In this episode, Professor John Jost discusses his research on how social change efforts are hampered by humans’ strong subconscious motivation to defend and justify the status quo.
Text transcript:
David Roberts
When looking over the course of human history, we tend to focus on times of disruption, when the established order is crumbling and something new is rising. But if we take a step back, something different strikes us: the vast majority of human history is characterized by small groups of people wielding often brutal power over massive numbers of others, without substantial resistance. Most of the time, the masses accept subjugation at the hands of a small cabal that they could, almost definitionally, overwhelm if properly organized.
From this perspective, what's needed is not an explanation of why people rebel against systems that are not in their self or group interest, but why they so often — most often — do not. What demands explanation is voluntary servitude. Why do people so often, rather than organizing and rising up against injustice, internalize the ideology of their oppressors and come to view themselves as naturally or fittingly subjugated?
And it's not just history where such an explanation is demanded. It's also current events. Why have the citizens of developed democracies endured two decades of misbegotten wars, financial crises, and rising authoritarianism with very little in the way of radical resistance?
Noted psychologist, researcher, and author John Jost of New York University offers an explanation: people have very strong psychological needs that weigh against thinking of themselves as subjugated victims; they crave certitude, closure, safety, and predictability. They are inclined, for these reasons, toward what is called “system justification.” As Jost writes, “people are motivated (often unconsciously, without deliberate intention or awareness) to defend, justify, and bolster aspects of the status quo, including existing social, economic, and political institutions and arrangements.”
The tendency to justify unjust systems is pervasive, even and especially among the people those systems treat worst. This means that everyone working for positive change is starting behind the eight ball, rolling a rock up a hill.
I read Jost’s two recent books — A Theory of System Justification and Left and Right: The Psychological Significance of a Political Distinction — earlier this summer and I've been thinking about them ever since, so I'm thrilled to talk to him about the evidence for system justification theory, the way it is distributed among conservatives and liberals, and ways those seeking change can work around it.
Without any further ado, Professor John Jost. Welcome to Volts, and thank you very much for coming.
John Jost
Thanks so much, David. It's great to be with you today. That was an outstanding summary of much of my work, especially the book on "system justification," so I'm not really sure what I have to add.
David Roberts
Well, we're done here. Thanks for coming and saying hi. Well, let's jump right into the main thing, so we can just give people a sense of what we're talking about. So, I frame it this way, I think ordinary people are familiar with "self-justification," which just has to do with the fact that we're inclined to accept stories or interpret things or perceive things in a way that justifies our own position and interests. I think people get that pretty clearly. And then there's "group justification," which I think people also get intuitively, people are inclined to sort of believe what justifies their group — that group can be their race, a geographical group, lots of different kinds of groups.
But then there's this third thing that you identify called "system justification," which has to do with people's inclinations to sort of tell stories and believe things that justify the larger systems of which they are apart. And I think the reason people stumble on this, a little bit, is that it often seems like "system justification" pushes us in directions contrary to "self-justification" and "group justification." It's often the case that we are embedded in larger social systems that are not particularly good for us. We're in the sort of lower rungs, and, even then, we have this tendency to justify those systems.
So tell us, for people who find the notion of this somewhat counterintuitive, explain, sort of, the evidence for it.
John Jost
Yes, I think that's well said, but just before I get to the evidence, let me kind of clarify the point that I'm trying to make. It's not really that people justify the social systems because they are bad for them. It's that we justify the social systems on which we depend, whether they're good for us or not good for us. And I think of the family, for instance, as a social system. And there are a lot of things that are unique about every family, Dickens notwithstanding, that we come to experience as natural, and reasonable, and legitimate, and desirable, for the most part.
Some people have an awakening in adulthood where they realize that a lot of stuff that they took for granted and experienced as legitimate, and so on, wasn't, and they, kind of, look back and rewrite their experiences, perhaps, in their family. But for many people, they never do. And those social systems, which can be as small as a diatic relationship, a marriage or a family, or as large as an entire society, or an economic system, or a political system, cultural institutions, organizations and so on. These things leave a mark on us psychologically, and it's not so easy for us to get outside of them, or to see them in a neutral, unbiased way, or, even, to see them, necessarily, as they are. There are a lot of ways in which our lives are easier and more subjectively satisfying, to the extent, that we accept those things as the default.
David Roberts
We're going to get, in just a minute, into the sort of psychological needs that this answers. So I just want to establish we have a very good sense that this exists.
John Jost
I think so. I mean, that's what I'm trying to — I'm reviewing hundreds of studies in this book called "𝘈 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘰𝘳𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘚𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘮 𝘑𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯," which came out in 2020, Harvard University Press. I think there's a large variety of sources of evidence for this. Some comes from history, anthropology, political science, sociology, but also experimental social psychology and surveys.
David Roberts
And I found it really interesting that we probably don't have time to get into this, but there's large parts of the book where you're just sort of engaging in other theories, previous theories and stories, from psychology and elsewhere, and all these different attempts to explain: why do people not just put up with being subjugated, but in a sense, participate in it? Why do they adopt the ideology of their oppressors? And there's been lots of different attempts to explain this, like maybe, it's in their self interest, maybe there's money on the line, maybe they do it out of fear of reprisal. But sort of what you come back to over and over again is no, there's something even if you subtract all those things there's something left at the root.
John Jost
Yeah, that's very well said. It's not that I'm saying those other things don't matter. I'm just saying that they're not sufficient to explain, for the full extent, to which we participate in social systems, including social systems that do contain elements of injustice, and that we and other people, sometimes, do suffer the consequences of subscribing to the legitimacy of those social systems. Which is also not to say that all social systems are unjust or illegitimate either.
David Roberts
So, the question then is: Why? Why do people have this tendency to justify systems, even when the systems are not operating in their favor or are not doing well by them? It seems counterintuitive. It seems like, based on my self-interest, lots of people ought to be rising up or rebelling or acting out, but they don't. So, you identify three families of psychological needs that this "system justification" answers: "epistemic," "existential," and "relational." I think, probably, ordinary people are not immediately going to get what those mean.
John Jost
Of course.
David Roberts
Let's just say a few words about each, sort of — "epistemic" has to do with knowledge. So what are the needs there that "system justification" answers?
John Jost
I mean, the most fundamental one is a reduction of uncertainty. Most people experience uncertainty, especially high levels of uncertainty, as aversive. And in fact, there are lots of situations where people would rather have a sure answer that's an unfortunate or negative answer, than to be left in a state of uncertainty for a prolonged period of time. So for most of us, we want, what psychologists sometimes refer to as closure, cognitive closure. We want to know, at least, what we think about something and then move on with the rest of our lives rather than engage in a protracted, informational search that could go on forever and ever.
And so the status quo, I think, has an advantage over alternatives to the status quo, in the sense, that it is familiar, and it is certain. We know it. It's the devil we know. Whereas alternative social arrangements, utopian social systems, et cetera, these things often raise more questions than they answer. And so for most people, and especially people who are high on, what psychologists call, needs for cognitive closure or intolerance of ambiguity or avoidance of uncertainty, people would rather stick with what's known and familiar because it reduces the degree of uncertainty that's involved. That's the "epistemic."
David Roberts
So, in a sense, like, we'd rather accept the idea that God has designated our group as slaves to some other group, because at least that's an answer. And if you reject it, then you don't know what God wants, and you don't know what you're supposed to be, and you don't know how you're supposed to relate to other people.
John Jost
Yeah.
David Roberts
And that is, for a lot of people, extremely anxiety producing.
John Jost
Well, that's a good example because it hits all three motives. It gives you certainty in an "epistemic" sense, but it also gives you safety or security, if you think that God will protect you and save you, and even in the afterlife, take care of you, look out for you. And it also satisfies your "relational" needs or motives because you're not alone in your religious group. You have lots of other people who share that, and they provide social support for you for subscribing to that ideology.
David Roberts
Right. So the "existential" needs are just a need for safety. And, basically, this has to do with the fact that going along with your group, going along with the largest system around you, offers you some physical safety. People who speak up, the sort of squeaky wheels, they draw attention and often not welcome attention. It's just safer to be in the group, basically. That's what "existential" has to do with. Yes.
John Jost
Yeah, that's right. Would you rather be one of the people that the police are protecting? Or would you rather be one of the people that the police are complaining about? Or worse.
David Roberts
Right. And the "relational" needs, I almost think, are the strongest. I go back and forth. But, you know, "relational" just has to do with the stories of the system you're in, tell you how you relate to other people, and in a sense, give you that social network that humans need badly.
John Jost
Yes.
David Roberts
And if you reject that, how are you supposed to relate to other people? What are the again, you're sort of back to the uncertainty, but it's uncertainty about your social relationships, which, you know, people really need those for peace of mind.
John Jost
I think that's absolutely right. I I think the risks of alienation are really high in a social sense. If you're a relentless critic or revolutionary, you can find quite a bit more support within your family and your neighbors and the community at large, if you're a supporter of the overarching social systems, rather than a relentless critic of them.
David Roberts
Yes, I think, Dan Cayen of, I think, Yale, he sort of makes that point. He's like, "what's better for you as an individual: to be accepted in your group and to have the group systems around you protecting you or to have accurate beliefs? What good or accurate beliefs compared to a social system that you belong in?" There's just no real incentive for it.
John Jost
Well, I wouldn't say no incentive. I think there's always going to be some incentive for having more or less, more than less, accurate perceptions, beliefs, et cetera. I think reality is a plausible co-selector of belief and perception, as they say. It's more adaptive to have things that are somewhat hooked into reality, at least in the long run, if not the short run. So, I wouldn't set this up completely as either/or, and that people always choose the group over what they know to be true. I think there are cases where people leave their groups because they believe that the ideologies are either untrue or unjust. And we have to pay homage to that, and recognize that, because that takes a special, kind of, moral courage, in its own, to do that.
David Roberts
Right. But, I think the significance of the theory is that that's the exception, right. That that's, sort of, a bit of, bravery out of the ordinary.
John Jost
A bit of bravery is what creates progress in society. There's a reason we're not stuck in the Middle Ages, entirely.
David Roberts
Right, okay. So we have this tendency towards "system justification" that answers "epistemic", "existential," and "relational" needs. It gives us a sense of certainty, a sense of safety, and a sense of belonging, in accord with those around us. And those are substantial needs that everyone has. And so this is how you end up with... like, you give some examples of "system justification," kind of, stories. You mentioned stereotypes about rich and poor people. One of the stories every system tells about itself, is about why the people with power in it ought to have power in it.
John Jost
That's right. It's a fundamental question for coordinated, socially-organized life: "why do those people have more than other people?" Yes.
David Roberts
And, as you say, if you come to the conclusion, "well, it's a random life lottery, and it's not fair, and we're stuck in this bizarrely, unfair system," you suddenly are uncertain? Unsafe?
John Jost
That's right. If you say it out loud, it, absolutely, you could be unsafe or ostracized. For sure.
David Roberts
Yeah. So this leads to, sort of, I mean, this is one of the things I find fascinating, just one example: the, sort of, stereotypes about rich people, which have always existed, but exist still today. Even in light of all we've learned about the sort of capriciousness of financial markets and the, kind of, lottery of capitalism we still have these stories, even in contemporary US society...
John Jost
Yes.
David Roberts
...About rich people, basically, being smarter and better, and deserving to be rich and powerful. Right?
John Jost
Yeah. A lot of people have written really good books in the last few years about meritocratic ideology, meritocratic myths. How it, in a way, it's keeping a lot of people signed on to the economic system we have and the educational system that we have, frankly.
David Roberts
Yeah. And the flip side being that poor people deserve to be poor. And one of the things that has always been disturbing to me, but that your work really casts a light on, is all this research we have in the US, showing that the, sort of, strata of people that are just above poverty, that are just barely making a living, are the ones with some of the strongest and most negative stereotypes about poor people. They're the ones most inclined to say that poor people are lazy, or drug users, or don't take care of their families, and that's why they're poor.
John Jost
Well, I don't know. I wouldn't say they're most inclined, necessarily. It's a complicated question. I wouldn't simplify it to that extent. It's possible that they feel freer to say things like that, than other people do. I don't know whether they're thinking it more than people at the top. But, I think, at least what's striking to me, is the extent to which many poor people do look down upon other poor people, and the extent to which, for instance, working class people in the United States reject liberal, progressive, socialist economic policies, that they would clearly benefit from, in favor of something that's quite a bit more conservative and regressive, in terms of social redistribution. And the reasons they do so, I do believe, are at least, in part ideological.
David Roberts
Yeah, and you see it in other power imbalances too. You mentioned gender. You, sort of, have this imbalance of gender power, which then results in stories about why that imbalance in gender power is natural, and right, and makes sense. And then you find those stories, even, among women, right?
John Jost
Sure. Many women, I think, also have, what we might say is, a traditional worldview about gender relations believe that, in some ways at least, they should be subjugated to men. And it's the same question. It's not that women are especially likely to stay in a bad or abusive relationship, necessarily, more than a non abusive one. It's that-but it's that a remarkable number of women find themselves trapped in an abusive relationship and find it very hard to get out psychologically, as well as, materially, in other ways. And that is, in part, because we are social beings. Our consciousness is occurring in a social context. First of all, we're socialized to think in certain ways, including about gender. And second of all, we're immersed in a very intense social system of the family, where we come up with our own, as you say, stories about why things are the way they are and why it's okay like this. And, it's not so easy to break out of that. It's much easier to see in retrospect, or from the outside.
David Roberts
It's like trying to see the back of your head. Right? Like, what are my hidden assumptions? Well, they're hidden.
John Jost
Yeah. Maybe a friend or a therapist can help you see it better than you.
David Roberts
Gender is, by no means, unique. This is something that social reformers throughout history find over and over again is that the attempt to liberate a group of people, who are stuck in an unjust system, often, not just fails to sort of create enthusiasm among the people, who are trying to be liberated but often hostility, often working against, to some extent, the people you're trying to liberate.
John Jost
Yeah. Backlash is always a serious issue, when you're talking about making transformative social changes. Upsetting the status quo can be very psychologically disturbing to people, including people who don't have it so well under the status quo. But they're, of course, afraid that things could get even worse, and that is always a possibility. That's part of the uncertainty.
David Roberts
Right?
John Jost
Yeah. And it's been pointed out, on many occasions, for many decades, by social scientists and others that many of the social movements, on behalf of the disadvantaged in society, are led not necessarily by people who are at the bottom, but people who are at the top of, at least, those groups.
David Roberts
Right.
John Jost
Maybe not the very top of society, but, at least, middle or middle upper class people.
David Roberts
You say that "system justification" is, I think, in an obvious and intuitive way, helpful and pleasant for those in the systems that are benefiting from them. Right? The privilege. Like, it's good for the subjective well-being of the privileged in society to think that their privilege is natural, in the way it's meant to be.
John Jost
Sure.
David Roberts
But it's a little more complicated story about the people, who are, sort of, on the ass end of the system, who are not benefiting from it.
John Jost
Right.
David Roberts
You say, in the short term, for those people, "system justification" can offer sort of a palliative, make you feel better in the short term because of these psychological needs, we were discussing. But you point out, in the long term, it's not really good for a group of people to think of themselves as naturally lesser.
John Jost
You're absolutely right. You've read the book very carefully, and I'm grateful for that. Thank you, for that. That's a subtle point, and there's only maybe a handful of studies that have really looked at the short term versus long term differences. But that's absolutely my take, at this point, is that believing in the legitimacy of the system, sometimes even against some of the evidence, at least, can have short term palliative benefits. It can keep your motivation going. It can keep you working harder and feeling like you maybe do have some self-efficacy in the system. You have some opportunities to succeed, but the longer you're plugging away, and the less success you experience, and the less success all the other members of your group are experiencing, I think, it becomes, first of all, harder to sustain those illusions; but, also, sustaining those illusions comes at the cost of your own self-esteem, or the image, or the esteem you have of your fellow ingroup members. I mean, if we're all working so hard, and we can't get ahead, and the system, itself, is fair and legitimate and desirable, then it must be that we're deficient in some way.
David Roberts
One of the most sort of stark examples, of all this, is slavery in the US. And there's some really striking and disturbing stuff in the book about slaves attitudes toward other slaves, and even toward themselves.
John Jost
And toward their masters. Yeah. The same thing was observed in the Holocaust, in concentration camps in World War II. When people are completely dependent for their entire existence, I mean, talk about an "existential" threat, it's pretty hard to not look for some way in which what you're experiencing is okay and looking for whatever silver linings you can possibly find. But, also, the other people who are suffering, the other victims, it's also hard to maintain solidarity with them and keep your own sanity and confidence that you're going to be okay.
David Roberts
Right. And that just, kind of, shows how strong this force is, even at work among the victims of the Holocaust. It just shows, I think, the degree to which human beings are averse to living day-to-day with the thought that they're in a broken, unjust system that they don't belong in, and that they...just that unsettledness is so grating and unhealthy for people that they will resort to justifying almost anything they find themselves in. It's really mind boggling.
John Jost
I think so, too.
David Roberts
And one of the other stories, that was striking, was the interviews with maids and housekeepers in South Africa. And these are almost all Black women serving white families, but they don't think of themselves as unfairly taken advantage of or exploited.
John Jost
Right? Yeah. That's not research that I did myself, but social psychologists in South Africa did these in-depth interviews with domestic workers, as you say, and most of them reported that they felt lucky and that they were the beneficiaries of a system that works for everyone. And yeah, again, from the outside, it seems pretty surprising.
David Roberts
Yeah. They take all this satisfaction basically playing a role, a needed role, in the system. Right? That's so satisfying to them that the larger injustices don't affect them. It's just very striking...
John Jost
Unless, it's explicitly brought to their attention. I mean, that's the point of kind of critical consciousness raising movements. And all the movements, the sort of progressive, egalitarian social movements of the last century or two, have had that as an element of, sort of, we need to look at, for instance, gender socialization in a more critical way. And to realize that we've been accepting a lot of things as natural and fair that we don't have to, necessarily. I mean, that's the key of, kind of, a critical ideology that points out the problems with the social system, that, like fish swimming in the water, we're not aware of.
David Roberts
Right. And this was, sort of, the thrust of when feminism says the personal is political. It's the same thing. Trying to make that shift, like the system that you're involved in, take a step back, and try to look at it from the outside.
John Jost
Right. I think it's a useful exercise to think about what women today think about these things, and what they did 70 years ago, and to do that thought experiment. Because I think it's easier to understand something, like how "system justification" or dominant ideology, can operate if you really understand how, let's say, the average housewife 70 years ago thought about things. Our own mothers or grandmothers. Right? Or great grandmothers.
David Roberts
Right. Progress does happen. It's just, I guess, when you're coming up like me as a fresh-faced, innocent person, who believes in reason and dialogue and persuasion, it just seems like it shouldn't be that hard. Right?
John Jost
Right. Of course. We all kind of think that, and maybe, we see again...we see it in others more readily than we see it in ourselves. But, I think that's absolutely correct. But also I don't even know how old you are, and it doesn't matter, but the point is that we're born into a new generation, and that is part of this "system justification" process because the way things are when we're sentient beings is the status quo for us, in many different ways. So, the world that girls are born into and raised in today is a very different social system than 70 years ago, or 40 years ago.
David Roberts
Right. So, you say, quoting here, "the strength of system justification, motivation, and its expression, are expected to vary according to situational and dispositional factors." In other words, the "system justification" is not a set quantity. It's not some standard unit that exists in all people and places the same. It will shift this way and that based on "circumstances" and "disposition." I want to save "disposition" for later because it's the one I'm most interested in, but let's talk about "situational" or contextual, sort of, factors. So what kinds of "circumstances" are likely to elicit "system justification"?
John Jost
So, we've got experimental studies on this and we've also got sort of archival studies that involve how people respond, for instance, before and after 9/11. How people respond before and after terrorist attacks around the world. And we're still sort of trying to suss out what happened during COVID, but I think there's a general picture that's emerging, that's consistent with what you and I have been talking about, with regard to uncertainty and threat that events that happen or situations that just happen to you or me, or events that are big enough situations that they are happening to all of us all at the same time. Highly threatening circumstances that are filled with uncertainty, such as, terrorist attacks, or war, or an economic crisis these are things that put most of us into a state where we want more certainty, we want more safety, we want more conformity, social belongingness. And that puts us in a mindset, I think, that is more conducive to hankering down on the status quo, justifying and defending the way things are now, rather than thinking about ways of improving the system. So, in a way, thinking about how to improve things is a luxury that we can only really have as a society when we're feeling like things are pretty good, when we're feeling that things are pretty secure, pretty safe, and we're pretty much in agreement. When there's a lot of discord, when there's a lot of uncertainty, when there's a lot of insecurity or threat, it's, I think, difficult for people to think about alternatives or even improving the social systems that we have.
David Roberts
That's such a maddening Catch-22.
John Jost
Yes.
David Roberts
Don't you think? It's like 9/11 is such a perfect, you'd never wish it on anyone, but it is an ideal case study for this, kind of thing, because 9/11 very much created uncertainty in the minds of the US public. Is it going to happen again? Who did it? Like, are there terrorists in my small town? Remember that whole thing?
John Jost
Absolutely.
David Roberts
And then, obviously, "existential" safety risks. And you saw, in the wake of 9/11, just this intense, immediate pressure toward conformity.
John Jost
Absolutely. President Bush's approval ratings were what? 86%?
David Roberts
God. Yeah, I know. We'll never see again. But this is what I mean about a Catch-22. It's like those who are on top of the system, and who benefit from those lower in the system accepting things, right, can create the very uncertainty and threats that reinforce the system. Right? You saw that in the wake of 9/11. Basically, Bush and the Republicans did everything they could to heighten uncertainty, heighten threat. Right? Remember the threat...
John Jost
Yeah. The orange red. Yeah. I think that's right. It's, obviously, it's not only the US government that does that, but governments all over the world do this pretty routinely. I think that's right. And that's why, I think, people who are interested in improving people's lives and creating better and more just social systems have to wait for the right moments and be opportunistic, when they have a brief opening, to make some changes before people have completely forgotten what the problems were. Right? So, I do think, I have to say, I've come to the view that it's much easier to govern from the right, in a system justifying conservative manner, because you can always frame your opposition as a threat.
David Roberts
Yeah. This is what I mean. Like, anytime there's a little glimmer of social change, or a glimmer of consciousness pushing towards social change, it's just, trivially, easy if you're a powerful person, or at the head of a country, to sort of generate the very sort of uncertainty and threat that will quash that consciousness. It's amazing that...this is sort of the result of my reading both your books is I've just come out, sort of, amazed that progress ever happens.
John Jost
Right, right. My view of progress is definitely two steps forward, one step back. But, you're right, it's amazing we're ever able to take two steps forward. But, part of it is because new generations, younger people, are born into a different world, and they are able to, at least for until their cerebral cortices are completely frozen like ours, they're able to envision new and alternative ways of doing things. Progress comes from the young. I think that's right.
David Roberts
Yes, or one death at a time, whatever.
John Jost
Yeah...or maybe. That's the more negative view of it but, yeah.
David Roberts
I mean, this gets to my larger pessimism, my pessimism has layers, but my larger pessimism has to do with...it just seems like, globally, we're heading into a time, just look at climate change, right? Climate change is going to create more disruption, more migrations, more uncertainty and threat, which are going to have the effect of making it more difficult to think clearly about how to solve climate change, in a just way. And it just seems like everything's heading that direction, in the direction of more disruption, more threat, more uncertainty. The very kinds of things that make the problems more difficult to solve.
John Jost
This is a very uplifting podcast, David, got to tell you. No, I agree with you, but, we're going to sound like Debbie Downers here, but, I think, that's exactly the problem. Over the weekend, I was at an academic conference of social psychology, and one of the presentations was about how system justifiers...and political conservatives do tend to score higher on measures of "system justification" than people who are liberal or progressive. High system justifiers tend to perceive policy solutions, aimed at addressing climate change, as more threatening to the status quo particularly, the economic system, than they do the threat of climate change itself.
This is where we're at with the framing of the problem. We think doing something about climate change is more upsetting to the status quo than waiting for the effects of climate change to happen. And this is a colossal problem, I think. I don't know how pessimistic you want me to be here, but I can join you, if you like.
David Roberts
Well, I think, Volt's listeners are pretty accustomed to general pessimism. So, we talked about contextual features that will tend to exacerbate "system justification" to basically, anything that, kind of, tickles those psychological needs, we were referring to earlier, for certainty, and safety, and connection to other people. Anything that threatens those or disrupts those, tends to strengthen "system justification" in everyone. Because everyone has some degree of this.
John Jost
Yes, I think so. But also we need to think about some people are justifying certain systems and not others. So not everyone is justifying every imaginable social system. But probably you've met people who are very critical, for instance, of the capitalist system or something but are also very sexist and very defending of the...
David Roberts
What?
John Jost
yeah, maybe once or twice, even, something like that. So, I think, we have to keep in mind that ... and who knows, maybe I'm justifying the academic system, the university system and so on, we're all justifying social systems, and, hopefully, we can, at least at times, step back and look at them critically and think about issues of justice. But it's important to think about, the fact, that we can satisfy our "system justification" needs in different domains. And not everyone is justifying in all the systems, although, by and large, people who justify one of the kind of aspects of the overarching social system tend to justify the others. But it's not a perfect correlation.
David Roberts
Right. And so this gets us to the "dispositional" differences, which are crucial to your other book about left versus right. So let's just get into that a little bit different. So the short answer here is that...how to summarize your entire second book?
John Jost
I don't know. You did a pretty good job with the first one. I'm just impressed that you read both my books. I don't know if anyone outside of my family has read both of the books, yet.
David Roberts
There's this long running debate in psychology about whether ordinary people have anything that you would refer to as ideology.
John Jost
Right.
David Roberts
And, we don't have to get into this, sort of, there's methodological debates around this long running, but basically, your whole point is that it's very difficult...you cannot cleanly separate ideology from these sort of deeper, more fundamental psychological needs; that they, sort of, feed into one another, and that, depending on your psychological makeup, different kinds of ideology will appeal to you. So, you can trace a connection between these deep psychological profiles and ideology. And, secondly, and most importantly, we find, again and again through experimental evidence and the evidence of our eyeballs, that there are deep psychological differences between conservatives and liberals. Between, broadly speaking, the right and the left that are stable over time. And that sort of transcend... because the exact expression of left and right obviously differ from place to place, time to time, system to system. But you find these sort of deep undercurrents that are true across systems. And one of those is that conservatives are more prone to "system justification". So just say a little bit about why that is, and how we know that.
John Jost
Yeah, that was an excellent summary of the second book, about as good as your summary of my first book. Thank you. Yes, there's a lot there.
David Roberts
It is a whole book.
John Jost
It is a whole book. The way I've come to think about it is there are two kind of fundamental value orientations, let's say, that separate left from right, and this goes back to the French Revolution, if not before. Some people say it goes back even before that. There's passages in the Bible about the right hand of God, and things like this. But, let's say, at least since the French Revolution, the potential for a fundamental clash between people on the left who want more equality, more social equality, more economic equality, more political equality, and they're willing to change the status quo, push for social change in order to arrive at a more equal place. And there's people on the right who want social stability, social order. They want to maintain the status quo or, at least, slow down the pace of social changes. And, in so doing, they end up having to defend and justify existing forms of hierarchy and inequality as legitimate or desirable or both. And this to me is the fundamental left/right distinction, in terms of values or philosophy or something like this.
And, I think, they're correlated dimensions. They're not uncorrelated dimensions; they're correlated dimensions. And the reason they're correlated is for historical reasons because human beings over a period of hundreds and even thousands of years, in general, most of our traditions have been more hierarchical and less equal. And most social change movements have been in the direction of pushing for more equality, More equality for women, more equality for people of color, more equality for poor people, you know, elimination of slavery and feudal bondage, and all kinds of things, in the direction of greater equality, and more recently for sexual minorities and so on, too.
And so that's why "system justification" is so crucial, to this, because it's sort of the thing that links those two dimensions together, and the dimensions, you could think of, as equality versus tradition, or something. So the right wants to maintain tradition and, in order to do that, they are willing to accept, if not push for, inequality. And on the left, people want more equality, and they're willing to upset, upend tradition, in order to do that. And "system justification" is, sort of,I think of as the motivational glue that leads people to prefer stability, if they're high on "system justification" and order, again, because it serves these "epistemic," "existential," "relational" needs to attain certainty, security, order, closure, safety, and conformity and social belongingness. And tradition is all about that, right? Whereas on the low end, people who are less likely to engage in "system justification," they need to be able to tolerate a lot of uncertainty, not only about what the revolution looks like, but what happens the day after the revolution succeeds, if it succeeds there's no blueprint, as they say, in things like this and willing to tolerate a great deal of personal lack of safety. You don't know if you go to the protest, if you're going to get arrested, or beaten up, or thrown in jail, or what. So you got to tolerate, you have to be pretty high on tolerance of uncertainty and, even, tolerance for threats, potential threats, and on social belongings willing to be ostracized, even, perhaps, by even your own parents, or your grandparents, or your aunts and uncles or people who don't understand why you're so upset about the American way of life, or the American system, or something.
Plenty of people don't understand the protesters and feel that they're out of step with mainstream society, and so on. And that's why, I think, burnout rates are so high among social activists. It's it's hard. You need a lot of social support from within the activist community to counter the fact that you're essentially being excluded from mainstream society as a whole, both actively and passively. So, I think, that this creates the possibility for people to, in part because of dispositional things, which is personality characteristics. People find themselves at some point on this continuum, from left to right. Most people are somewhere in the middle, but how close you are to one side or the other is affected, I think, by temperament and personality, even beginning in childhood. And there seems like there's some genetic basis, I think, in the psychological characteristics that make people more likely to gravitate toward the left or toward the right, if they're in a society with a lot of options, with a menu of options from left to right, typically, a democratic society, where you have a lot of things to choose from and have enough education and interest to be exposed to those things on the menu.
So ... all of these things are happening in interactions. So, I'm not saying like people are born to be a liberal or born to be a conservative. I'm saying people are born with certain psychological predispositions that increase the likelihood or decrease the likelihood of them gravitating towards specific sets of ideas, if they encounter them in their social and cultural environments, as they mature.
David Roberts
Right, but these "dispositions" you're talking about here, I'm going to read a quote from the book, says, "meta-analytic reviews confirm that uncertainty avoidance, intolerance of ambiguity, perceptions of a dangerous world, and death anxiety are positively associated with an affinity for political conservative system justifying ideology. Conversely, cognitive complexity, openness to new experience, and the motivation to prolong cognitive closure are negatively associated with conservatism." Now, when I read those dispositions, it seems to me that they all have a common root, which is, basically, fear or threat sensitivity, whatever you want to call it. The, sort of, down at the most root, brainstem level, people seem to have different sensitivities toward threat. Is that accurate?
John Jost
Well, I wouldn't essentialize that so much or say it goes back to the brainstem or anything like that, but I would say that, and there are evolutionary theories about why things, like authoritarianism, which, in democracies tends to be more associated with right leaning, or conservative leaning politics, than with liberal or left leaning politics. But there are theories about that that suggest that when there are high levels of threat, such as pathogen threat, threats of disease, or threats from outgroup members, threats from groups that could do harm to us, the group tends to bond together, enforce social norms to a much higher degree, punish deviance, look for strong leaders. Things that we associate with authoritarianism, and with maintaining tight traditions, and being closed to people who deviate too much from those norms. And so, I would say, vigilance towards certain kinds of threats, especially, I think yes, they do lend themselves to a more conservative, and a more authoritarian, way of seeing the world and way of thinking. But some of the evidence about physiological differences and so on, has not been replicated. And so it's a complicated business that people in my field are still trying to sort out.
David Roberts
This is a good, maybe footnote here is there's a lot of controversy about people have been trying to trace these differences deeper and deeper and deeper. And they're like, maybe, they're genetic, maybe they're neurological. All that research is highly, let's say, provisional and uncertain at this point.
John Jost
It is. But can I just stop you right there? Because even the assumption that those things are more fundamental or unchangeable, that's part of the problem here, because the brain stuff certainly is not that. Our brains are changing in response to all kinds of things that we're doing. If we learn to juggle, or we learn a second or third foreign language, our brains change dramatically. If we start driving a taxi cab, certain parts of our brain, where the geolocations are stored, is going to be massively changed, as a function of driving a taxi for a couple of years.
So we shouldn't think of the brain as fixed. We shouldn't think of it as the cause and everything else, the effect. I think it's very plausible that the direction of causality runs the other way, as well. That once we become inundated with a particular ideological worldview, once we start, I don't know, listening to NPR or watching Fox News, it's going to have effects on our brains over time, after years. So the fact that there are neurological differences, and I think there are some, but you're right to point out we're still just talking about a handful of studies, doesn't mean that the differences originated with the neurocognitive structures or functions.
David Roberts
Right. I understand why you're so sensitive about this.
I'm not sensitive. I just want people to understand what we can and can't get from neuroscience.
Right. People have this weird idea that if you're saying that certain proclivities, let's say, would urge people to one side or the other, that you're somehow essentializing things, and you're not. You know, I think we can hold two thoughts in our head, which are that the brain is very plastic, it changes based on circumstances, but also that it has certain proclivities. Right? That incline it one way or the other. And those proclivities can be formed by...I think about this a lot. Like, why do some brains end up with this heightened threat response? And I feel like this is one area where, sort of, like, physiology and sociology can help. It has everything to do with, like; did the mother breathe polluted air while she was pregnant? We can trace these things back. Like how is the prenatal care? How is postnatal care? All these things affect the brain's proclivities that it emerges into the world with.
John Jost
That may very well be true, but let's not rule out the role of social-cultural things. If you grow up in an environment where people are always suspicious of the foreigner, or the person whose food smells different or whatever, that's going to make you vigilant in a way that someone else, who grows up in a more cosmopolitan environment, isn't going to be vigilant to that sort of stuff.
David Roberts
Right. Obviously, there's a two way causal loop here. Right.? The proclivities...
That's what I'm trying to say.
...Affect the circumstances. The circumstances affect the proclivities. They're in a loop, here.
John Jost
That's exactly what I want to say. I am not a reductionist about these things. And even on the genetic front, I mean, the the highest estimates we've seen, and these are based on comparing, essentially, identical to fraternal twins, monozygotic to dizygotic twins who are raised in different families, different environments. The monozygotic identical twins do tend to have more similar political attitudes and political orientations in adulthood than the dizzygotic same sex twins, who are also raised apart. But the maximum amount of the variability in political attitudes that could be explained, on the basis of this, is 40%, which first of all, leaves a lot more to be explained by social and cultural effects.
David Roberts
Right.
John Jost
But second of all, even that 40%, I think ... It's certainly not that there's a gene for left and right. The psychological characteristics make you more or less open to certainty or uncertainty, and threat or safety, or maybe uniqueness versus conformity.
David Roberts
Yeah, the controversy around this puzzles me somewhat. Like, it just seems to me, easy enough to say, you'll have these proclivities based on maybe physiological stuff, maybe some genetic stuff, maybe early childhood or pre and post natal care. And then, you'll have those proclivities which can be shaped and formed in a million different ways, depending on what kind of society and circumstances you emerge into. Obviously, both things are going on. So when you say we can trace some of this to genetics, you're not saying people are born liberal. It's just a weird ... but people are very hypersensitive about that kind of essentializing.
John Jost
Well, not only that, there's not a very high level of scientific literacy, I think, in our public discourse, especially around politics and, especially, maybe with regard to social science. And many people, I think, are knee-jerk reductionists. I'm not saying you are by any stretch of the imagination, but most people, when they hear about brain research, they don't think about the fact that situations or experiences can cause changes in brain structures or functions, but they can.
David Roberts
Right. So this gets back to what we were saying earlier. It's contextual and "dispositional."
John Jost
Yes. I'm an interactionist in my field. I'm a Lewinian person by situation interactionist, from Kurt Lewin. Yeah.
David Roberts
And that's the only take that really makes any sense to me. Of course, we're not blank slates.
John Jost
That's right.
David Roberts
But also, of course, our specific opinions about, I don't know, welfare policy are not genetically encoded. Like, of course it's both.
John Jost
I think so.
David Roberts
But we do end up with psychological profiles that are one or the other. Right? We do end up with pretty deep differences.
John Jost
Well, I wouldn't say one or the other. I would say that.
David Roberts
On a spectrum.
John Jost
Yeah, that's right. They can be located on a spectrum. That's exactly right. I see it as a continuous dimension. I think ... it's left and right in a political sense. It's like east and west. They're relative to each other, and they change. Their meaning changes, somewhat, depending on the context. Right. So, it's possible that someone in the US, who considers themselves left of center, would be right of center with those same attitudes in France, or whatever. Just as New York is an Eastern city, but not when compared to Paris.
David Roberts
Right. So if you, let's say, emerge from childhood with similar proclivities, you'll be shaped differently, whether you are born in the US, or born in France, or born in China. Like, those proclivities can be shaped into very different political philosophies depending on your circumstances.
John Jost
Oh, for sure. And that includes the family, that includes schools, that includes the political system, the media environment, all those things. And, I think, if you're born into a totalitarian system, there's really no menu, whatsoever. So I don't think your psychology is going to predict your political attitudes at all, in a context like that. This theory really only applies to democracies where people have some freedom of choice, even within a constrained menu of options. As long as there's some choice, we can explain relative preferences within that range.
David Roberts
Yeah. Obviously, the whole book is about these differences between left and right, so we can't cover the whole thing. But there's some of them, some of these sort of experimental results I just found so familiar and telling that they kind of made me laugh. Like this one, for instance, "on several specific issues, conservatives exhibited the truly false consensus effect by assuming that like-minded others share their opinions more than is actually the case. Liberals, on the other hand, often display an illusion of uniqueness assuming that like minded others share their opinions less than is actually the case." That is just so...
John Jost
Thanks. I'm glad you appreciated that. There is something funny, maybe, about both sides getting it wrong in opposite directions.
David Roberts
I know. You look around, and you see that. Like, this is the moral majority, right? Conservatives seem to have this very deep-seated belief that everyone agrees with them but is just afraid to speak up.
John Jost
Yeah. And, of course, that has happened sometimes in history, in social sciences or social psychology, we call that pluralistic ignorance. Apparently, there was a time when alcohol was prohibited, and, apparently, it was never a majority opinion of American citizens to prohibit alcohol. But people were afraid to say, "no, I want to keep alcohol legal," and so a false norm can take place. But I think you're right. The whole issue over abortion, maybe, is exemplifying that, that conservatives believe that people are more supportive of striking down Roe versus Wade, than is the case. Apparently, if the public opinion research is to be believed, what, 62% disagree with the Supreme Court's decision? That's, maybe, a case of pluralistic ignorance on the other side there.
David Roberts
Well, yeah. Speaking of liberals thinking that their beliefs are more unique than they are, there's all this polling I read about. I don't know, maybe this was in your book, but early in the Civil Rights Era, like 1960. In the late 1950s, early 1960s, there were polls showing that the majority of the public supported desegregation and equality, but also that people who supported desegregation and equality, thought that other people disagreed with them. Right. Thought that they were unique in thinking so. So you had this sort of majority opinion that the majority was not aware of it being a majority. And I feel like liberals get into that a lot.
John Jost
That's a very good point. That particular statistic was not in my book, but it's a very interesting one. And I'm also curious whether that was before or after the 1954 Brown versus Board of Education Supreme Court decision. Because we do know that that over time, and we'll see if this turns out to be the case with Roe versus Wade or with Dodd, but the Supreme Court decision, because it becomes the new status quo, the law of the land, it does have an effect on people's attitudes over time. But we'll see. But the other point there, that I think is germane to that, is that political scientists have often distinguished between "symbolic" and "operational" ideology. And "symbolic ideology" is when you think of yourself in a certain way, as a conservative or liberal. And more people in the United States, for a very long period of time, have thought of themselves as conservative than as liberal. And, I think, in a way, that's consistent with "system justification" theory, that people want to think of themselves as maintaining the social system, the stability, being patriotic, being defender of the way things are and our way of life and so on. But on issues, that's the "operational" part of ideology, on specific policy opinions, people look much more liberal, often, than on the actual issues. And that's a good example, where liberals may not always realize how much support there is for actually liberal policy opinions. And it's, kind of, an opportunity, let's say.
David Roberts
Yeah, and I also think about, in light of this, another phenomenon which we're seeing a lot today, which is people who self-identify as liberals, obviously, being subject to this "system justification" effect. Sort of, like, I grew up thinking of myself as a liberal, but now here I am, 50 years old, and the kids are telling me to say Latinx, and all of a sudden, I'm having exactly those feelings that conservatives get. Right?
John Jost
That is such a good point.
David Roberts
This is too far. I changed the system when I was young, but now it's proper, and, now, further change triggers my "system justification."
John Jost
No, that's right. And I don't think it's a deep, philosophical response you're having. I think it's a social-psychological one to something that is just outside of the bounds of how we've come to understand what the status quo is, and the status quo gets a kind of default legitimacy. And then when young people come up with new gender schemes and really complicated 14-by-14 matrix of gender-bisexual-orientation-identification things, for people a certain age and older, it's a very, kind of, shocking experience to work through that. And it's for exactly the same reason, psychologically, that conservatives can't countenance the idea of whites not being a majority in the United States in the next decade or two.
David Roberts
Yeah, I guess it's just more frustrating when liberals do it because there's supposed to be that self awareness, right?
John Jost
That's right. But give everybody some time to come to it. And, I think, that we've seen this already. I think that liberals and progressives have been the first, that doesn't mean they're always fast enough, but the first to embrace new ways of thinking about sexual identities, and gender identities, and orientations, and so on. And then, over time, it spreads to the rest of the population. It may take conservatives another ten or 20 or 30 years behind that, but, in general, most historical trends have been in that direction, around these kinds of issues.
David Roberts
Yeah, I just think it's very, very difficult to maintain. Even if you're born with the sort of proclivities, the sort of openness to experience and all these other characteristics of liberals, it's just very difficult to consistently maintain that over a lifetime, to retain that sort of negative capacity, that sort of thought that all my beliefs are provisional, things are still going to change. I'm going to be open to change. You get old and...
John Jost
Yeah, right! I think you're right, both about personality, in the sense, that we know that some personality traits change more in certain decades of your life and then sort of stabilize, and different traits are changing a lot in your teens and your twenties and other traits are coming online and mattering more in your thirties and forties and so on, so you're right, both at the level of personality and, probably, also at the level we've been talking about brain formation and so on, and what is and isn't continuing to develop in the human brain into your twenties and thirties and beyond. But, also, I think, you're right in terms of the experiences that people have. And there are big cohort effects that, I think, are very consistent with what we've been saying about "system justification."
You know, the world as you encounter it, at your moment in in time, whether it's when you're 18 or 25 or 30, whatever, your worldview comes together that is the status quo for you. And even if you're motivated to keep updating, sometimes you feel like you don't want to. It's a motivational question, right? But I think some people deserve credit for sticking with it and thinking more deeply about things that were, initially, upsetting to their sense of reality, that were initially threatening to their "epistemic," "existential," and "relational" needs or motives. But they worked through it, and they came to a position where they can be open to new ideas or other people, if those ideas are worth being open to and supporting.
David Roberts
Yeah, this is part of why I wanted to do this pod and part I to wanted just get the sort of notion of "system justification" out there is just make people a little bit more self aware or self-conscious about it. Like, if you find yourself in a position of saying that kids these days are lazy, you should have a glimmer of self awareness. Like, oh, wait a minute, all the other old people throughout all of history have thought that about young people. Maybe, there's something, maybe these are psychological proclivities acting on me that I'm not fully aware of, and I should take a step back. People just don't do that. Or people will say ... people will repeat sort of misogynist myths. like Hillary sounds shrill, like my ex wife, with no glimmer of, like, wait a minute, that's what all the other misogynists said about all the other women throughout history. Maybe, I'm not making an objective assessment of Hillary Clinton, here. Maybe, there are forces acting on me that I should be more aware of. I don't know why that's so difficult for people.
John Jost
I think that's absolutely right. So, maybe, we should try to destigmatize a little bit, this process of "system justification," and recognize that all of us experience it to some degree or another. But, also, I do think some people are more willing to prioritize other concerns. such as accuracy, such as social justice, and such as innovation. And I think all of those things can be things that counter the "system justification" motives that maintain the status quo.
David Roberts
Right. And at our best, we can create social systems, like science, itself, that encourage accuracy, that encourage mutual fact checking, and that encourage openness to correction. Ideally, you can create "system justification" for good systems, if you can pull it off.
John Jost
I think that's exactly the ideals of the liberal, democratic system, where you have a plurality of voices, and arguments, and reasoned debate. This is the ideal, obviously, not the actual we're talking about, here. Reasoned debate about what the facts are and what counts as evidence. And then, you have a free vote, and you resolve it with the mechanisms of democracy, resolve the conference. And it's an unambiguous result, and you move on to the next thing to debate. And, I think, that is the ideal of a liberal democratic system. And I think we're very far from that ideal right now, obviously.
David Roberts
Yeah, so a couple of fun of questions. I know that a lot of people are going to hear that conservatives are prone, more prone than liberals to "system justification," and then they're going to look at Trump and Trump voters, who appear to be willing to tear everything down.
John Jost
While making America great again, by the way.
David Roberts
Yes, so help people square that circle. Why does this apparently radical movement, that doesn't seem to give a shit about the sanctity of any of America's systems, how is that commensurate with conservatives being more prone to "system justification?"
John Jost
Yeah, Trump definitely made a lot of things more complicated for social scientists and social theorists to understand. But first of all, I think what he did was he tapped into a lot of anger about the pace or perceived pace of social change, and that's why this slogan of "Make America Great Again" resonated with so many people, which, which of course is a slogan from Reagan's campaigns. So it is a very conservative message, and it is a message. And the way he delivered it was tapping into, I think, a lot of especially, let's say, white males frustrations at how things for them seemed to be much better when they were 20 or 25, than they are now. And the world looked different, you know, much less diversity and much less salience of social and cultural diversity.
So he tapped into, I think, a lot of resentment about social change and the pace of social change, and the feelings that the movements for equality had gone too far and were now biased against whites, which is an opinion that a lot of people have, even though it's a false opinion, I would say. But you're right. He also used the language that was very disruptive of the status quo, and that was, maybe, part of his appeal. So, I think, in some sense, people are frustrated with the status quo, but they don't have a good understanding of the origins of their dissatisfaction with the status quo. And they also at the same time want to go back to some idealized version of an earlier time for them. And so, they are open to rhetoric that sounds like it's going to shake up the status quo when, in fact, what it's really going to do is restore the older hierarchies. And so it's kind of having your cake and eating it too, in a way, in that sense.
But I do have an empirical answer, though, for you because we studied that the question that you're talking about about whether Trump supporters were higher or lower in "system justification" relative to supporters of other candidates. And the answer is they were lower on general "system justification," but higher on economic and gender specific "system justification." So they were more likely to justify the system in the economic domains, like capitalism, and in gender domains, like traditional division of labor within the family and within society, but less likely, especially, compared to the other conservative candidates, to justify the whole American society as a whole.
David Roberts
Interesting. And it also seems like one of the, sort of, characteristic features of fascism is this idealized past, right? This idealized thing that we've lost, the system that we've lost. So in a sense, you can sort of bring "system justification" to bear on a system that is, itself, somewhat mythical. Right?
John Jost
Yeah, I think it's possible in both directions, in a way, to justify imaginary social systems, whether they're imaginary versions of some Nordic past or whatever, or some utopian system that never has been. And maybe that's a way that people can try to satisfy their "epistemic," "existential," "relational" needs, while not buying into the immediate status quo.
David Roberts
Yeah. And another weird inversion that Trump has pulled off, and, maybe, this is characteristic for authoritarians too, is somehow he's framing things as if the radicals, the outsiders, the agitators, the people who want to change your beloved system, have taken over, now, and, sort of, are the power. And so the system has been taken over by system changers. So in a sense, you're, sort of, like, fighting the actually, existing system that's run by liberals, in an attempt to restore a deeper and more true system that existed before they came along and screwed everything up.
John Jost
That's a very interesting way to put it. Clearly, that whole first part is like "system justification" by the book. All these people who are critics, unpatriotic threats to the status quo. It's easy to turn people against those people. It's a tactic that's been used since time immemorial for leftist probably was used in the French Revolution and, certainly, throughout the 20th century in the United States. But the other part is interesting, too, because it does suggest that you can get some motivational juice maybe from also shaking up or making people realize that they are frustrated with aspects of the status quo, even if they're not fully aware of it, or even if they're not aware of the true sources of their dissatisfaction. So I think it's very possible that many Trump voters are extremely frustrated with the effects of global capitalism, but they don't see it that way at all. They don't make the connections. They, instead, they have been led to believe that it's because of immigrants, or it's because of journalists, or whoever else.
David Roberts
It's this bizarre, power inversion that all fascism, and fascism adjacent, movements seem to do, which is to say the groups who are properly outsiders, right, who are properly on the bottom of the system have taken over, right? This is always kind of the fascist message. Like, the proper order of the system, the people who are supposed to be in charge, have been displaced by outsiders, so we got to restore the proper operation of the system, basically.
John Jost
Yeah, I think you're describing, kind of, exclusionary populism, right-wing populism, which aims, perhaps, to impose some kind of authoritarian, or even fascist, social order, in order to, provide all of that safety, security, and so on. But the appeal early on is that, yes, the elites are the problem. And in this case, if you could paint the elites to be your political opponents, like liberals, whatever, journalists, minorities, et cetera, and that they don't deserve the full spectrum of rights afforded people in the United States, then they should be excluded. And that's in contrast with left-wing populism, which tends to be more inclusionary and, also, is critical of elites. But their elites are different, right? The elites there are the ... sometimes it's conservative government, sometimes it's capitalists, et cetera, sometimes it's religious elites, and so on...on behalf of a more exclusionary definition of the people, which might include women, minorities, people from other countries, and so on. So, yeah, it's a populist message that appeals to right-wing sentiments, and we have seen it throughout history. You're absolutely right.
David Roberts
I've kept you too long. But I wanted to at least address, here, at the end, I think if people read these two books, it's pretty bleak.
John Jost
Well, that's not why I wrote them.
David Roberts
Let's just say, everyone has this in them. And so the fight, or the push to change things, is, in a sense, always the underdog, right? You're not fighting on a level playing field here. The field is, in a sense, always tilted against change because of this "system justification" that all people are subject to. But, as you point out, change has happened. Progress has happened. Somehow "system justification" has been overcome, at least at the margins, repeatedly throughout history. So, it can't be that we've talked ourselves into thinking that progress is impossible, because progress is clearly not impossible.
John Jost
No, my view is not fatalistic in that way at all.
David Roberts
So, let's talk about if I'm a change maker, whether I'm an activist, or a politician, or just a concerned citizen, and I want change. And I read and appreciate and internalize this work about "system justification". And I, now, know, in my head, that when I go out and try to change zoning laws in my town, or the label on the bathroom door, whatever change I want to make, there's going to be a certain level of automatic resistance. People, automatically, are going to be nervous about change and not want change. So as an activist, having internalized all this, how do I operationalize it? What kinds of things would you advise people to do to overcome "system justification" or work around it?
John Jost
Yeah, that's good. And I do talk about this in the books. I think, first of all, to be aware and to anticipate that resistance in, precisely, the ways that you and I have been talking about it in both even understandable ways, in which people find new ideas a little bit hard to grasp or something, let alone to be inspired by them. That's one thing. But, also, you can't get around social organizing for change. I mean, it's just telling you that you need more resources and more of an organized ability to overcome that resistance. The resistance is not something that could never be overcome, but it's something that's going to take more effort to overcome. And if it's easy to do, maybe, you don't need to do it.
David Roberts
More than clever arguments, even.
John Jost
Yeah, right.
David Roberts
More than a bunch of scientific facts.
John Jost
Clever arguments are not, necessarily, going to win the day. Right. But the other thing we talk about, is, one is to try to avoid running into the headwinds of motivated system defensiveness. So being aware that this is a possibility and trying to avoid it, rather than provoking and eliciting motivated system defensiveness by just poking people right in the status quo.
David Roberts
Right. This is something liberals need to be aware of. If you feel like the prospect of radical change is exciting and you're into it, like, you need to know that you are unusual. Right?
John Jost
Yes.
David Roberts
And if you go out with that as the headline, you're going to be in a tiny minority of people.
John Jost
That's exactly right. And the other thing is that we talk about interventions that actually take advantage of "system justification," motivation in various ways by framing certain policy initiatives as congruent with the aims or the ideals of the societal status quo. And so, just one small example we had and it was an experimental study we conducted about resistance to support climate action. And what we found was that high system justifiers could be persuaded to be more supportive and more open to thinking about climate action when we framed the threats of climate change, and doing something about it, as patriotic and a way of conserving the American way of life against environmental changes.
David Roberts
Right. Protecting the status quo against climate change. Right. Which is going to radically change it.
John Jost
That's right. And another historical example, Martin Luther King Jr. was a genius at doing this, was tying the egalitarian goals of his movement to the American ideals about freedom, equality, democracy, and so on. He was constantly referencing the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution, and things. And in stark contrast to Malcolm X, for instance, who, you know, said, I didn't land on Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock landed on me, a clear declaration that I am not part of this system. I'm against this system. Martin Luther King was using the system to persuade people to make changes, to make the system fulfill its promise.
David Roberts
Well, in a more contemporary example, very similar. I always thought this was Barack Obama's most brilliant rhetorical device, which, I guess, he sort of took from Martin Luther King Jr., which is to say, America's struggle to be better, to perfect itself, to be more equal, is the American status quo. That's what America is. Right? So that's what we're trying to defend, here. That's what we're trying to pay tribute and live up to, here, is the American system. The struggle for greater equality is the American system. That's what Obama always emphasized over, and over, and over again.
John Jost
I think that's right. And, now, if we want to preserve what's left of our democracy, I think that people who feel that our historical legacy around democracy, which used to be the envy of the world in many ways, maybe not the whole world, but lots of it. I think we need to have that same kind of defense and pride in that legacy, or we're going to lose it.
David Roberts
Yeah. Well, that seems like a good place to wrap up here. Thanks so much. The books were very eye opening and interesting to me. I urge other people to read them or, at least, read the summary chapters. It will, sort of, I think, change the way you approach trying to change things, mainly by daunting you to begin with.
John Jost
Well, the first step towards overcoming a problem is correctly diagnosing it, right?
David Roberts
Exactly. Alright, thanks for coming on.
John Jost
It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me, David. Take care.
David Roberts
Thank you for listening to the Volts podcast. It is ad-free, powered entirely by listeners like you. If you value conversations like this, please consider becoming a paid Volts subscriber at volts.wtf. Yes, that's volts.wtf, so that I can continue doing this work. Thank you so much, and I'll see you next time.
Why social change is so excruciatingly difficult