Why does the "mental shotgun" fire system-justifying bullets?
We suggest that people privilege explanations relying on inherent rather than contingent factors not only because of an innate cognitive tendency to monitor reality, but because doing so satisfies the desire to perceive the societal status quo as legitimate. In support, we describe experimental studies linking the activation of system justification motivation to the endorsement of inherence-based (essentialist) explanations.
Department of Psychology,University of Winnipeg,Winnipeg,MB R3B 2E9,Canada.d.gaucher@uwinnipeg.cahttp://ion.uwinnipeg.ca/~dgaucher/lab.html.
Danielle
D
Gaucher
Department of Psychology,New York University,New York,NY 10003.john.jost@nyu.eduhttp://www.psych.nyu.edu/jost/
John T
JT
Jost
D003071:Cognition; D003210:Concept Formation; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D008128:Logic