) and their reactions toward extremely negative statements about religion (Van den Bos, Van Ameijde, & Van Gorp, 2006). The Greco and Roger (2001) measure of cognitive uncertainty did not show significant effects on people’s reactions in these studies nor in other studies in which we included this scale. This suggests that the influence of uncertainty concerns on worldview defense and system justification may best be understood from a perspective that focuses on the emotional components that the experience of uncertainty entails.

THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF UNCERTAINTY

MANAGEMENT: THE HUMAN ALARM SYSTEM

This final section discusses another very recent line of research that may also further our insights into the social psychology of uncertainty management, system justification, and fairness judgments. This research program was driven by the working hypothesis that people may show strong reactions following the experience of personal uncertainty because experiencing feelings of uncertainty may constitute an alarming experience for them. More specifically, in this line of research (Van den Bos et al., 2008), we examined a possible connection between, on the one hand, the augmentation of justice effects in the presence of personal uncertainty (e.g., Van den Bos, 2001; Van den Bos et al., 2005) and other self-threatening conditions (Miedema, Van den Bos, & Vermunt, 2006) and, on the other hand, related phenomena in social cognition and social neuroscience showing the possible existence

of a “human alarm system” (Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2004; Eisenberger, Lieberman, & Williams, 2003; see also Murray, Holmes, & Collins, 2005).

As noted earlier, it is well-established in the justice literature that personal uncertainty (Van den Bos, 2001; Van den Bos & Lind, 2002; Van den Bos et al., 2005) and other self-threatening conditions (Miedema et al., 2006) lead to more extreme reactions toward fair and unfair events. Interestingly, in the literature on close relationships and social neuroscience, personal uncertainty and self-threats recently have been suggested to lead to the activation of a “human alarm system,” a psychological system that people use to detect and handle alarming situations and that prompts people to process more alertly what is going on in the situations in which they find themselves. For example, Murray and colleagues (2005) suggested that personal uncertainty (Murray et al., 2002) and perceived insecurity in close relationships (Murray, 2005) activate the human alarm system so that, among other things, people process more alertly what is happening in their relationships.

Related to this, Eisenberger and colleagues (2003) have argued that being ostracized or experiencing other self-threatening events activates parts of the human brain that they labeled the human alarm system. Furthermore, Eisenberger and Lieberman (2004) proposed that the alarm system is responsible for detecting cues that might be harmful to survival and, after activation, for recruiting attention and coping responses to minimize threat. For example, Eisenberger and colleagues (2003) have argued that experiencing social exclusion or other self-threatening events may be an experience of social pain. Like physical pain, the experience of social pain may trigger the human alarm system, hence “alerting us when we have sustained injury to our social connections” (Eisenberger et al., 2003, p. 292). From an evolutionary perspective, the working of such an alarm system would be adaptive (see Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2004) insofar as it prompts the human organism to act and respond more quickly to what is going on in the environment and hence make the organism’s survival more likely (see, e.g., De Waal, 1996).

We proposed (Van den Bos et al., in press) that one way to triangulate the relationships between personal uncertainty (Miedema et al., 2006; Van den Bos, 2001; Van den Bos et al., 2005), the human alarm system (Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2004; Eisenberger et al., 2003; Murray et al., 2005), and social justice judgments is by conceptualizing an overlap between the alarm system and the justice judgment process. A hypothesis that can be derived from such a postulated overlap is that factors that people associate with alarming conditions should enhance the sensitivity of the alarm system and thus, given the postulated overlap, potentiate sensitivity to the justice-related events people subsequently experience. So, just as Eisenberger and Lieberman (2004) postulated that the brain bases of social pain are similar to those of physical

pain and hypothesized that “factors that enhance the sensitivity to one type of pain should enhance the sensitivity of this alarm system and thus potentiate sensitivity to the other type of pain as well” (p. 297), we postulated that presenting to people alarm-related symbols should activate the human alarm system and hence potentiate sensitivity to other types of processes associated with it as well, including enhanced sensitivity to the justice judgment process, thus making people react more sensitively toward subsequently experienced fair or unfair events.

More specifically, from the literature reviewed here at least two things can be concluded: personal uncertainty and other self-threatening conditions activate the human alarm system (Eisenberger et al., 2003; Murray et al., 2005); and personal uncertainty and self-threatening conditions lead to more extreme judgments about procedural and outcome justice (Miedema et al., 2006; Van den Bos 2001; Van den Bos et al., 2005). Thus, it is known that the same conditions that may activate the human alarm system may also lead to more extreme justice judgments. This suggests that activating the human alarm system directly, by presenting alarm-related stimuli to people, may lead to more extreme reactions toward fair and unfair events.

An intriguing hypothesis that follows from the alarm-system perspective, laid out in detail in our report (Van den Bos et al., 2008), is that the presentation of cues closely or even subtly related to alarming conditions may lead people to form more extreme judgments about subsequently presented fair and unfair events. Findings of various experiments (scenario studies, an experiential experiment, and functional magnetic resonance imaging [fMRI] testing) indeed provide evidence for this line of reasoning both inside and outside the psychology lab. That is, research findings reveal that viewing large exclamation points prior to making evaluations of the justice of accurate or inaccurate procedures, good or bad outcomes, and voice or no-voice procedures indeed made participants react more extremely toward the procedures or outcomes (Van den Bos et al., 2008, Experiments 1–3). Furthermore, another experimental study replicated and extended these findings by showing that a flashing warning light produced similar effects on outcome justice judgments among participants with various educational backgrounds and from different age groups who were walking in the shopping center of a typical Dutch city (Van den Bos et al., 2008, Experiment 4). In correspondence with the alarm-system view of the justice judgment process, the findings reveal that the mere presence of a flashing light can lead people to show more extreme justice judgments in response to variations in good and bad outcomes.

The studies reported (Van den Bos et al., 2008) were in part inspired by the conjecture that uncertainty management findings reported in the justice

literature (see, e.g., Van den Bos, 2001; Van den Bos & Lind, 2002; Van den Bos et al., 2005) may be explained by the notion that experiences of personal uncertainty may often constitute alarming events to people, and that it is this alarm-related component of uncertainty manipulations that may largely drive the uncertainty effects reported in the social psychological literature (e.g., Hogg, 2005; McGregor et al., 2001; Murray et al., 2002). Very interesting in this respect are some auxiliary findings from fMRI testing (Van den Bos & Rijpkema, 2007) showing that watching an exclamation point leads to a brain activation pattern that shares areas (medial frontal gyrus, Brodmann area [BA] 9) with those brain regions found to be active in personal moral judgment tasks and that is known to be sensitive to tapping the combined effects of human cognitive and emotional responses (Greene et al., 2001, 2004). This may indicate that a combination of cognition and emotion may best predict how people will form justice judgments (cf. Van den Bos et al., 2008) and make personal moral decisions (cf. Greene et al., 2001, 2004). In other words, the social psychology of uncertainty management and system justification may be a process of “hot cognition,” and not “cold cognition” (see, e.g., Abelson, 1963; Kunda, 1999; Stapel, 2003). Future research should pursue and test this line of thinking.

CONCLUSION

In closing, I would like to note that, as far as I know, the alarm-system perspective has not previously been integrated with the justice literature, so the union of the two lines of work may well give new insights into the process by which justice judgments are formed. Furthermore, there may be at least one other reason why the findings reported (Van den Bos et al., 2008) make a worthwhile contribution to the social justice literature. That is, in the literature, it has been assumed frequently that one important reason to study the concept of justice is that, compared to other social motives, there is something unique about the justice concept—something that makes the process of how justice judgments are formed stand out, when compared to the processes with which people form judgments of related yet different constructs (see, e.g., Lerner, 1977, 1980, 2003; Montada, 1998, 2002). What may be an important aspect of the line of reasoning and the findings we present (Van den Bos et al., 2008) is that they may cast doubt on whether this assumption is, in fact, warranted. That is, the continuing attempts in the justice literature to focus on what makes the justice concept different from other concepts may have come at the expense of neglecting a thorough examination of the basic processes that also may play a pivotal role in how people form justice judgments.