Dans les dernières décennies, une majorité des pays occidentaux a vu les filles surpasser les garçons en matière de réussite académique. Pourtant, celles-ci restent sous-représentées dans les sciences et la recherche. Nous proposons dans la présente thèse d’explorer ce paradoxe contemporain à la lumière de la théorie de la justification du système (Jost & Banaji, 1994). En particulier, nous suggérons qu’il existe un stéréotype de genre de réussite scolaire, non spécifique à une discipline particulière, dont le contenu permet la justification et le maintien des trajectoires académiques défavorables aux femmes. Cette hypothèse générale est testée dans trois axes de recherche, donnant lieu à huit études. Le premier axe est destiné à documenter le contenu d’un stéréotype de genre de réussite scolaire. Le deuxième axe est consacré à l’étude du rôle possible du stéréotype de genre de réussite scolaire dans la perpétuation des inégalités de genre dans les trajectoires académiques. Enfin, l'objectif dans le troisième axe est de tester dans quelle mesure le stéréotype de genre de réussite scolaire permet de satisfaire le besoin de justifier le système lorsque celui-ci est menacé. Pris dans leur ensemble, les résultats indiquent que les élèves ont connaissance d’un stéréotype de genre décrivant les filles qui réussissent à l’école comme moins affirmées, mais plus conformismes et plus intelligentes et travailleuses que les garçons qui réussissent. Cependant, l’intelligence des filles est jugée moins malléable que celle des garçons. Les résultats semblent en outre confirmer que le contenu de ce stéréotype de genre, parce qu’il associe aux garçons plus qu’aux filles les caractéristiques jugées prédictives de la réussite dans les filières prestigieuses, pourrait servir une fonction de rationalisation et de maintien des trajectoires scolaires défavorables aux filles. En conclusion de cette thèse, nous réaffirmons la nécessité pour les recherches futures d'articuler les explications de niveaux intra-individuel, situationnel, positionnel et idéologique pour une meilleure compréhension des processus de perpétuation de la hiérarchie de genre défavorable aux femmes dans le milieu académique. / In spite of continuous academic improvement, female students are still underrepresented in the fields of science and research. Our aim is to explore this contemporary paradox from a system justification perspective (Jost & Banaji, 1994). Specifically, we suggest that a gender stereotype on academic achievement exists, and that its content serves to justify and maintain unfavourable academic paths for women. We test this general assumption in eight studies organized into three lines of research. The first line is intended to document the content of a gender stereotype on academic achievement. The second one focuses on the role of the gender stereotype on academic achievement in the perpetuation of gender inequalities in academic paths. The third one is devoted to testing the justifying function of the gender stereotype on academic achievement, when the gender system is threatened. Taken together, results show that students are aware of the shared belief that girls who succeed in school are less assertive, but more compliant, intelligent and hardworking than boys who succeed in school. Girls' intelligence is nevertheless described as less malleable than boys' intelligence. Results indicate that the caracteristics deemed to predict success in the most prestigious fields of education are ascribed to male students more than to female students, confirming that the gender stereotype on academic achievement could serve to rationalize and perpetuate the gender gap in higher education. Finally, we emphasize that future research should articulate individual, situational, positional and ideological levels of explanation to fully account for the processes underlying the maintenance of the gender hierarchy in the academic domain.

The aim of the current thesis was to explore the possible link between System Justification Theory (SJT) and Terror Management Theory (TMT) in gender context and from the perspective of intergroup relations in a sample of Turkish university students. Having recently attracted research attention, the relation between the two theories is based on the effect of mortality salience (MS) on the tendency to justify the existing system. Accordingly, three research questions were investigated to see whether (1) ambivalent sexism toward women (hostile and benevolent sexism / HS and BS, respectively) and gender-group favoritism (on both explicit and implicit measures / expGF and impGF, respectively) were related to gender-specific system justification (GSJ), and whether (2) gender and (3) MS moderated the relation of GSJ to ambivalent sexism and gender-group favoritism. Based on the literature, it was hypothesized that (1) GSJ would predict HS, BS, expGF, and impGF, and that these predictions would be stronger (2) among women than among men and (3) when mortality is made salient as compared to when it is not. The hypotheses were tested with 185 participants (86 men, 99 women) who completed a questionnaire package including the demographic information form, GSJ Scale, MS manipulation, Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, and a scale measuring expGF along with a computer-administered task for impGF. The results revealed that higher levels of GSJ predicted higher levels of benevolent and hostile attitudes toward women as well as higher levels of explicit ingroup favoritism and lower levels of favoritism toward women. Only GSJ &ndash / HS and GSJ &ndash / expGF relationships were moderated by gender. The moderating role of MS was not observed in any of the four relationships. However, GSJ scores were found to be unevenly distributed across MS conditions, thereby, casting doubt on the reliability of the results concerning the moderating role of MS. The findings, as well as the contributions and limitations of the study, were discussed.

The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the relationship between ambivalent sexism, gender related system justification and religious orientation with attitudes toward physical wife abuse (APWA). APWA are investigated in three facets, namely justifiability (JPWA), perceived functionality (PFPWA) and consequences (ACPWA). As measurement tools, Attitudes toward Physical Wife Abuse Scale, Content Domains for Justification of Physical Wife Abuse Scale, Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI), Ambivalence toward Men Inventory (AMI), Revised Muslim Religious Orientation Scale (MROS-R), Gender Related System Justification Scale (GSJ) and demographic information form were used. Although a total of 385 student and non-student participants responded the questionnaire, only 303 (119 males, 184 females) participants who stated their religion to be Islam were included in the study for accurate assessment of Muslim religious orientation. The age range of the participants was between 17 and 72 (M=27.30 / SD= 8.68). Since women and men significantly differed with respect to their APWA, separate hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted in order to further observe the differences between them. Although there were slight differences in unique contributions of the variables for the three subscales of APWAS and for men and women, a general pattern was drawn in which results revealed that intrinsic religious orientation and quest religious orientation were not related to any of the three dimensions of APWA whereas fundamentalist religious orientation was found to be a significant predictor of APWA. Among the dimensions of ASI and AMI, Hostile Sexism (HS) and Benevolence toward Men (BM) predicted more favorable attitudes toward the three dimensions of physical wife abuse, whereas hostility toward men (HM) and benevolent sexism (BS) predicted less favorable attitudes. GSJ was not found to have a unique contribution in predicting any of the three dimensions of APWA. The major contributions of the present study are / 1) Investigation of religious orientation as an individual difference affecting APWA first in a Muslim culture, 2) Investigating GSJ first in Turkey and first with relation to APWA and 3) Providing a detailed measurement tool for specific assessment of attitudes toward physical wife abuse in three dimensions and 4) Providing a re-constructed Muslim Religious Orientation Scale which was extended and improved in content, reliability and validity after revision.

The present dissertation aims to investigate cognitive and motivational underpinnings of stereotype contents in differing contexts. This dissertation consisted of two related sections. In the first section, comparison was suggested as the cognitive process underlying the implicit competence and warmth attributions toward businesswomen and homemakers. Four studies using Go/No Go Association Task were conducted to investigate the comparison process. Findings of the studies indicated that comparison has a significant impact on implicit mixed stereotypes. Implicit mixed stereotypes were not observed when target groups and attributes were presented in non-comparative context (Study 1). However, implicit stereotype contents were obvious in comparative context (Study 2). Finally, implicit stereotype contents of homemakers and businesswomen were shaped in accordance to the part of the context that was comparative (i.e. group comparison in Study 3 and attribute comparison in Study4). In the second section of the dissertation, comparison process was related to individuals&rsquo / compensation tendency. Two studies were conducted to examine the compensation tendency in the framework of System Justification Theory. In the first study (Study 5), presentation order of the target groups was manipulated. By this way, participants were not aware of the second group. Findings indicated that participants tended to compensate their first ratings toward homemakers and businesswomen. Furthermore, ambivalent sexism moderated the compensation tendency. In the second study (Study 6), both groups were presented together. Neither order of presentation nor its interactions were significant. Findings of the studies were discussed in the light of relevant literature.

In the United States, women’s persistent gains in structural power may cause backlash among those motivated to preserve the status quo. The proposed study examines the conditions that prompt men and women to endorse sexism and promote gender stereotypes. System justification theory proposes that people are motivated to justify the socio-political system that governs them and threats to the stability of their system can increase individual’s motivated defenses. I expect men to show the strongest motivated defenses when the hierarchy is threatened or viewed as unstable, because to protect group-based interests men will reinforce the legitimacy of the system through stronger endorsement of system defenses. In contrast, women will show the strongest system defenses when the hierarchy is viewed as stable, to avoid feeling trapped in an unchanging system that oppresses them. To test these ideas, 430 men and women were exposed to a gender status hierarchy that was portrayed as stable or unstable and then they responded to several measures of sexism and gender stereotypes. Support for the hypothesis was only found on one measure of gender stereotypes. Men reported more system justifying stereotypes of traditional women in the unstable condition, while women showed the opposite pattern. Exploratory results demonstrate that men’s and women’s reports of agentic stereotypes for traditional and nontraditional women depended on whether they were exposed to a stable or unstable gender hierarchy. Future directions and limitations are discussed in consideration of these exploratory findings.

This study explored how system-justification theory may explain the mixed psychological outcomes of women's self-sexualization. Specifically, it was hypothesized that gender-specific system justification would mediate the relationships between women's intentions regarding and enjoyment of self-sexualization and (a) endorsement of benevolent sexist attitudes; (b) environmental mastery; (c) general positive affect; and (d) general negative affect. Participants were 190 heterosexual-identified women over the age of 18, surveyed through college courses, social media, and email advertisement. Measures included the Sexualizing Behavior Scale (SBS; Nowatzki & Morry, 2009), the Enjoyment of Sexualization Scale (ESS; Liss, Erchull, & Ramsey, 2011), a gender-specific system justification scale (as modified and used by Jost and Kay, 2005), the Benevolent Sexism subscale of the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (Glick & Fiske, 1996), the Environmental Mastery subscale from the Psychological Well-being Inventory (PWBI; Ryff, 1989), and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule - Expanded Form (PANAS-X; Watson & Clark, 1999). Self-esteem was also examined as an exploratory criterion variable, using the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Inventory (RSE; Rosenberg, 1965). Data were analyzed through path analysis, and results indicated a number of significant direct paths between variables; however, none of the indirect paths was significant, indicating lack of support for the general hypothesis that gender-specific system justification would mediate the links between self-sexualizing and the criterion variables of interest. Implications of this study include illuminating the role of societal context in shaping the function of marginalized individuals' behaviors, as well as advancing feminist scholarship by bridging the opposing views regarding women's self-sexualizing behaviors.

Sexism tends to be a culturally accepted form of prejudice. I propose the relatively strong trivialization of societal sexism stems from the unique benefits that men receive from the gender status hierarchy, compared to other types of group-based hierarchies. Three studies examined why people, men in particular, trivialize or justify gender bias in relation to other types of group-based biases. Study 1 was a correlational study that examined whether participants downplay the existence and social harm of gender bias in relation to racial, religious, and sexual orientation bias, moderated by participant gender. Participants reported stronger trivialization and denial of gender bias, compared to other three types of bias. Study 2 experimentally tested whether White men’s justifications for gender bias, in relation to racial bias, stems from the dyadic benefits men receive in interpersonal relationships with women. White men high in proximal benefits reported stronger essentialist justifications in the gender bias, compared to the racial bias condition. Study 3 examined whether heterosexual men, compared to heterosexual women and gay men, endorse stronger justifications for gender bias, compared to sexual orientation bias. Heterosexual men endorsed stronger essentialist justifications in the gender bias, compared to the sexual orientation bias condition. Implications of these findings are discussed.

<p>Challenges to or criticisms of existing social arrangements often result in individuals bolstering the status quo rather than becoming inspired to consider avenues for improvement - a phenomenon known as system justification. However, it is not yet known whether characteristics of the individual challenging the system might magnify (or alleviate) system-defensive responding. New entrance into a system might be one such characteristic to heighten defensiveness because new entrants likely have had fewer opportunities to prove their commitment to the system’s values. Thus, I conducted three initial studies to develop experimental paradigms testing whether recommendations for change are particularly repudiated when advocated by newcomers. Study 1 examined responses to proposals by a freshman congressperson (vs. senior or control) to change an obscure U.S. policy (<i>N </i>= 540). Study 2 examined responses to a proposal by a new employee (vs. senior or control) to change a workplace policy (<i>N </i>= 515), and Study 3 investigated student responses to a proposal by a junior transfer student (vs. junior continuing student) to change a proudly-held university policy (<i>N </i>= 309). Together, findings across these three paradigms suggest mixed evidence that both newcomers themselves, and their policy ideas, are derogated more than are full members when advocating change, particularly among individuals higher on dispositional system justification. Future, sufficiently-powered research should continue to examine impacts of proposer’s membership status on resistance to system change in order to provide insight into the actors most likely to successfully advocate for social progress. </p>

Acknowledged as the defining challenge of our time, economic inequality has far reaching individual and societal consequences. It negatively affects productivity, decision-making, and health outcomes on the one hand, and political stability and economic growth on the other. Increased competition for resources not allocated at the top skews available reference frames and leads to adoption of unachievable standards, generating stressful social comparisons and anxiety that may intensify inter-group conflicts. Yet, as this dissertation shows on data from surveys from across the world, many of the worse off tend to believe that the social world in general is fair and that large differences in incomes are justified and even necessary. To understand why and how are the widespread and entrenched differences in incomes and wealth not being contested at a larger scale, this dissertations links perceptions and judgments of economic inequalities to their perceived, and often misjudged, normativity. It is argued that there is a need for a greater attention and understanding of people’s beliefs about what are the popular opinions and shared values regarding political issues. It is not only that people not know of inequalities, underestimate them, or attempt to rationalize their existence as fair and deserved. It is that people also need to know that their sentiments are shared by others. Based on results of multiple experimental studies, this thesis explored and supported a possibility that people who believe that the unequal status quo is unsatisfactory and that the standing system should be challenged and changed also tend to believe that their views are not shared by the general population. Even more, such thinking tends to get reinforced when someone else is critical of the system in place. Thus, instead of rising in spirit and assuming that others will finally see at least some of the negative outcomes of the way things are, those hoping for change may get demoralized, feel isolated in their views, and may feel drawn to compromises they shouldn't need to consider. In particular, the dissertation mainly utilizes the framework of conservatism being a motivated political cognition (Jost et al., 2003) which proposes that adoption of system-legitimizing attitudes may be motivated by psychological needs to see the social world as orderly, structured, and generally just and fair. In four chapters, the dissertations explores how the conditions theorized to motivate adoption of status-legitimizing attitudes affect not only these attitudes, but also the perceptions of their normativeness. Chapter 2 presents a comprehensive test of the original reading of status-legitimacy hypothesis (Jost, Pelham, Sheldon, &amp; Ni Sullivan, 2003) which implied that those with lower objective status are the most motivated to system-justify, and of the re-specified version (van der Toorn et al., 2015) that posits subjective powerlessness to be the driver of undue system legitimization. Presented are results of a mixed-effects analysis of ISSP data on social inequality, covering almost 50,000 respondents from 28 countries. The results from analysis testing contextual moderation lend more support for the original, rather than the revised reading of status-legitimacy hypothesis - that it is the objectively disadvantaged who may experience greater motivation to defend the system. Chapter 3 adopts Lane's (1986) perspective explaining that political institutions create more dissonance than market institutions, and tests a proposition that while political institutions will be perceived as legitimate by the members of the lower classes, market institutions will be seen as less legitimate. Second, we hypothesize that those over and under-estimating their social class should report higher or lower perceived legitimacy of the system. Analysis of data from General Social Survey (2010-2016; total n = 4142) shows that those in lower classes report higher confidence in political, but not market institutions compared to those members of the upper classes. Similarly, relative to those under- or correctly estimating their class, those over-estimating their class positioning reported higher confidence in political compared to market institutions. Chapter 4 presents two experimental studies testing, on a sample of 201 students (in Tilburg, the Netherlands), how indirect threat to the country's culture and a direct criticism of the country's economic performance influence people's perceptions of attitudinal similarity with their society in general depending on their prior ideological views. The results suggest that those with views critical of the standing socio-political system imagine their co-nationals as more attitudinally different compared to those who consider the standing system to be fair and desirable. In particular, exposure to economic threat, but not cultural threat, increased the perceived ideological distance from the presumed attitudes of the rest of the society among those critical of the system, but not among those who considered the system to be fair and desirable as it is. Chapter 5 presents data from two studies conducted before and after the 2016 US Presidential election (mTurk, n = 478), and before and after the 2017 UK general election (Prolific Academic, n = 617). Data were gathered in two rounds, utilizing the same between-subjects experimental design to assess whether ideological differences moderate how threat (economic system threat) and uncertainty (outcome uncertainty about election) influence the perceived similarity between people's personal normative attitudes (how things should be) and their estimates of socially normative attitudes (what they believe others would say should be). Furthermore, the effect of the result of the election on beliefs about the legitimacy of the standing economic system among supporters of competing political parties was assessed in two studies using within-subjects design (US n = 80; UK n = 329). The findings support the hypothesis that ideology predicts differences in perception of the generalized other when faced with system threat and that people bolster their ideological commitments following threats to their worldview in form of electoral defeat. While liberals tend to overestimate the strength of conservative values within the society in general, conservatives view others as both more conservative and liberal compared to themselves.

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