System justification theorists have proposed that people will defend one's circumstances, even if they inflict psychological and material costs. This tendency has been found to extend even to outcomes that have not yet been decided, but are perceived as being likely; however, this research has only examined outcomes that will be decided on in the near future. According to Construal Level Theory (CLT), distant future events are represented primarily according to their essential features, while thoughts about temporally near events are more concrete and contextual. We hypothesized that system justification results from the motivational impact of low-level thinking, and so would be expected to occur for near-future, but not distant-future, outcomes. Consistent with our hypothesis, our Main Study found evidence of system justification only when outcomes were to be decided in the near future. Distant future outcomes, in contrast, were viewed as being more undesirable as they became increasingly likely. / by Nicholas J. Martens. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2008. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2008. Mode of access: World Wide Web.