| It has been proposed that people are motivated to believe that social systems operate justly and fairly. This belief, it is also argued, holds important consequences for the formation of stereotypes and judgments made about different social groups, especially those groups that are endowed with particular advantages or disadvantages within the prevailing social system. Traditionally, researchers have focused on victim-derogating stereotypes and judgments as the primary means for maintaining this motivated belief regarding the social world. In an integration of just world and system justification theories, however, it was hypothesized that exposure to compensatory (or victim-enhancing) representations of the poor as happier and more honest than the rich would also satisfy the justice motive and lead to an increase in support for the status quo. This hypothesis---which is ostensibly opposite to the predictions derived from victim-derogation research---was corroborated in the first four experimental studies presented here. Participants primed with compensatory, victim-enhancing stereotypes (i.e., a poor character who is portrayed as happier or more honest than a rich character) subsequently viewed the world as more fair, and experienced less implicit threat to the justice motive, than those participants primed with non-compensatory, victim-derogating stereotypes (i.e., a rich character who is portrayed as happier or more honest than a poor character).; Next, I sought to reconcile the distinction between these novel results and traditional findings in the social justice literature, that, for the most part, have demonstrated the primacy of victim-derogation tendencies in processes of justification. Working forward from the principle of equifinality ---which suggests that there are often multiple psychological routes to the same end-state, with the most likely route being determined by, among other variables, specific situational constraints and opportunities---it was theorized that whereas victim-derogation tendencies may indeed be more effective at maintaining the belief in a fair social world when the relevant traits are perceived as causally related to the group's status, victim-enhancing tendencies would be more effective when the traits are perceived as causally irrelevant. Focusing on stereotypes concerning the poor, obese, and unattractive, the final two studies provided support for this hypothesis. |
