Belief in a just God (and a just society): A system justification perspective on religious ideology

Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology

Volumn 34, Issue 1, 2014, Pages 56-81

  Jost, John T ^a   Hawkins, Carlee Beth ^b   Nosek, Brian A ^b   Hennes, Erin P ^a   Stern, Chadly ^a   Gosling, Samuel D ^c   Graham, Jesse ^d  

^a NEW YORK UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA   (United States)

^c UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN   (United States)

^d UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

Ideology; Religion; Social justice; System justification

Indexed keywords

EID: 84893674102     PISSN: 10688471     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1037/a0033220     Document Type: Article

References (108)

1. Altemeyer, B. (2002). Dogmatic behavior among students: Testing a new measure of dogmatism. The Journal of Social Psychology, 142, 713-721. doi: 10.1080/00224540209603931
2. Altemeyer, B., & Hunsberger, B. (1992). Authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism, quest, and prejudice. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2, 113-133. doi:10.1207/ s15327582ijpr0202_5
3. Altemeyer, B., & Hunsberger, B. (2004). A revised religious fundamentalism scale: The short and sweet of it. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 14, 47-54. doi:10.1207/ s15327582ijpr1401_4
4. Altemeyer, B., & Hunsberger, B. (2005). Fundamentalism and authoritarianism. In R. F. Paloutzian & C. L. Park (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (pp. 378-393). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
5. Atran, S., & Norenzayan, A. (2004). Religion's evolutionary landscape: Counterintuition, commitment, compassion, communion. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27, 713-770. doi:10.1017/ S0140525X04000172
6. Aydin, N., Fischer, P., & Frey, D. (2010). Turning to God in the face of ostracism: Effects of social exclusion on religiousness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 742-753. doi:10.1177/ 0146167210367491
7. Becker, E. (1973). The denial of death. New York, NY: Free Press.
8. Beit-Hallahmi, B., & Argyle, M. (1997). The psychology of religious behavior, belief, and experience. London, UK: Routledge.
9. Birgegard, A., & Granqvist, P. (2004). The correspondence between attachment to parents and God: Three experiments using subliminal separation cues. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 1122-1135. doi:10.1177/ 0146167204264266
10. Bloom, P. (2005, December). Is God an accident? The Atlantic. Retrieved from http://www .theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/12/is-godan-accident/304425/
11. Boyer, P. (2001). Religion explained: The evolutionary origins of religious thought. New York, NY: Basic Books.
12. Brandt, M. J., & Reyna, C. (2010). The role of prejudice and the need for closure in religious fundamentalism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 715-725. doi:10.1177/ 0146167210366306
13. Budner, S. (1962). Intolerance of ambiguity as a personality variable. Journal of Personality, 30, 29-50. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.1962.tb02303.x
14. Chirumbolo, A., Areni, A., & Sensales, G. (2004). Need for cognitive closure and politics: Voting, political attitudes, and attributional style. International Journal of Psychology, 39, 245-253. doi: 10.1080/00207590444000005
15. Dalbert, C., Montada, L., & Schmitt, M. (1987). Glaube an eine gerechte Welt als Motiv: Validierungskorrelate zweier Skalen. [The belief in a just world construct as a motive: Validity correlates of two scales]. Psychologische Beitrage, 29, 596-615.
16. Davis, N. J., & Robinson, R. V. (1996). Are the rumors of war exaggerated? Religious orthodoxy and moral progressivism in America. American Journal of Sociology, 102, 756-787. doi:10.1086/ 230996
17. Davis, N. J., & Robinson, R. V. (2006). The egalitarian face of Islamic orthodoxy: Support for Islamic law and economic justice in seven Muslimmajority nations. American Sociological Review, 71, 167-190. doi:10.1177/000312240607100201
18. Dawkins, R. (2006). The God delusion. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
19. Dennett, D. C. (2006). Breaking the spell: Religion as a natural phenomenon. London, UK: Penguin Books.
20. Deutsch, M. (2006). A framework for thinking about oppression and its change. Social Justice Research, 19, 7-41. doi:10.1007/s11211-006-9998-3
21. Duriez, B. (2003). Vivisecting the religious mind: Religiosity and motivated social cognition. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 6, 79-86. doi: 10.1080/1367467031000085928
22. Ellison, C. G. (1991). Religious involvement and subjective well-being. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 32, 80-99. doi:10.2307/2136801
23. Fastnow, C., Grant, J. T., & Rudolph, T. J. (1999). Holy roll calls: Religious tradition and voting behavior in the U.S. House. Social Science Quarterly, 80, 687-701.
24. Faust, D. G. (Ed.). (1981). The ideology of slavery: Proslavery thought in the Antebellum South, 1830-1860. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press.
25. Feather, N. T. (1964). Acceptance and rejection of arguments in relation to attitude strength, critical ability, and intolerance of inconsistency. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 69, 127-136. doi:10.1037/h0046290
26. Federico, C. M., & Goren, P. (2009). Motivated social cognition and ideology: Is attention to elite discourse a prerequisite for epistemically motivated political affinities? In J. T. Jost, A. C. Kay, & H. Thorisdottir (Eds.), Social and psychological bases of ideology and system justification (pp. 267-291). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195320916 .003.011
27. Finnegan, W. (2000, January 24). A slave in New York: From Africa to the Bronx, one man's long journey to freedom. The New Yorker, 60, 50-61.
28. Francis, L. J. (2001). Christianity and dogmatism revisited: A study among fifteen and sixteen years olds in the United Kingdom. Religious Education, 96, 211-226. doi:10.1080/00344080120870
29. Fredrickson, G. M. (2002). Racism: A short history. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
30. Fromm, E. (1962). Beyond the chains of illusion: My encounter with Marx and Freud. New York, NY: Simon Schuster.
31. Fromm, E. (2004). The dogma of Christ: And other essays on religion, psychology, and culture. New York, NY: Holt. (Original work published 1963)
32. Furnham, A., & Brown, L. (1992). Theodicy: A neglected aspect of the psychology of religion. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2, 37-45. doi:10.1207/s15327582ijpr0201_4
33. Graham, J., & Haidt, J. (2010). Beyond beliefs: Religions bind individuals into moral communities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 140-150. doi:10.1177/1088868309353415
34. Graham, J. W., Taylor, B. J., Olchowski, A. E., & Cumsille, P. E. (2006). Planned missing data designs in psychological research. Psychological Methods, 11, 323-343. doi:10.1037/1082-989X.11 .4.323
35. Greenberg, J., Simon, L., Porteus, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1995). Evidence of a terror management function of cultural icons: The effects of mortality salience on the inappropriate use of cherished cultural symbols. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 1221-1228. doi:10.1177/ 01461672952111010
36. Hawkins, C. B., Graham, J., & Nosek, B. A. (2012). Ideology 1.0: A large, multimethod, multivariate planned missingness design for construct validation. Manuscript in preparation, University of Virginia.
37. Hennes, E. P., Nam, H. H., Stern, C., & Jost, J. T. (2012). Not all ideologies are created equal: Epistemic, existential, and relational needs predict system-justifying attitudes. Social Cognition, 30, 669-688. doi:10.1521/soco.2012.30.6.669
38. Hogg, M. A., Adelman, J. R., & Blagg, R. D. (2010). Religion in the face of uncertainty: An uncertaintyidentity theory account of religiousness. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 72-83. doi: 10.1177/1088868309349692
39. Hood, R. W., Spilka, B., Hunsberger, B., & Gorsuch, R. (1996). The psychology of religion: An empirical approach. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
40. Jones, H., Furnham, A., & Deile, A. (2010). Religious orientation and the protestant work ethic. Mental Health and Culture, 13, 697-706.
41. Jost, J. T. (2009). "Elective affinities": On the psychological bases of left-right differences. Psychological Inquiry, 20, 129-141. doi:10.1080/ 10478400903028599
42. Jost, J. T., & Banaji, M. R. (1994). The role of stereotyping in system-justification and the production of false consciousness. British Journal of Social Psychology, 33, 1-27. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8309.1994.tb01008.x
43. Jost, J. T., Banaji, M. R., & Nosek, B. A. (2004). A decade of system justification theory: Accumulated evidence of conscious and unconscious bolstering of the status quo. Political Psychology, 25, 881-919. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9221.2004.00402.x
44. Jost, J. T., Blount, S., Pfeffer, J., & Hunyady, G. (2003). Fair market ideology: Its cognitivemotivational underpinnings. Research in Organizational Behavior, 25, 53-91. doi:10.1016/S0191-3085(03)25002-4
45. Jost, J. T., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A. W., & Sulloway, F. J. (2003). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 339-375. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.129.3.339
46. Jost, J. T., & Hunyady, O. (2002). The psychology of system justification and the palliative function of ideology. European Review of Social Psychology, 13, 111-153. doi:10.1080/10463280240000046
47. Jost, J. T., & Hunyady, O. (2005). Antecedents and consequences of system-justifying ideologies. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 260-265. doi:10.1111/j.0963-7214.2005.00377.x
48. Jost, J. T., & Kay, A. C. (2005). Exposure to benevolent sexism and complementary gender stereotypes: Consequences for specific and diffuse forms of system justification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 498-509.
49. Jost, J. T., Ledgerwood, A., & Hardin, C. D. (2008). Shared reality, system justification, and the relational basis of ideological beliefs. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2, 171-186. doi: 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2007.00056.x
50. Jost, J. T., Napier, J. L., Thorisdottir, H., Gosling, S. D., Palfai, T. P., & Ostafin, B. (2007). Are needs to manage uncertainty and threat associated with political conservatism or ideological extremity? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, 989-1007. doi:10.1177/0146167207301028
51. Jost, J. T., Nosek, B. A., & Gosling, S. D. (2008). Ideology: Its resurgence in social, personality, and political psychology. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3, 126-136. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6916 .2008.00070.x
52. Jost, J. T., Pelham, B. W., Sheldon, O., & Sullivan, B. N. (2003). Social inequality and the reduction of ideological dissonance on behalf of the system: Evidence of enhanced system justification among the disadvantaged. European Journal of Social Psychology, 33, 13-36. doi:10.1002/ejsp.127
53. Jost, J. T., & Thompson, E. P. (2000). Group-based dominance and opposition to equality as independent predictors of self-esteem ethanocentrism, and social policy attitudes amongs African Americans and European Americans. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 36, 209-232.
54. Jost, J. T., & van der Toorn, J. (2012). System justification theory. In P. A. M. van Lange, A. W. Kruglanski, & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of theories of social psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 313-343). London, UK: Sage. doi:10.4135/ 9781446249222.n42
55. Jost, J. T., Wakslak, C. J., & Tyler, T. R. (2008). System justification theory and the alleviation of emotional distress: Palliative effects of ideology in an arbitrary social hierarchy and in society. Advances in Group Processes, 25, 181-211. doi: 10.1016/S0882-6145(08)25012-5
56. Katz, I., & Hass, G. R. (1988). Racial ambivalence and American value conflict: Correlational and priming studies of dual cognitive structures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, 893-905. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.55.6.893
57. Kay, A. C., Jimenez, M. C., & Jost, J. T. (2002). Sour grapes, sweet lemons, and the anticipatory rationalization of the status quo. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 1300-1312. doi:10.1177/ 01461672022812014
58. Kay, A. C., & Jost, J. T. (2003). Complementary justice: Effects of "poor but happy" and "poor but honest" stereotype exemplars on system justification and implicit activation of the justice motive. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 823-837. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.85.5.823
59. Kay, A. C., Jost, J. T., Mandisodza, A. N., Sherman, S. J., Petrocelli, J. V., & Johnson, A. L. (2007). Panglossian ideology in the service of system justification: How complementary stereotypes help us to rationalize inequality. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 39, 305-358. doi:10.1016/ S0065-2601(06)39006-5
60. Kemmelmeier, M. (2007). Political conservatism, rigidity, and dogmatism in American foreign policy officials: The 1966 Mennis data. Journal of Psychology: Interdisciplinary and Applied, 141, 77-90. doi:10.3200/JRLP.141.1.77-90
61. Kluegel, J. R., & Smith, E. R. (1986). Beliefs about inequality: Americans' views of what is and what ought to be. New York, NY: DeGruyter.
62. Knowles, E. D., Lowery, B. S., Hogan, C. M., & Chow, R. M. (2009). On the malleability of ideology: Motivated construals of color blindness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, 857-869. doi:10.1037/a0013595
63. Kruglanski, A. W., Webster, D. M., & Klem, A. (1993). Motivated resistance and openness to persuasion in the presence or absence of prior information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 861-876. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.65 .5.861
64. Larrimore, M. (Ed.). (2001). The problem of evil: A reader. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
65. Layman, G. C. (2001). The great divide: Religious and cultural conflict in American party politics. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
66. Leibniz, G. W. (1952). Theodicy. (E. M. Huggard, Trans.). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. (Original work published 1709)
67. Lerner, M. J. (1980). The belief in a just world: A fundamental delusion. New York, NY: Plenum Press.
68. Levin, J. S., Markides, K. S., & Ray, L. A. (1996). Religious attendance and psychological well-being in Mexican Americans: A panel analysis of threegenerations data. The Gerontologist, 36, 454-463. doi:10.1093/geront/36.4.454
69. Magee, M. W., & Hardin, C. D. (2010). In defense of religion: Shared reality moderates the unconscious threat of evolution. Social Cognition, 28, 379-400. doi:10.1521/soco.2010.28.3.379
70. Major, B., Gramzow, R. H., McCoy, S. K., Levin, S., Schmader, T., & Sidanius, J. (2002). Perceiving personal discrimination: The role of group status and legitimizing ideology. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 269-282. doi:10.1037/ 0022-3514.82.3.269
71. Malka, A., Lelkes, Y., Srivastava, S., Cohen, A. B., & Miller, D. T. (2012). The association of religiosity and political conservatism: The role of political engagement. Political Psychology, 33, 275-299. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9221.2012.00875.x
72. Marx, G. T. (1967). Religion: Opiate or inspiration of civil rights militancy among Negroes? American Sociological Review, 32, 64-72. doi:10.2307/ 2091719
73. Marx, K. (1964). Economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844. (M. Milligan, Trans.). New York, NY: International Publishers. (Original work written 1844)
74. Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1964). Contribution to the critique of Hegel's philosophy of right, introduction. In On religion (Trans. R. Niebuhr). Chico, CA: Scholar's Press. (Original work written 1843)
75. McGregor, I., Nash, K., Mann, N., & Phills, C. E. (2010). Anxious uncertainty and reactive approach motivation (RAM). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 133-147. doi:10.1037/ a0019701
76. Mehrabian, A. (1996). Relations among political attitudes, personality, and psychopathology assessed with new measures of libertarianism and conservatism. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 18, 469-491. doi:10.1207/s15324834basp1804_7
77. Mirels, H., & Garrett, J. B. (1971). Protestant ethic as a personality variable. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 36, 40-44.
78. Napier, J. L., & Jost, J. T. (2006, October 14). The psychological bases of religiosity and political conservatism. Oral presentation at the meeting of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, Philadelphia, PA.
79. Napier, J. L., & Jost, J. T. (2008a). The antidemocratic personality revisited: A cross-national investigation of working class authoritarianism. Journal of Social Issues, 64, 595-617. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-4560.2008.00579.x
80. Napier, J. L., & Jost, J. T. (2008b). Why are conservatives happier than liberals? Psychological Science, 19, 565-572. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008 .02124.x
81. Norenzayan, A., & Hansen, I. G. (2006). Belief in supernatural agents in the face of death. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 174-187. doi:10.1177/0146167205280251
82. Norenzayan, A., & Shariff, A. F. (2008). The origin and evolution of religious prosociality. Science, 322, 58-62. doi:10.1126/science.1158757
83. Nosek, B. A. (2005). Moderators of the relationship between implicit and explicit evaluation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 134, 565-584. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.134.4.565
84. Pancer, S. M., Jackson, L. M., Hunsberger, B., Pratt, M., & Lea, J. (1995). Religious orthodoxy and the complexity of thought about religious and nonreligious issues. Journal of Personality, 63, 213-232. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.1995.tb00808.x
85. Pargament, K. I. (2002). The bitter and the sweet: An evaluation of the costs and benefits of religiousness. Psychological Inquiry, 13, 168-181. doi: 10.1207/S15327965PLI1303_02
86. Parsons, T. (1963). Introduction. In M. Weber (Ed.), The sociology of religion (E. Fischoff, Trans.). Boston, MA: Beacon Press. (Original work published 1922)
87. Rankin, L. E., Jost, J. T., & Wakslak, C. J. (2009). System justification and the meaning of life: Are the existential benefits of ideology distributed unequally across racial groups? Social Justice Research, 22, 312-333. doi:10.1007/s11211-009-0100-9
88. Ross, L. D., Lelkes, Y., & Russell, A. G. (2012). How Christians reconcile their personal political views and the teachings of their faith: Projection as a means of dissonance reduction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 109, 3616-3622. doi:10.1073/ pnas.1117557109
89. Rubin, Z., & Peplau, L. A. (1975). Who believes in a just world? Journal of Social Issues, 31, 65-89. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4560.1975.tb00997.x
90. Saroglou, V. (2002a). Beyond dogmatism: The need for closure as related to religion. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 5, 183-194. doi:10.1080/ 13674670210144130
91. Saroglou, V. (2002b). Religion and the five factors of personality: A meta-analytic review. Personality and Individual Differences, 32, 15-25. doi: 10.1016/S0191-8869(00)00233-6
92. Schwartz, S. H., & Huismans, S. (1995). Value priorities and religiosity in four Western religions. Social Psychology Quarterly, 58, 88-107. doi: 10.2307/2787148
93. Shaffer, L. S. (2008). Religion as a large-scale justification system: Does the justification hypothesis explain animistic attribution? Theory & Psychology, 18, 779-799. doi:10.1177/ 0959354308097257
94. Silberman, I., Higgins, E. T., & Dweck, C. S. (2005). Religion and world change: Violence and terrorism versus peace. Journal of Social Issues, 61, 761-784.
95. Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (2004). The cultural animal: Twenty years of terror management theory and research. In J. Greenberg, S. L. Koole, & T. Pyszczynski (Eds.), Handbook of experimental existential psychology (pp. 13-34). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
96. Spilka, B., Hood, R. W., Jr., & Gorsuch, R. L. (1985). The psychology of religion: An empirical approach. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
97. Ullrich, J., & Cohrs, J. C. (2007). Terrorism salience increases system justification: Experimental evidence. Social Justice Research, 20, 117-139.
98. Vail, K. E., Rothschild, Z. K., Weise, D. R., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (2010). A terror management analysis of the psychological functions of religion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 84-94. doi:10.1177/ 1088868309351165
99. van den Bos, K., van Ameijde, J., & van Gorp, H. (2006). On the psychology of religion: The role of personal uncertainty in religious worldview defense. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 28, 333-341. doi:10.1207/s15324834basp2804_6
100. Van Hiel, A., Pandelaere, M., & Duriez, B. (2004). The impact of need for closure on conservative beliefs and racism: Differential mediation by authoritarian submission and authoritarian dominance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 824-837. doi:10.1177/0146167204264333
101. Voltaire, F. (1759). Candide, or optimism. Retrieved from http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Candide
102. Weber, M. (1958). The Protestant work ethic and the spirit of capitalism. (T. Parsons, Trans.). New York, NY: Scribner's Sons. (Original work published 1905)
103. Weber, M. (1963). The sociology of religion. (E. Fischoff, Trans.). Boston, MA: Beacon Press. (Original work published 1922)
104. Whittemore, R. (2002). Psalm. In G. Keillor (Ed.), Good poems (p. 13). New York, NY: Viking. (Original work published 1990)
105. Willer, R. (2009). No atheists in foxholes: Motivated reasoning and religious belief. In J. T. Jost, A. C. Kay, & H. Thorisdottir (Eds.), Social and psychological bases of ideology and system justification (pp. 241-264). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195320916 .003.010
106. Wolff, J. (2002). Why read Marx today? Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
107. Ysseldyk, R., Matheson, K., & Anisman, H. (2010). Religiosity as identity: Toward an understanding of religion from a social identity perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 60-71.
108. Zakrisson, I. (2005). Construction of a short version of the Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) scale. Personality and Individual Differences, 39, 863-872. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2005.02.026