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Speculations on the Evolutionary Origins of System Justification Special Issue: Evolution and Politics Evolutionary Psychology April-June 2018: 1–21 ª The Author(s) 2018 Speculations on the Evolutionary Origins Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav of System Justification DOI: 10.1177/1474704918765342 journals.sagepub.com/home/evp John T. Jost1, Robert M. Sapolsky2, and H. Hannah Nam3 Abstract For centuries, philosophers and social theorists have wondered why people submit voluntarily to tyrannical leaders and oppressive regimes. In this article, we speculate on the evolutionary origins of system justification, that is, the ways in which people are motivated (often nonconsciously) to defend and justify existing social, economic, and political systems. After briefly recounting the logic of system justification theory and some of the most pertinent empirical evidence, we consider parallels between the social behaviors of humans and other animals concerning the acceptance versus rejection of hierarchy and dom- inance. Next, we summarize research in human neuroscience suggesting that specific brain regions, such as the amygdala and the anterior cingulate cortex, may be linked to individual differences in ideological preferences concerning (in)equality and social stability as well as the successful navigation of complex, hierarchical social systems. Finally, we consider some of the implications of a system justification perspective for the study of evolutionary psychology, political behavior, and social change. Keywords system justification, ideology, political neuroscience, amygdala, hierarchy, evolutionary psychology Date received: September 18, 2017; Accepted: February 18, 2018 We, as a species, have an easy time convincing ourselves and their necks under the yoke, not constrained by a greater multi- each other that our current ethic, morality, and way of living is tude than they, but simply, it would seem, delighted and not just good or better but comes close to being Truth. charmed by the name of one man alone whose power they need We, today, regard as barbarous such practices as selective not fear. (pp. 40–41) infanticide, sacrifices to pagan gods, or the enslavement of human beings—practices that in earlier times we would have The author defended three major hypotheses concerning the deemed just, honorable, and morally right. The things we do are politics of obedience. According to Lukes (2011, p. 20), these always good. amount to (a) “cultural inertia” or the “force of custom and Leon Festinger (1983, p. 163) habit”; (b) “manufactured consent,” that is, ideology and pro- paganda; and (c) “patronage,” such that “tyrants surround In the middle of the 16th century, a 22-year-old law student themselves with dependents, who in turn have their own in France by the name of Etienne de la Bo´etie wrote an essay dependents.” The anthropological record suggests that reli- entitled Discourse of Voluntary Servitude that was to be circu- gious rituals, including human sacrifices, also “played a pow- lated among academics for centuries to come (Lukes, 2011; erful role in the construction and maintenance of stratified Rothbard, 1975/2008; Stanley, 2015). In this work, de la Bo´etie (1548/2008) set out to understand: 1 Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY, USA how it happens that so many men, so many villages, so many 2 Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA 3 cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a single tyrant Department of Political Science, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, who has no other power than the power they give him; who is USA able to harm them only to the extent to which they have the Corresponding Author: willingness to bear with him .... Surely a striking situation! Yet John T. Jost, Department of Psychology, New York University, 6 Washington it is so common that one must grieve the more and wonder the Pl., New York, NY 10003, USA. less at the spectacle of a million men serving in wretchedness, Email: [email protected] Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). 2 Evolutionary Psychology societies” (Watts, Sheehan, Atkinson, Bulbulia, & Gray, 2016, of reasons, then, people may internalize the norms of the social p. 3) in early civilization by “combining displays of ultimate order on which they depend (Fehr & Gintis, 2007), and in so authority—the taking of a life—with supernatural justifications doing develop “mental resistance to the fundamental flaws of that sanction authority as divinely ordained” (p. 10). their social order” (Kuran, 1991, p. 32). In the 450 years since de la Bo´etie’s Discourse, a celebrated cadre of intellectuals—including David Hume, Leo Tolstoy, Henry David Thoreau, Wilhelm Reich, Hannah Arendt, A Theory of System Justification Michel Foucault, and Vaclav Havel—have revisited the fun- It is hardly surprising that de la Bo´etie’s (1548/2008) student damental questions he raised about why people submit will- essay, penned during the Renaissance period, falls short of ingly, even enthusiastically, to the humiliations of the providing a complete or adequate theory of how and why powerful, and the conclusions they reached echoed those of human beings submit to tyrannical regimes (e.g., Gunn & de la Bo´etie (e.g., Lukes, 2011; Rothbard, 1975/2008; Stanley, Wilding, 2012; Rosen, 1996). Nevertheless, some of his obser- 2015). Several commentators have noted that de la Bo´etie’s vations about human nature—along with Gramsci’s (1971) description of voluntary servitude (sometimes referred to as emphasis on the popular tendency to experience “the existing “self-domination”) has much in common with Marxian con- social order” as a “stable, harmoniously coordinated system”— cepts of ideological hegemony and false consciousness (e.g., anticipate the framework of system justification theory, a Rosen, 1996). To take just one example, the famous Italian social–psychological perspective that seeks to elucidate the Marxist, Gramsci (1971), marveled at the “‘spontaneous’ con- individual and group-level mechanisms contributing to false sent given by the great masses of the population to the general consciousness and related ideological phenomena (Jost & direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental Banaji, 1994; Jost & van der Toorn, 2012). According to sys- group” and proposed that “this consent is ‘historically’ caused tem justification theory, people are motivated—often at a non- by the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the domi- conscious level of awareness—to defend, bolster, and justify nant group enjoys because of its position and function in the the social, economic, and political institutions on which they world of production” (p. 12). depend (Jost, Banaji, et al., 2004; Jost & Hunyady, 2005; Livia- Political economists today marvel at the so-called paradox tan & Jost, 2014). Thus, as Veyne (1976/1992) put it, “the of inequality—the fact that despite sharp increases in economic tendency to justify what exists constitutes one of the factors disparities between the rich and poor over the past several which combine to shape opinions” (p. 379, emphasis added), decades, concerns about inequality seem to be on the decline, including opinions about the legitimacy of hierarchy. while citizens become more and more convinced that income Empirical studies in support of system justification theory differences are justified in terms of meritocratic considerations demonstrate that when women, for instance, are made to feel such as hard work, talent, and ambition (e.g., Kelly & Enns, dependent upon the social system—or are exposed to criticisms 2010; Luttig, 2013; McCall, 2013; Mijs, 2017; Paskov & of the system—they come to view gender disparities in politics Dewilde, 2012). A plausible explanation is that people living and business as natural, desirable, and just (Kay et al., 2009). In in capitalist societies grow increasingly tolerant of inequality as other cases, women may regard themselves as little more than way of justifying—and, indeed, coping with—harsh economic sexual objects existing for the gratification of men (Calogero & realities (e.g., B´enabou & Tirole, 2006; Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, Jost, 2011). Interviews with domestic workers in post–Apart- 2004; Trump, in press). Even unambiguously oppressive social heid South African homes reveal that—far from seeing them- systems—such as slavery, caste systems, segregation, apart- selves as underpaid or exploited—these women, most of whom heid, and patriarchy—withstood shockingly long periods of were Black, saw themselves as lucky to be part of a symbiotic stability and even perceived legitimacy before concerted relationship with their wealthy White employers (Durrheim, efforts to overthrow them were finally undertaken. Jacobs, & Dixon, 2014). And, rather than blaming their prob- Although it is true that people sometimes do turn against lems on the social system, low-income Latina and African unjust manifestations of authority (Gurr, 1970), the persistence American mothers in the United States attributed poverty to of inequality and exploitation leads social historians such as drug and alcohol addiction and “character deficiencies
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