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psychological bases of ideology and system justification. These traditions include (a) the study of attitudes, social cognition, and information processing at both conscious and nonconscious levels of awareness, (b) theories of motivated reasoning and goal-directed cognition, (c) research on personality and dispositional correlates of political orientation, (d) work on social justice and the origins of moral values, (e) the myriad ways in which social and political opinions are shaped by local situations and environments, and (f) studies of stereotyping, prejudice, and the ideological correlates of intergroup attitudes. Given the complex, multifaceted nature of ideology, this variety of approaches is not only desirable but perhaps necessary. Our sense is that the time is ripe for a book in which prominent scholars from several neighboring disciplines are brought together to facilitate the scientific understanding of ideological dynamics across the boundaries established by different theoretical perspectives, research traditions, and empirical methodologies.

Major Strengths of This Volume and

Its Use as an Advanced Textbook

A major strength of this book, we think, is the fact that it represents “state of the art” research on ideology and system justification as it is being conducted now by many of the world’s leading social and behavioral scientists. Data collection methods include traditional laboratory experiments, huge Internet and other public opinion surveys, and even the use of thought experiments in the framework of the “hypothetical societies” paradigm. The phenomena under investigation range from subtle and short-lived effects on ideologically significant outcomes, to more robust and enduring differences in public opinion. One example of the former comes from priming studies in which brief exposure to a picture of the American flag is found to activate values pertaining to nationalism; an example of the latter type of investigation is the demonstration that variability in “state-wide personalities” is associated with regional differences in voting behavior in several recent presidential elections.

Roughly half of the 19 chapters following this one focus on political and/or religious ideologies, and the other half highlight processes of system justification. Importantly, at least one-third of the chapters explicitly address the link between political conservatism and system justification (see also Jost et al., 2008). Although the majority of authors are from either the United States or Canada, reflecting the fact that most of the current research on these topics is taking place in North America, some contributors hail from Great Britain, the Netherlands, Israel, and New Zealand. During the writing process, authors were encouraged to read and refer to other chapters in the book, and we believe this has facilitated dialogue among authors and added intellectual coherence to the volume.

As the volume took final shape, it became increasingly clear to us that it would be a good textbook for advanced undergraduate or graduate courses in social and/or political psychology or any course with a focus on processes of ideology and system justification. We came to this conclusion for two main reasons. First, if there existed a “who’s who” list of researchers on these two topics (and especially their intersection), it is clear that the contributors to this volume would be listed. The second reason is that most of the chapter authors have chosen to frame their chapters by starting with a concise overview of a research area or theory, such as automaticity in social cognition, belief in a just world (BJW), system justification theory (SJT), or terror management theory (TMT). Following these brief overviews, the chapters then extend the guiding ideas in new and important directions, either by connecting them to other theories represented in the volume or by developing and testing novel hypotheses concerning ideology and system justification. Chapters that are organized in this way guarantee that students will be exposed to a wide range of theoretical approaches and will also be able to see how theories in social and political psychology evolve through empirical confrontation.

Readers with at least some prior knowledge of the approaches represented in this volume should find it to be a practical, valuable source of reference when planning their own research. What will probably be most exciting to those already familiar with the research programs summarized in the volume is the active, scholarly exchange of ideas. A few chapters contain sharply worded commentaries on or critiques of other approaches taken in the volume. Still others advance the field by weaving together seemingly disparate perspectives, such as the chapter by Feygina and Tyler on the relationship between procedural justice and system justification theory, and another chapter by Eibach and Libby on how illusory perceptions of moral decline can increase one’s affinity for politically conservative attitudes and opinions.

The Chapters to Come

Ideology and Automaticity. Following the foreword by George Lakoff and this introductory chapter, the next section of the book is devoted to “Ideology and Automaticity,” which we regard as an extremely new and exciting field of inquiry within social and political psychology. Researchers have very recently begun to explore the notion that ideology serves more than a heuristic function and that it can exert surprisingly profound influences at an implicit as well as explicit level of awareness (e.g., see Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004; Jost et al., 2008; Kay & Jost, 2003). John Bargh and his collaborators are pioneers in the study of automaticity (e.g., Bargh, 1994; Bargh & Ferguson,

2000). In this volume, they show that certain characteristics of automatic cognitions, including the fact that they are intuitive, spontaneous, effortless, and/or unconscious, can have powerful ideological consequences.

In Chapter 2, Eric Uhlmann, T. Andrew Poehlman, and John Bargh propose that “implicit Puritanism” is a pervasive aspect of American culture and that—whereas many nations base their identity on shared history, culture, language, or customs—American identity is based on shared moral and political values. Specifically, due to its settlement history, American identity is based on the Protestant values of hard work and individual merit. They argue that these values are implicitly embraced by all Americans, whether Protestant or not, and they can therefore be automatically activated to influence social judgments outside of conscious awareness. They discuss results from several ingenious experiments testing this idea. In one study, they find that Americans (but not others) who were primed with words related to the concept of “salvation” worked harder on a subsequent task.

In Chapter 3, Melissa J. Ferguson, Travis J. Carter, and Ran R. Hassin also explore the implicit influence of nationalist ideology on behavior and attitudes, including support for the current system. They review several experiments in which subtle, even subliminal priming of American flag imagery activates ideologically associated constructs such as power, materialism, and aggression. These effects seem to hold regardless of political party affiliation, but they are amplified for people who are high in exposure to political news coverage, suggesting that both top-down and bottom-up processes may be at work.

The Psychological Power of the Status Quo. The third section of the book contains four chapters that address the psychological power of the status quo. The authors take different perspectives on the topic, and because of this, they represent well the range of current thinking in the field. Chapter 4, by Scott Eidelman and Christian Crandall, reflects a purely cognitive account of system justification. Specifically, these authors argue that upholding the status quo requires minimal effort, intention, awareness, and control and therefore has a psychological advantage over alternatives to the status quo. In Chapter 5, Carolyn L. Hafer and Becky L. Choma adopt a more motivational perspective, identifying Lerner’s (1980) construct of the BJW as a critical determinant of deservingness judgments. They review recent theorizing and experimental evidence suggesting that believing in a just world leads one to perceive less personal discrimination, thereby increasing the likelihood of arriving at system-justifying ideological outcomes.

Gregory Mitchell and Philip E. Tetlock strike a different, more critical tone in Chapter 6. They question the emphasis many psychologists put on

subconscious motivations for explaining people’s support for the system, or what they call “subterranean-motivational theories.” Mitchell and Tetlock claim that what system justification theorists describe as motivated, even potentially irrational, support for the status quo should be seen as a neutral, if not downright rational form of object appraisal. They advocate the use of a research paradigm originating in philosophical thought experiments, which they refer to as the hypothetical society paradigm, to explore the boundaries of a system justification approach.

Aaron C. Kay and Mark Zanna round out the section on the psychological power of the status quo, with a contextual analysis of the psychological and societal consequences of the system justification motive (Chapter 7). They review very recent evidence for the notion that people’s support of the system will depend on contextual factors such as system threat, perceived inevitability, and psychological dependence. Heightened support for the system, in turn, affects social judgments such as victim-derogation and reliance on complementary stereotypes. The work by Kay and Zanna extends the reach and theoretical precision of system justification theory considerably.

Epistemic and Existential Motives. In the fourth section of the volume, three chapters explicitly compare and contrast different social psychological theories aimed at explaining why people tend to support the status quo. In Chapter 8, Kees van den Bos focuses on how subjective experiences of uncertainty can be aversive and therefore motivate people to restore certainty by increasing their allegiance to the status quo (see also Kay et al., 2008). Van den Bos also contrasts his uncertainty management model with TMT.

The terror management theorists have their say next. In Chapter 9, Jacqueline Anson, Tom Pyszczynski, Sheldon Solomon, and Jeff Greenberg describe several areas of convergence and divergence between terror management and system justification theories. The authors seem to agree with system justification theorists that some worldviews are better suited to calm the fear of death, and that these are typically characterized by structure, order, and certainty (e.g., see Jost, Fitzsimons, & Kay, 2004). However, they also dispute the notion that death anxiety leads people to gravitate disproportionately to right-wing (versus left-wing) ideologies in general.

The author of the final chapter in this section (Chapter 10), Robb Willer, also compares TMT to an alternative account. He argues that the fear of death is associated with increased religiosity because for most people religion is inseparable from the promise of an afterlife, and he demonstrates experimentally that mortality salience leads to a stronger belief in the afterlife for both religious and nonreligious people. Willer proposes a relatively

straightforward motivational account that does away with the more elaborate notion of “worldview defense” advocated by terror management theorists.

Personality and Individual Differences. The three chapters that comprise the fifth section of the book offer new insights and relatively comprehensive reviews of several important individual difference factors that have been shown to matter greatly in the formation and adoption of political ideologies. In Chapter 11, Christopher M. Federico and Paul Goren use sophisticated statistical techniques to analyze nationally representative survey data to explore the link between epistemic motivation and ideology. They find that the relationship between the need for cognitive closure and conservative orientation (e.g., see Jost et al., 2003) is stronger for those who are high (versus low) in political sophistication and expertise.

In Chapter 12, John Duckitt and Chris G. Sibley advance our understanding of the motivational basis of ideology and system justification by demonstrating that right-wing authoritarianism is associated with the endorsement of attitudes that serve to maintain ingroup norms and values (traditionalism), whereas social dominance orientation is related to endorsement of attitudes that accept and justify hierarchy (rationalization of inequality).

Chapter 13 by P. Jason Rentfrow, Sam Gosling, John T. Jost, and Jeffrey Potter breaks new ground by attempting to link individual-level personality variables to more “macro” regional-level variables. Drawing on extremely large Internet data sets that include psychological data from inhabitants of all 50 U.S. states, they demonstrate that average state-level scores on the personality dimension of Openness to New Experiences strongly predict pro-Democratic voting patterns, whereas state-level scores on Conscientiousness significantly, albeit less strongly, predict pro-Republican voting patterns.

Perspectives on Justice and Morality. It is at least arguable that justice and morality are next of kin to the concept of political ideology, with a two-way street connecting them. People are apt to embrace ideological opinions that are in line with their ideas about what is fair and moral and, once adopted, ideological opinions are likely to influence beliefs about what is just and appropriate. Three chapters in the sixth section of the book explore this kinship from quite different perspectives.

Irina Feygina and Tom R. Tyler (Chapter 14) investigate the possibility that perceptions of procedural fairness are affected by system justification tendencies. They test this hypothesis using data collected from citizens who had recently interacted with either the police or the courts. Findings reveal that political conservatives, who are chronically higher in system justification motivation compared with liberals (see Jost et al., 2008), are generally more

satisfied with decisions made by authorities. Feygina and Tyler also observe that decision satisfaction is less affected by the perceived fairness of procedures for conservatives than for liberals.

Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Graham (Chapter 15) venture to the “Planet of the Durkheimians” to try to explain why some moral and political attitudes, which are sometimes seen as wrong and/or incomprehensible to liberals, are experienced as subjectively right and desirable by conservatives. Building on their previous work (Haidt & Graham, 2007), they argue that morality rests on five foundations: Harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. Haidt and Graham suggest that system-justifying outcomes are seen as moral and desirable from a conservative perspective (but not a liberal perspective) because they are in line with the authority/respect foundation.

In Chapter 16, Richard P. Eibach and Lisa K. Libby analyze the fear of moral decline in society to explain the psychological appeal of nostalgia, tradition, and politically conservative opinions. The authors review studies showing, for example, that when people become parents they come to see the world as a more dangerous place but fail to realize that it is a change in their personal circumstances (rather than a change in the state of the world) that is responsible for their perception. As a result, they gravitate toward more conservative, system-justifying positions without even realizing it.

Implications for Self, Group, and Society. In the final section of the book, four chapters explore questions of ideology and system justification insofar as they intersect with feelings of personal entitlement, gender relations, the redressing of historical injustices, and implicit and explicit intergroup attitudes. In Chapter 17, Laurie T. O’Brien and Brenda Major tackle the thorny question of why inequalities between groups are maintained in society, and they argue that a state of disadvantage leads individuals to develop a depressed sense of personal entitlement, thereby preventing people from demanding equality. The authors suggest that social comparison and system justification processes work together to undermine the sense of entitlement among members of disadvantaged groups and to perpetuate inequality.

Gender relations are the focus of Chapter 18 by Mina Cikara, Tiana L. Lee, Susan T. Fiske, and Peter Glick. These authors review theory and research on ambivalent sexism, which is an ideological belief system that combines a hostile view of women as manipulative and seductive with an ostensibly benevolent view of them as sweet, caring, and virtuous, but also as emotional, irrational, and above all in need of male protection. A benevolently sexist view of women is particularly effective for satisfying system justification needs, because it offers a somewhat flattering view of women and therefore

enables both men and women to rationalize gender inequality (see Jost & Kay, 2005).

In recent decades, members of historically oppressed minority groups in various societies have begun to request that authorities redress the harm their ancestors suffered. Katherine B. Starzyk, Craig W. Blatz, and Michael Ross address this important issue in Chapter 19, drawing on anecdotal examples from Canada’s past and present, as well as on findings from their own experimental research. They start with the observation that one impediment to rectifying historical injustices is that majority group members are often unaware of historical events or view them benignly. This lack of awareness is often explicitly promoted by the government and more fundamentally reflects the motivation to justify the social system.

In the last chapter of the book, Brian Nosek, Mahzarin R. Banaji, and John T. Jost summarize results derived from analyses of two large data sets that address the manner and extent to which political ideology predicts (or constrains) both implicit and explicit attitudes toward social groups. First, data based on thousands of people who have taken the Implicit Association Test (IAT) on the Project Implicit website reveal that, whereas both liberals and conservatives exhibit implicit preferences for high-status (or advantaged) groups over low-status (or disadvantaged) groups, the tendency is more pronounced for conservatives than liberals. Second, analysis of public opinion data from the American National Election Studies between 1972 and 2004 shows that, compared with liberals, conservatives are indeed more resistant to social change, especially when change is associated with increased egalitarianism. Whereas liberals generally advocated racial equality as long ago as 1972, it took several decades for conservatives to “catch up.”

CONCLUSION

This introductory chapter has highlighted the diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of ideology and system justification. By alluding to the fable of the blind men and the elephant at the outset of the chapter, we certainly do not mean to imply that the current state of knowledge about the social psychological bases of ideology and system justification is in any way akin to researchers fumbling in the dark. Nevertheless, an honest broker is obliged to point out that social, personality, and political psychologists are still some ways from achieving 20/20 vision with respect to ideological phenomena. Our hope is that by summoning some of the world’s most illustrious researchers in this important area of investigation, this book will help to provide readers with a good pair of spectacles (or

perhaps a few pairs) that can aid them in their own explorations of the social and psychological bases of ideology and system justification.

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