How do people cope when they feel uninformed or unable to understand important social issues, such as the environment, energy concerns, or the economy? One would intuitively expect that a lack of knowledge would motivate an increased, unbiased search for information, thereby facilitating participation and engagement in these issues – especially when they are consequential, pressing, and self-relevant. However, there appears to be a discrepancy between the importance/self-relevance of social issues and people’s willingness to engage with and learn about them. Drawing from the literature on System Justification Theory (Jost & Banaji, 1994), I hypothesized that, rather than motivating an increased search for information, a lack of knowledge about a specific socio-political issue will (a) foster feelings of dependence on the government, which will (b) increase system justification and government trust, which will (c) increase desires to avoid learning about the relevant issue when information is negative or when information valence is unknown. In other words, I suggest that ignorance – as a function of the system justifying tendencies it may activate – may, ironically, breed more ignorance. The rational for these predictions is discussed in Chapter 1. Then, in the contexts of energy, environmental, and economic issues, I present seven studies that: (a) provide evidence for this specific psychological chain (i.e., ignorance about an issue → dependence → government trust → avoidance of information about that issue); (b) shed light on the role of threat and motivation in driving the second and third links in this chain; and (c) illustrate the unfortunate consequences of this process for individual action in those contexts that may need it most.

Texte remanié de: Dissertation--Theologische Fakultät--Heidelberg--Ruprecht-Karls-Universität, 2004.

Thesis (M.A.)--Lancaster Bible College, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 106-110).

Thesis (Th. M.)--Covenant Theological Seminary, 2003. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 86-90).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oklahoma, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 326-336).

Evidence linking poverty with poor mental and physical health outcomes is well documented, but until recently little research has focused on the underlying psychological factors that mediate these relationships. This report represents the first step toward exploring how two emerging theories, allostatic load and system justification theory, can be harmonized to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms that propagate poverty. Specifically, this report addresses the question of how poverty-related stress might moderate the degree to which an impoverished individual is inclined to justify a system that fundamentally does not favor them. Promising future research will be addressed. / text

This thesis argues that within political philosophy, property rights deserve closer attention than has been paid to them recently because the legitimacy of a state rests upon their definition and enforcement. In this way property rights differ from the right to liberty or equality. A state may or may not have liberty or equality, but it has no meaning at all if it does not enforce the rights of property. This is not to suggest that normative arguments for property rights are ‘nonsense upon stilts’. Morality may provide many reasons for an individual to exclude other members of a political community from a property. However, the function of property rights is to enforce that exclusion and this suggests that the normative legitimacy of a state is closely bound both to its ability to enforce whatever property rights it already has granted, and its justification of decisions taken when property rights are granted within its borders. My argument is that a proper political philosophy of property rights should acknowledge that a state depends upon its treatment of property rights for justification, not as a matter of justice, but as a matter of its existence.

The purpose of this study is to re-analyze existing findings in order to demonstrate and summarize relationships between criteria and the sub-scales/dimensions of the Conditional Reasoning Test for Aggression (CRT-A): Externalizing, Internalizing, and Powerlessness. A CRT-A sub-scale was expected to relate more strongly with criteria categorized as being more relevant to the dimension that is represented by that sub-scale. For criteria that were categorized as relevant to only a subset of the dimensions represented by CRT-A sub-scales, the regression of a criterion on all three sub-scales was expected to create a better fitting model than the regression of a criterion on the CRT-A total score alone. Scales were also expected to interact to predict criteria. This was expected to be most likely when multiple dimensions of implicit aggression were activated by environmental factors to influence specific behaviors. Support was found for all expectations

A consequential ideology in Western society is the uncontested belief that a committed relationship is the most important adult relationship and almost all people want to marry or seriously couple (DePaulo & Morris, 2005). In the present article, I investigated the extent to which the system justification motive may contribute to the adoption of this ideology. In Studies 1 and 2, I examined whether a heightened motive to maintain the status quo would increase defense of committed relationship values. In Study 3, I examined the reverse association, that is, whether a threat to committed relationship ideology would also affect socio-political system endorsement. As past research has found that the justification of political systems depends upon how much these systems are perceived as having control over life outcomes, in Study 4 I tested whether the defense of the system of committed relationships would also increase when framed as controlling. Results from Studies 1–4 were consistent with my hypotheses, but only for men. In Study 5, using cross-cultural data, I sought to replicate these findings correlationally and probe for a cause of the gender effect. Results from over 33 000 respondents indicated a relationship (for men) between defense of the socio-political system and defense of marriage in countries where the traditional advantages of men over women were most threatened. In Studies 6 and 7, I investigated when the gender difference found in the earlier studies disappears. Results revealed that when I measured (Study 6) or manipulated (Study 7) personal relationship identity (i.e., how much relationships are part of the active self-concept), rather than relationship ideology, effects also emerge for women.

How do people cope when they feel uninformed or unable to understand important social issues, such as the environment, energy concerns, or the economy? One would intuitively expect that a lack of knowledge would motivate an increased, unbiased search for information, thereby facilitating participation and engagement in these issues – especially when they are consequential, pressing, and self-relevant. However, there appears to be a discrepancy between the importance/self-relevance of social issues and people’s willingness to engage with and learn about them. Drawing from the literature on System Justification Theory (Jost & Banaji, 1994), I hypothesized that, rather than motivating an increased search for information, a lack of knowledge about a specific socio-political issue will (a) foster feelings of dependence on the government, which will (b) increase system justification and government trust, which will (c) increase desires to avoid learning about the relevant issue when information is negative or when information valence is unknown. In other words, I suggest that ignorance – as a function of the system justifying tendencies it may activate – may, ironically, breed more ignorance. The rational for these predictions is discussed in Chapter 1. Then, in the contexts of energy, environmental, and economic issues, I present seven studies that: (a) provide evidence for this specific psychological chain (i.e., ignorance about an issue → dependence → government trust → avoidance of information about that issue); (b) shed light on the role of threat and motivation in driving the second and third links in this chain; and (c) illustrate the unfortunate consequences of this process for individual action in those contexts that may need it most.