Perceived legitimacy in the struggle for civil rights - Book Review

Review of The Psychology of Legitimacy, edited by John Jost and Brenda Major

To the extent that civil rights movements are battles for the hearts and minds of the public, they are conflicts about the perceived legitimacy of our social institutions and laws. Political theorists, including Machiavelli and Marx, have long recognized that perceptions of legitimacy--what people perceive to be correct, proper, or morally acceptable--are critical to the maintenance of social and political hierarchies. Legitimization conspires with psychological, social, political, and economic processes to support established social hierarchies.

The Psychology of Legitimacy, edited by John Jost and Brenda Major, collects varied perspectives on the social-psychological processes, among both the advantaged and the disadvantaged, that shore up this wall around the status quo. Because we contributed a chapter, this article is not intended to be an objective, critical review, but rather to highlight the broader implications of theories and research presented in the book. (The researchers mentioned below are either contributors to the book or cited in it.) We will concentrate here on one of the most disturbing aspects of the tendency to legitimize--how difficult it is to puncture the apparent legitimacy of a discriminatory social system, even among those who bear the burdens of disadvantage and discrimination.

Psychological theories of legitimacy examine what Jim Sidanius and his colleagues have termed "legitimizing myths," the shared values, beliefs, and ideologies that justify social hierarchy. Legitimizing myths provide Pangloss-like rationalizations as to why, despite obvious inequities, ours is the best of all possible societies. As John Jost and his colleagues note, such "system-justifying" beliefs (that our society is good and fair) may either complement or conflict with rationalizations each of us uses to preserve esteem for ourselves and for our groups (based on ethnicity, gender, class, etc.). The possible conflicts between these levels of rationalization (self, group, society) differ for the privileged and the disadvantaged.

Legitimization Among the Privileged

Happy are the privileged for whom justifying the legitimacy of society simultaneously fulfills the goals of flattering themselves and their groups. Successful members of dominant social groups can feel good about themselves, the groups to which they belong, and their society by embracing mutually reinforcing beliefs in the legitimacy of each. For example, the system-justifying belief that American society is a perfect meritocracy provides individual and collective self-esteem for affluent whites, confirming that their own and their group's success is due to talent and effort, not group privilege. By asserting the fairness and legitimacy of society as a whole, these individuals also reinforce positive self-images and group identifications.

That the privileged typically support a discriminatory system surprises no one. Nor is this basic tenet of Marxist thought a new idea. What the psychological perspective adds, however, is the realization that legitimizing beliefs are not solely about maintaining economic advantage, going beyond pure Marxian views, nor are they merely cynical, deliberately Machiavellian attempts to placate the masses. Rationalizations are truly effective only when they deceive oneself as well as others. The most powerful legitimizing ideologies are sincerely held, unrefiectively believed, and widely shared.

For the privileged, the most attractive rationalizations not only reinforce their economic and social advantage, but also fulfill the basic psychological need to view themselves as both competent and morally good. Arguably, these psychological motivations are at least as important to people as the political and material self-interest that Machiavelli and Marx claimed as the driving forces behind ideological convictions. Recognizing psychological motives helps to explain behavior that appears to contradict self-interest, but fulfills the need to feel morally correct. The revolutionary zeal of affluent reformers (Marx and Engels, after all, were members of the bourgeoisie) illustrates how material self-interest can take a backseat to a desire to be morally good. In successful social movements, reformers have provoked (what Habermas termed) a "legitimation crisis" among members of the dominant social group. When most white Americans were led to realize that racial segregation contradicts American democratic ideals--central to the perceived moral goodness of American identity--attitudes changed.

One's own and one's group's perceived morality, however, can all too easily reconcile with justifying hierarchy and discrimination. Mary Jackman suggests that paternalism appeals to the privileged through a mental jui jitsu that transforms exploitation into benevolence, and dominance into service. Paternalistic legitimizing myths justified 19th-century colonialism and slavery, by affirming white European racial and cultural superiority while simultaneously defining, and by construing their actions toward "inferior" groups as benevolent rather than exploitative (e.g., governing people who were perceived as incapable of governing themselves and ostensibly introducing culture and true religion to "superstitious savages").

Although the sensitivity of Americans to race relations has suppressed more overtly paternalistic attitudes toward nonwhites (e.g., speaking of the "white man's burden" has gone out of fashion), attitudes toward nonwhites still often contain an element of paternalistic pity. Overtly paternalistic attitudes toward people who are older, physically disabled, mentally disabled, and female have not been as thoroughly challenged. Our own work (with Amy Cuddy and Jun Xu) shows that these groups elicit mixed stereotypes of low competence and high warmth, correlated with their low-status but noncompetitive social niche.

Paternalism is both subjectively benevolent and effectively hostile. On the one hand, it evokes pity, which leads to helping, and it justifies protective legislation for groups perceived to be weak. On the other hand, a fine line separates "protecting" and restricting. Opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, for example, was framed as protective (e.g., concerns about the draft).

Our research on ambivalent sexism examines the role that "benevolent sexism" plays in legitimizing gender inequality. Benevolent sexism comprises subjectively positive responses to women that nevertheless presume them to be the "weaker sex," requiring men's protection and provision. Examples of such beliefs include the ideas that women ought to be set on a pedestal, that women are more morally pure than men, and that women require men's protection. In a study of 19 nations, we found that where benevolently sexist attitudes were endorsed, so too were hostile sexist beliefs (that is, nations in which benevolent sexism scores were high invariably also showed high hostile sexism scores). Furthermore, both types of sexism (hostile and benevolent) predicted standard U.N. measures of national inequality between women and men (e.g., fewer women in top governmental and business roles).

In the contemporary U.S. political climate, women's civil rights are attacked more effectively by those who espouse a benevolently protective, rather than an overtly hostile, ideology. Hostile justifications (e.g., that women do not possess leadership ability) are politically incorrect. In contrast, because of its affectionate, protective tone, benevolent sexism is often embraced by women as well as men. And it manages to justify inequality while also conferring a moral legitimacy on men as chivalrous, self-sacrificing protectors (rather than exploiters) of women. For dominants, paternalistic ideologies avoid legitimization crises by justifying their own superior status (and the social practices that preserve it) while simultaneously asserting their own benevolent moral goodness.

Legitimization Among the Disadvantaged

Members of disadvantaged groups have a more difficult time resolving conflicts between the desires for self-esteem and belief in the fairness of their society. If members of low-status groups view society as just, their disadvantaged position implies unflattering views of themselves and of their group. Social psychologists have discovered a number of ways in which people solve this conundrum. Unfortunately, many of these solutions fail to challenge social injustice.

One psychological obstacle to questioning the legitimacy of the social system is people's desire to believe in a just--even if cruel--world. The motivation to view the world as controllable is both strong and basic, as Melvin Lerner first pointed out. Believing that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get maintains this sense of control, without which people risk feeling helpless and depressed. Members of disadvantaged groups therefore face a difficult psychological dilemma: believe in the basic fairness of the world and view their poor outcomes as deserved, or recognize that society is unfair and risk feeling helpless. Thus, Jost and his colleagues propose that members of disadvantaged groups face a legitimization crisis in which the desire to see their society as fair conflicts with motivations to view themselves and their group in a positive light.

This dilemma can be resolved by viewing society as unjust, but malleable, and then joining collective movements for social change. But the disadvantaged are less likely to band together and work collectively for change when a society allows for even minimal social mobility (e.g., tokenism). Stephen Wright has compared experimental conditions in which individuals are informed that they have been denied membership in a high-status group because members of their participant's group (based on the participant's area of study at the university) were either (a) completely restricted or (b) allowed to form only 2 percent of the high-status group's membership. Participants were then given several options: take no action; take individual action (aimed at getting into the group without challenging the discriminatory roles); or take collective action (openly challenge the roles as unfair to members of their group). In the completely closed condition (where no "social mobility" was allowed), participants strongly endorsed collective action. But when the high-status group was even slightly permeable (accepting just 2 percent membership from the participant's group), individualistic action was preferred and collective action became an unpopular choice.

Wright's results illustrate that collective action is most likely in the face of clear-cut discrimination that completely closes off opportunities for the advancement of specific social groups. Allowing even a token amount of social mobility can diminish collective action; Wright empirically demonstrates how to co-opt the oppressed but talented. Thus, a system that promotes only a few members of disadvantaged groups to tokens in high-status positions can have unfortunate side effects--when the success stories can coexist with continuing disadvantages and a discriminatory system. Questioning the fairness of the society becomes less attractive to members of disadvantaged groups than do individual attempts to get ahead within the system. Furthermore, members of privileged groups can point to the few prominent success stories to bolster their beliefs that the system is fair. Thus, ideologies such as the Protestant work ethic and tokenism not only soothe the consciences of the privileged, but (in a semi-permeable society) also puncture collective resistance by the disadvantaged.

Furthermore, individual members of oppressed groups who are successful tend themselves to buy into justifications of the status quo. Having achieved their success within the system, they have a stake in asserting its fairness--belief in meritocracy confirms that their own success is well deserved. Naomi Ellemers has found that successful women in male-dominated fields tend to distance themselves from other women, viewing themselves as different. Rather than helping other members of their sex, women who have succeeded in typically male domains tend to view other women stereotypically.

What about those who are left behind? The famous Clark and Clark studies in the 1960s, which showed that black African American children preferred to play with white-skinned (not brown-skinned black) dolls, reinforced the then-popular idea that self-hate was the inevitable outcome of discrimination. Newer research, however, shows that the self-esteem of ethnic minorities equals or exceeds that of whites and that black children no longer prefer white dolls. This may, in part, reflect an increase in minority self-esteem over the last 40 years. However, as Brenda Major and Toni Schmader note, as researchers have probed more deeply into minority self-esteem, they have discovered that members of disadvantaged groups are quite adept at often preserving individual and collective self-esteem, but often at the steep price of disengaging from domains in which their group tends to fare poorly. Unfortunately, for disadvantaged minorities these domains--such as school--may be precisely those that provide the best opportunity for upward mobility.

In contrast to older notions of minority self-hate, current research suggests common ground between the disadvantaged and the advantaged--everyone is motivated to develop a positive, distinctive identity. Being in an advantaged position helps the privileged to base their individual and collective self-esteem on traits (e.g., competence and ambition) and accomplishments (e.g., education and high-status jobs) that consolidate their privilege. In contrast, lack of opportunity and discrimination hinder members of disadvantaged groups from priding themselves on the traits and achievements most valued by the dominant society.

Major and Schmader's research has demonstrated that disillusioned African American students devalue the importance of academic feedback--when they suspect it may be racially biased--so that failure at school does not threaten how they feel about themselves. Protecting self-esteem in this manner, however, decreases motivation to do well and promotes alienation from school (e.g., viewing school success as "acting white"). This process is triggered by what Claude Steele has termed "stereotype threat"--the perception among members of stereotyped groups that should they ever perform poorly, others are all too ready to reduce them to a stereotype, to perceive them (negatively) as a "typical" member of their group. (Anybody can fall prey to stereotype threat in domains where their group is negatively stereotyped, for example, white athletes comparing themselves to black athletes.) Strikingly, stereotype threat endangers every level of schooling for groups stereotyped as academically weak. Even those individuals whose talent and effort gain them admission to elite colleges can fall prey to such anxieties if they perceive the school environment as promoting stereotypical views of their group (as minority students often feel at majority-white colleges). Fortunately, if schools build a sense of trust, they can diminish stereotype threat and performance gaps between students who are negatively academically stereotyped and those who are not.

Conclusion

Legitimization conspires with psychological, social, political, and economic processes to support established social hierarchies. The Psychology of Legitimacy, edited by Jost and Major, collects varied perspectives on the social-psychological processes, among both the advantaged and the disadvantaged, that shore up this wall around the status quo. The varied perspectives presented in The Psychology of Legitimacy can be usefully applied in many contexts. We are not so much interested in promoting a particular book as the useful ideas it represents. In legal settings, legitimization provides a theory of the prejudiced mind. In politics, legitimization explains change and stagnation. In social services, legitimization provides a window for combating alienation. In diversity consulting, legitimization provides an opportunity for examining shared assumptions that support the status quo. Perhaps knowledge in this case can truly empower.

PETER GLICK IS PROFESSOR OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY AT LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY; SUSAN FISKE IS A PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY AT PRINCETON UNIVERSITY.

COPYRIGHT 2002 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group