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AbstractOne of the most pressing tasks facing policymakers in the 21st century is reducing stark group‐based inequalities that have developed within many societies because of centuries of structural discrimination. However, efforts to redress group disparities through equality‐promoting policies are frequently met with policy backlash and countermobilization. We describe several social psychological contributors to policy backlash, distinguishing between identity‐based and ideology‐based processes. While the role of identity politics in driving support and opposition to policies pertaining to race, gender, and sexual orientation is well‐known, less attention has been given to the role of ideological motivation, including individual and group differences in system justification tendencies to defend and bolster the societal status quo. In this article, we develop a framework based on system justification theory to understand why backlash against equality‐promoting policies occurs, when such backlash is most likely to occur, and who is most likely to be countermobilized against such policies. From this perspective, policy backlash is motivated not only by the desire on the part of advantaged group members to maintain their own existing privileges but also by the broader desire to maintain the perceived legitimacy and stability of the overarching social system. We make recommendations about how leaders can develop and communicate about equality‐promoting policies in a way that reduces the likelihood of backlash due to system justification motivation.

Throughout Europe and North America, mainstream political parties have ceded electoral support to antiestablishment parties from the far left and far right. We investigate the hypothesis that individual differences in system justification—the psychological tendency to defend and justify the overarching social system—would be negatively associated with antiestablishment voting, even among citizens who would otherwise be inclined to support radicalism. In three large, nationally representative surveys conducted in France (N = 14,432), Germany (N = 1,168), and the United Kingdom (N = 2,337), we observed that system justification was positively associated with voting for establishment parties and negatively associated with antiestablishment voting. System justification was associated with reduced support for antiestablishment parties on the right and left—even among respondents who were high on ethnic intolerance, opposition to the European Union, economic distress, and support for income redistribution. Thus, all other things being equal, system‐justification tendencies reinforce political moderation, establishment voting, and therefore social stability.

When political polarization is high, it may be assumed that citizens will trust the government more when the chief executive shares their own political views. However, evidence is accumulating that important asymmetries may exist between liberals and conservatives (or Democrats and Republicans). We hypothesized that an asymmetry may exist when it comes to individuals' willingness to trust the government when it is led by the "other side." In an extensive analysis of several major datasets (including ANES and GSS) over a period of five decades, we find that in the United States, conservatives trust the government more than liberals when the president in office shares their own ideology. Furthermore, liberals are more willing to grant legitimacy to democratic governments led by conservatives than vice versa. A similar asymmetry applies to Republicans compared with Democrats. We discuss implications of this asymmetrical "president-in-power" effect for democratic functioning.

The United States wields disproportionate global influence in terms of carbon dioxide emissions and international climate policy. This makes it an especially important context in which to examine the interplay among social, psychological, and political factors in shaping attitudes and behaviors related to climate change. In this article, we review the emerging literature addressing the liberal-conservative divide in the U.S. with respect to thought, communication, and action concerning climate change. Because of its theoretical and practical significance, we focus on the motivational basis for skepticism and inaction on the part of some, including "top-down" institutional forces, such as corporate strategy, and "bottom-up" psychological factors, such as ego, group, and system justification. Although more research is needed to elucidate fully the social, cognitive, and motivational bases of environmental attitudes and behavior, a great deal has been learned in just a few years by focusing on specific ideological factors in addition to general psychological principles.

It is tempting to believe that one's political convictions reflect independent and unbiased thinking, but social psychological research increasingly suggests that ideologies reflect motivational processes. The present paper integrates system justification and shared reality theories to suggest that ideologies function as prepackaged units of interpretation that spread because of basic human motives to understand the world, avoid existential threat, and maintain valued interpersonal relationships. We review evdeence revealing that affiliative motives influence ideological beliefs to align with the progressive or conservative views shared within a given relationship or group, and propose that such motives may lead disproportionately to the adoption of system-justifying worldviews. Implications for the context-dependence of ideological convictions, the role that shared reality may play in group conflicts, and the relational bases of revolutionary change are discussed. Adapted from the source document.

Most theories in social and political psychology stress self‐interest, intergroup conflict, ethnocentrism, homophily, ingroup bias, outgroup antipathy, dominance, and resistance. System justification theory is influenced by these perspectives—including social identity and social dominance theories—but it departs from them in several respects. Advocates of system justification theory argue that (a) there is a general ideological motive to justify the existing social order, (b) this motive is at least partially responsible for the internalization of inferiority among members of disadvantaged groups, (c) it is observed most readily at an implicit, nonconscious level of awareness and (d) paradoxically, it is sometimes strongest among those who are most harmed by the status quo. This article reviews and integrates 10 years of research on 20 hypotheses derived from a system justification perspective, focusing on the phenomenon of implicit outgroup favoritism among members of disadvantaged groups (including African Americans, the elderly, and gays/lesbians) and its relation to political ideology (especially liberalism‐conservatism).

Healthy democratic polities feature competing visions of a good society. They also require tolerance, trust, and cooperation to avoid toxic polarization that puts democracy itself at risk. In the U.S., liberal-leftists and conservative-rightists differ in many attitudes, values, and personality traits, as well as tendencies to justify the unequal status quo and embrace authoritarian aggression and group-based dominance. Some of these differences imply that conflict between liberal-leftists and conservative-rightists is tantamount to a struggle for and against democratic ideals. However, these political and psychological differences between the left and the right do not necessarily mean that Americans are forever doomed to intergroup hatred and intractable political conflict. Some modest basis for optimism emerges from recent experimental interventions, including one that encourages people to identify with and justify the system of liberal democracy in the U.S.

AbstractWe conducted a longitudinal study involving 734 college students over a three-month period that included the 2008 U.S. presidential election. The study investigated factors such as respondents' personality characteristics and ideological proclivities in predicting perceptions of the major candidates and both stability and change in voting preferences for Barack Obama and John McCain. Previous research on personality and political orientation suggests that Openness to New Experiences is positively associated with liberal political preferences, whereas Conscientiousness is positively associated with conservative preferences; we replicated these results in the context of the current study. Several ideological factors also predicted conversion to Obama's candidacy. These included respondents' degree of self-reported liberalism, perceptions of their parents as liberal (versus conservative), and lower scores on measures of authoritarianism and political system justification (i.e., support for the prevailing system of electoral politics and government). The effects of Openness and Conscientiousness on candidate preferences were statistically mediated by ideological variables, providing further evidence that general predispositions exist that link personality and political orientation, and these are likely to play a significant role in electoral politics. Implications for the integration of "top-down" (institutional) and "bottom-up" (psychological) approaches to the study of political behavior are discussed.