For the introduction to this next column in my series drawing on my 2023 national survey, I’m turning back the clock to late 2016. The University of Auckland had invited American political psychology star John Jost from New York University to present several nights of talks for the Vice-Chancellor’s Lecture Series. I was asked to present a local counterpoint to one of the sessions, about political and religious ideologies in Aotearoa.
Jost was the president of the International Society of Political Psychology, cementing his place among the who’s who of political psychology. For me, Jost’s work has two highlights. The first was in 2003 when he co-authored a paper synthesising decades of work on “conservatism” to make the argument that political attitudes and behaviours serve a psychological function.
By “conservatism” I mean the general preference for the world to remain the same, if not return to values of the past, and the relative dispreference for absolute equality. Notice I say relative “dispreference”, because in Aotearoa only about one in 20 of us say we shouldn’t try to make things more fair and equal.
Jost and his colleagues argued that political conservatism helps some of us more than others to sleep at night as we worry about the political, economic and social challenges we see in the world around us. I like this argument because I believe that most of what we think, believe and do has a psychological function.
The other thing Jost is known for is system justification theory, also a synthesis of decades of scholarship. In this work, I can imagine Jost asking why the oppressed do not rise up and throw off their chains. The answer for system justification theory harks back to the Marxist notion of false consciousness – they don’t realise they’re shackled.
In a nutshell, we’re motivated to think positively of ourselves, of the groups to which we belong and also the institutions that dictate much of our lives. To question the common order is scary, and threatens change and instability. We essentially kid ourselves that the world is a fair and just place so we can avoid troubling questions.
Who believes our system is just?
In terms of sociodemographics, men, Pākehā, older New Zealanders and people who earn more tend to say the world is fair. Jost would say the reasons for these are obvious – these are people who tend to be closer to the top of the socioeconomic pile. They have more of an investment in believing that what they have is the product of their hard work. I should also qualify that when I say “they” I should include myself in those categories because they pretty much describe me.
People with higher self-esteem also tend to endorse system justification more, which Jost would take as evidence that system justification serves a palliative “ego-justification” function. It helps us feel better about ourselves.
In this political moment, there’s a lot of chatter about entitlements – whether about the prime minister for claiming for using his own Wellington flat or tightening access to welfare. We’re talking about instituting military-style boot camps that experts are pretty sure don’t make a big difference. When we try to rationalise the status quo, we’re more likely to draw on stereotypes – criminals and welfare recipients are lazy bad eggs who haven’t taken advantage of the opportunities of our oh-so-fair society.
Unsurprisingly, there is a relationship between system justification and political preference. The more politically liberal or left-wing your economic and social position, the less you agree the world is fair.
Unfortunately, Jost had to miss one of his own lecture series because he ended up in hospital for a night. Unfortunate also for the audience, because I ended up filling in for him. Proof the world really isn’t fair.
Are we kidding ourselves that the world is a fair and just place?
