TY - JOUR
T1 - System Justification, Satisfaction, and Perceptions of Fairness and Typicality at Work
T2 - A Cross-System Comparison Involving the U.S. and Hungary
AU - van der Toorn, Jojanneke
AU - Berkics, Mihály
AU - Jost, John T.
N1 - Funding Information:
Portions of this research were presented at the Academy of Management 2008 Annual Meeting in Anaheim, CA, and the 2009 International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP) conference in Dublin, Ireland. This research was supported in part by a Henry Mitchell MacCracken Fellowship to Jojanneke van der Toorn and National Science Foundation Award BCS-0617558 to John T. Jost. The authors would like to thank Hannah Stern for assistance with data collection in the United States.
PY - 2010
Y1 - 2010
N2 - This research addresses system justification tendencies in the United States and Hungary and their potential to shape reactions to equity-equality tradeoffs in the workplace. Participants in both nations were asked to rate the fairness of, their satisfaction with, and the typicality of four hypothetical work situations. These scenarios differed in terms of which distributive justice principle was violated (equity or equality) and whether the violation favored the participant or the co-worker (self or other). While the mean level of system justification was lower in Hungary than in the U.S., multilevel models revealed that in both societal contexts the motivation to justify the system was associated with participants' perceptions of justice in the workplace. Based on the characteristics of the two social systems, however, these tendencies played out differently. Specifically, for the U.S. participants system justification was associated with more favorable views of work situations that emphasized equity over equality and that rewarded the self over others, whereas for Hungarian participants system justification was associated with more favorable views of work situations that emphasized equality over equity and that rewarded others over the self. Results also revealed that Americans (but not Hungarians) who scored higher on system justification perceived as fairer that which they perceived as more typical of their society. Taken as a whole, the evidence suggests that the psychological transfer of legitimacy from socialism to capitalism in Hungary remains incomplete.
AB - This research addresses system justification tendencies in the United States and Hungary and their potential to shape reactions to equity-equality tradeoffs in the workplace. Participants in both nations were asked to rate the fairness of, their satisfaction with, and the typicality of four hypothetical work situations. These scenarios differed in terms of which distributive justice principle was violated (equity or equality) and whether the violation favored the participant or the co-worker (self or other). While the mean level of system justification was lower in Hungary than in the U.S., multilevel models revealed that in both societal contexts the motivation to justify the system was associated with participants' perceptions of justice in the workplace. Based on the characteristics of the two social systems, however, these tendencies played out differently. Specifically, for the U.S. participants system justification was associated with more favorable views of work situations that emphasized equity over equality and that rewarded the self over others, whereas for Hungarian participants system justification was associated with more favorable views of work situations that emphasized equality over equity and that rewarded others over the self. Results also revealed that Americans (but not Hungarians) who scored higher on system justification perceived as fairer that which they perceived as more typical of their society. Taken as a whole, the evidence suggests that the psychological transfer of legitimacy from socialism to capitalism in Hungary remains incomplete.
KW - Distributive justice
KW - Eastern Europe
KW - Equality
KW - Equity
KW - System justification
KW - Workplace
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U2 - 10.1007/s11211-010-0116-1
DO - 10.1007/s11211-010-0116-1
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:77955845980
SN - 0885-7466
VL - 23
SP - 189
EP - 210
JO - Social Justice Research
JF - Social Justice Research
IS - 2
ER -