Near the end of a provocative discussion of typical prejudice reduction efforts and their potentially deleterious consequences for society, Dixon et al. mention that promoting intergroup harmony “carries insidious, often unacknowledged, ‘system-justifying’ consequences” (sect. 4.1.3, para. 2). We flesh out this important but underdeveloped point, demonstrating that system justification theory can help to explain how and why “benevolent” and “complementary” stereotypes, superordinate identification, positive intergroup contact, and standard prejudice reduction techniques all serve to undermine social change motivation and maintain support for unequal social systems.

From a system justification perspective, “cognition is deployed in the service of the social system” (Jost Reference Jost and Moskowitz2001, p. 95), which is a way of saying that individuals and groups construct belief systems that disproportionately bolster existing societal arrangements. As Allport (Reference Allport1954) pointed out long ago, stereotypes are a major vehicle for the rationalization of inequality among social groups (Jost & Hamilton Reference Jost, Hamilton, Dovidio, Glick and Rudman2005). Glick and Fiske (Reference Glick and Fiske2001) observed that even seemingly benevolent stereotypes of women as warm, nurturing, and deserving of admiration and protection reinforce gender disparities. Jost and Kay (Reference Jost and Kay2005) demonstrated that simply reminding female college students of benevolent or complementary stereotypes (e.g., “Women are more considerate than men,” and “Men are more ambitious than women”) caused them to profess greater satisfaction with the status quo by endorsing “system-justifying” statements such as, “Most policies relating to gender and the sexual division of labor serve the greater good,” and “In general, the American political system operates as it should.”

Becker and Wright (Reference Becker and Wright2011) found that exposure to hostile sexism caused women to express stronger desire for collective action, whereas exposure to benevolent sexism made them less supportive of feminist causes. Furthermore, these effects were mediated by gender-specific system justification. Calogero and Jost (Reference Calogero and Jost2011) showed that exposure to benevolent and complementary stereotypes led women (but not men) to view themselves as sexual objects, engage in more self-surveillance, and experience more body shame. In summary, seemingly “benevolent” gender stereotypes can strengthen women's ideological and behavioral conformity to a social system that disadvantages them profoundly.

Such effects are hardly confined to the context of gender. When individuals are exposed to “poor but happy” or “poor but honest” stereotype exemplars, they report more satisfaction with the societal status quo, as measured by the general (or diffuse) system justification scale (Kay & Jost Reference Kay and Jost2003). Confronting participants with criticisms of the national system causes them to respond defensively on its behalf, drawing on benevolent and complementary stereotypes to bolster the sagging legitimacy of the social system. Exposure to system criticism leads Americans to describe the obese as lazier but more sociable (Kay et al. Reference Kay, Jost and Young2005) and Israelis to describe Mizrachi Jews as less intelligent but more friendly than Ashkenazi Jews (Jost et al. Reference Jost, Kivetz, Rubini, Guermandi and Mosso2005). Consistent with Dixon et al.'s analysis, it is precisely because complementary stereotypes such as these are laden with positivity (and an “illusion of equality”) that they are effective in undermining support for social change.

It follows that a focus on negative evaluation as the major problem of intergroup relations neglects the insidious role of complementary stereotyping and other Panglossian forms of rationalization in sustaining inequality (e.g., see Kay et al. Reference Kay, Jost, Mandisodza, Sherman, Petrocelli, Johnson and Zanna2007). Positive intergroup contact as a prejudice reduction strategy can attenuate unambiguously negative evaluations of low-status groups (Pettigrew & Tropp Reference Pettigrew and Tropp2006), but it can also thwart social change by leaving system-justifying beliefs (such as essentialism with respect to race and sex and meritocracy with respect to social and economic status) fully intact.

Personal relationships between those who are advantaged and those who are disadvantaged may foster a sense of equality and social progress that is more illusory than real (Jackman Reference Jackman1994). Even trivial interpersonal ties to the advantaged can facilitate system justification among the disadvantaged (Cheung et al. Reference Cheung, Noel and Hardin2011). Positive intergroup contact is associated with more favorable implicit evaluations of outgroups by members of disadvantaged (e.g., blacks, Muslims) but not advantaged groups (whites, Christians; Henry & Hardin Reference Henry and Hardin2006). Given that implicit outgroup favoritism among the disadvantaged is associated with conservative, system-justifying responses (Ashburn-Nardo et al. Reference Ashburn-Nardo, Knowles and Monteith2003; Jost et al. Reference Jost, Banaji and Nosek2004), the net effect of intergroup contact may be to suppress rather than promote meaningful social change. The same can be said of many efforts to foster common (or superordinate) forms of in-group identification that gloss over differences between advantaged and disadvantaged (sub)groups (Dovidio et al. Reference Dovidio, Gaertner and Saguy2009). Such efforts encourage the disadvantaged to believe (often falsely) that they will be treated fairly (Saguy et al. Reference Saguy, Tausch, Dovidio and Pratto2009) and that the social order is legitimate (Saguy & Chernyak-Hai Reference Saguy and Chernyak-Hai2012).

For substantive social change to occur, members of disadvantaged groups must build solidarity within their ranks and take decisive action against the status quo (e.g., Wright et al. Reference Wright, Taylor and Moghaddam1990). Such action may necessitate intergroup tension to forcefully resist the social system and ideologies that justify it (Becker & Wright Reference Becker and Wright2011; Jost et al. Reference Jost, Chaikalis-Petritsis, Abrams, Sidanius, van der Toorn and Bratt2012). Attacking system-justifying beliefs and demanding equitable resource distributions will be far more difficult and psychologically unsettling than trying to assimilate, establish positive intergroup relations, or otherwise accommodate the demands of the status quo. System justification theorists point out that it will almost always be easier to encourage individuals and groups to make the best of a bad situation than to actually fix it.

For these reasons, we would go further than Dixon et al. to hypothesize that prejudice reduction strategies that frame problems of inequality as operating exclusively at the level of individuals and groups are heralded because they are psychologically comforting, as are other system-justifying illusions (Jost & Hunyady Reference Jost and Hunyady2002). To the extent that prejudice can be marginalized as simply a problem of “hate,” conflict, or misunderstanding, citizens can deny the extent to which inequalities of wealth, power, and privilege remain firmly entrenched in our social, economic, and political systems (from colonialism and slavery to capitalism and corporate control of democratic institutions). The kind of “motivated ignorance” that follows from system-justifying ways of thinking may help to “keep the peace,” but it can also prevent us from tackling serious social problems, including structurally embedded forms of inequality and oppression.