System justification
People defend the existing social order — even when it disadvantages them.
What it means
The motivated tendency to perceive existing social, economic, and political arrangements as fair, legitimate, and natural, satisfying needs for certainty, security, and social belonging. Strikingly, the motive can lead members of disadvantaged groups to rationalize and support the very systems that harm them, sometimes more than the advantaged do, because acknowledging injustice is threatening. It draws on stereotypes that 'balance' the order (e.g., 'poor but happy') and can conflict with self-interest and group-interest motives. It matters for explaining the persistence of inequality, resistance to reform, and the durability of unfair institutions.
Examples
Low-income voters sometimes oppose redistribution, endorsing beliefs that the economic system is basically fair.
Junior staff at a firm with an opaque promotion ladder often insist the process is fair and the people promoted must have earned it — including staff who were just passed over.
'Women are the caring ones, men the providers' makes an unequal division of housework feel like a natural fit rather than a bargain that could be renegotiated tonight.
First described in John Jost & Mahzarin Banaji (1994).