Question

cultural diversity

Give an example of a system-justifying ideology.?

Answer 1

• System justification theory was created in order to investigate why and how people uphold the social systems that affect them.
• System justification is a process through which group differences in outcomes are legitimized. Consistent with system justification theory is the notion that people have the psychological need to believe that the system they live in is just and fair, which results in the justification of unequal relationships among groups in society.
• Examples of system justification beliefs (SJB) are the belief that success reflects merit or the belief that success is based on hard work. This implies that groups who have higher status may be more meritorious than groups that have lower status.
• There are many different system-justifying ideologies. These ideologies serve a similar function of legitimizing existing social arrangements.
• One of these ideologies is known as protestant work ethnic. This ideology follows the logic that people have a responsibility to "work hard and avoid leisure activities".
• Using protestant work ethic ideology, it can be argued that lower status groups are not working as hard and therefore maintaining their lower status in society.
• A similar ideology is meritocratic ideology, which argues that the system "rewards individual ability and motivation, so success is an indicator of personal deservingness" .
• The ideology can be used to dispute that lower status groups are less motivated and have less ability; therefore their "lack of success" is due to a lack of personal deservingness.
• The last ideology to be discussed is called power distance. This ideology is defined as the belief that inequality is a natural part of social order, which legitimizes large power differences.
• By outlining that social inequality is part of a natural social order, lower status groups will have a harder time changing the existing social hierarchy. All of these ideologies are adopted by people in order to justify the status quo in our society.
• System justification refers, therefore, to an inherently conservative tendency to defend and justify the status quo simply because it exists, sometimes even at the expense of individual and collective self-interest.