jost_j_t_kay_a_c_thorisdottir_n_social_and_psychological_bas

The explicit goal of our research program is to focus on the basics of the justice judgment process, and an important implication of this line of thinking is that the justice judgment process may share important similarities with the processes used to determine other human judgments and responses. Thus, one explicit aim of our work is to show that the justice judgment process may be affected by sometimes subtle cues in people’s environments—cues that may not be revealed when justice judgments are unique. So, following the advice of Bem (1987) to end a paper with a bang and not a whimper, and to paraphrase a well-known justice article (Lerner, 2003) and often-repeated conference presentation (e.g., Lerner, 1997, 2002): If we continue to study the justice judgment processes as something unique, and not as something that is part of more general social psychological processes and principles (such as processes of uncertainty management, system justification, and the human alarm system), it may lead justice researchers to lose their connection with contemporary social psychology and not find this connection again. In this chapter, I have tried to show that more closely linking the justice judgment process with the social psychology of uncertainty, system justification, af- fective-experiential processes, and the human alarm system may be a good way to go.

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sider two of the most prominent contemporary psychological theories of ideology: our own terror management theory (TMT; Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986; Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 1991) and Jost and colleagues’ system justification theory (SJT; Jost & Banaji, 1994; Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004). Although these theories share some common assumptions and offer insights into many of the same types of behavior, they are different in several important ways. Accordingly, we will compare and contrast TMT and SJT explanations for understanding stability and change in ideology.

Terror management theory posits that the uniquely human capacity for self-awareness led to knowledge regarding the inevitability of death. This knowledge, couple with a host of biological systems oriented toward continued survival, create an enormous potential for existential terror. People manage this terror by adopting meaningful cultural worldviews and seeking self-esteem, as measured by the extent to which they view themselves as living up to the standards of value prescribed by those worldviews. As such, TMT posits that people cling to and defend their own individualized cultural worldviews in order to manage the existential anxiety that is distinctively associated with the human condition. These individualized cultural worldviews draw on the social, economic, and political ideologies of the culture into which one is born, but from the perspective of TMT, are very clearly unique and individualized creations derived from the wide range of information and experiences to which the individual is exposed throughout his life (Greenberg et al., 1986). Terror management theory views the motivation to maintain and defend one’s worldview as rooted in the protection it provides against the fear of death, and thus specific responses to existential threat are dependent on the extent of protections that the various elements of these ideologies provide. In this chapter, we will explore the determinants of this protection to further explicate the TMT analysis of political ideology.

System justification theory posits that people within a given cultural system are motivated to perceive existing social structures as legitimate, fair, and valid. Building on cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger, 1957), just world theory (Lerner, 1980), and lay epistemic theory (Kruglanski, 1989), SJT posits that the tendency for system-justifying behavior is motivated by cognitive and epistemic needs for consistency and certainty. System justification theory conceptualizes the system-justifying motive as distinct from and sometimes more potent than the motives for self-esteem and group enhancement (Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004). This leads to the rather counterintuitive SJT prediction that people often defend existing external systems even when these systems are responsible for keeping them in subordinate status and even though such system-justification undermines their self-esteem, group pride, and general psychological well-being. The individual satisfies this