Justifying Social Inequalities: The Role of Social Darwinism

Abstract

Three studies supported a model whereby associations between ideologies that share roots in biological determinism and outcomes that reinforce inequality (based on gender, race, or class) were mediated by system justification beliefs (SJB). Outcomes included support for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton as president (Study 1), justifying police brutality (Study 2), and support for a White House budget that slashed the social safety net to endow the wealthy with tax cuts (Study 3). These findings provoke a vital question: How do people deem unequal systems worthy of defense? Each study compared social Darwinism, social dominance orientation (SDO), and biological essentialism. We expected social Darwinism to account for the most variance in SJB because it provides both the rationale for social hierarchies (natural selection) and defends them as required for human welfare. This prediction was supported in each study. Implications for the psychology of legitimacy are discussed.

Keywords

prejudice system justification theory social Darwinism social dominance orientation essentialism

Despite a foundational tenet that all people “are created equal,” Americans do not live in a representative democracy or economy. Although only 31% of Americans are White men, they hold 65% of elected offices (Henderson, 2014; Lardieri, 2017) and represent 91% of Fortune 500 company CEOs (Mather, 2016). Existing social, economic, and political systems that privilege wealthy White men reinforce social hierarchies that disenfranchise women and minorities. Given that support for power imbalances depends on their perceived legitimacy (Zeldich, 2001), how do Americans rationalize the “goodness” of systems that produce pervasively poor outcomes for most social groups?

According to system justification theory, people are born into a caste system that they are motivated to defend to avoid bitterness and despair (Jost & Banaji, 1994). Basic human needs (relational, existential, and epistemic) also promote motives to justify the system (Hennes et al., 2012). People who score high on system justification are more likely to defend social hierarchies and resist egalitarianism (Brescoll et al., 2013; Rothmund et al., 2016). They reject nontraditional women, including feminists (Yeung et al., 2014) and qualified female leaders (Rudman et al., 2012). They also resist policies designed to improve conditions for the disenfranchised, such as affirmative action policies (Phelan & Rudman, 2011) and health care and immigration reforms (Hennes et al., 2012). Moreover, system justification mediates associations between basic human needs (e.g., existential) and rejecting policy reforms (Hennes et al., 2012). Because system justification is triggered by “system criticism, challenge, and threat,” it plays a central role in preserving the status quo (Jost, 2019, p. 267). As a result, anything that threatens extant power relations (e.g., people, issues, or policies) may meet resistance, especially by those who defend social hierarchies as just and fair.

This begs a vital question: How are social hierarchies deemed worthy of defense? Which ideologies form the strongest bases for system justification? In the present research, we examined the relative power of ideological predictors to defend system justification beliefs to illuminate how people manage to have faith in obviously unequal systems.

Ideological Justifications for Defending Unequal Systems

Justifications for defending inequality are valuable for two primary reasons (Crandall & Eshleman, 2005). First, they provide a rationale for why some groups have more power than others. Second, they allow people to support social hierarchies without believing they are prejudiced. Accordingly, people who justify unequal systems also score high on (a) biological essentialism (Brescoll et al., 2013; Morton et al., 2009) and (b) social dominance orientation (SDO; Douglas & Sutton, 2014; Williams & Eberhardt, 2008). Biological essentialism refers to lay beliefs that group members’ characteristics, behaviors, and roles have genetic determinants (Keller, 2005). As a result, essentialist explanations for group-based inequalities presume that social categories are innate and permanent. SDO is defined as favorable attitudes toward social hierarchies. According to social dominance theory (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999), power structures evolved because hierarchically organized groups had a competitive advantage during combat, making them better able to survive than egalitarian groups. Consequently, people are predisposed to favor power structures. However, as shown in Figure 1, both are incomplete justifications: Essentialism provides a rationale for social hierarchies without evaluation (are they good or bad?), whereas SDO provides evaluation but not the rationale (why are social hierarchies good?). Because each is missing a vital component (Crandall & Eshleman, 2005), the ability of essentialism and SDO to predict defending unequal systems may be compromised.

Figure 1.

Criteria assessment of proposed ideological bases for system justification (Studies 1–3). To effectively deem social inequalities worthy of defense, ideological justifications should fulfill two criteria. They should provide (a) a rationale for why social hierarchies exist and (b) attitudes toward them (Crandall & Eshleman, 2005).

For a full value justification, we turned to social Darwinism, invented by American and British social scientists during the Gilded Age (1870s to 1900; a period marked by rapid industrialization and high income inequality), to justify unbridled capitalism and vast disparities in wealth (Degler, 1991). Social Darwinists believe that humans, like plants and animals, are engaged in a ruthless genetic competition such that the ascendancy of “the fittest” benefits the whole species (Spencer, 1867). To justify laissez-faire capitalism, wealthy White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) men were deemed biologically superior to the lower classes, who were blamed for a culture of dependency. Government relief was unwarranted because, for the good of the species, nature should be allowed to weed out the weak.

Social Darwinism, essentialism, and SDO are ideological cousins because they share conceptual roots in biological determinism. However, as Figure 1 illustrates, only social Darwinism is a complete justification because it provides both the rationale (natural selection) for social hierarchies and their evaluation: Hierarchies are not only good, tampering with them weakens humankind. As described by Crandall and Eshleman (2005),

Social Darwinism elevates hierarchies to a state where mistreatment of “inferior” [groups] is not only natural but necessary—a way of improving the human race through natural selection. In this way, prejudice and discrimination are not only acceptable, but inevitable, necessary, natural, and moral. (p. 250)

As a result, we expected social Darwinism to provide a stronger defense of unequal systems than either essentialism or SDO, which are known correlates of system justification (Brescoll et al., 2013; Douglas & Sutton, 2014; Williams & Eberhardt, 2008).

Used to justify colonialism (Jahoda, 1999), enforced sterilization in the United States (Cohen, 2016), and eugenics in Nazi Germany (Whitman, 2017), social Darwinism is among the most powerful ideologies in human history. Its influence in America began to erode when widespread corruption in the Gilded Age gave rise to populist uprisings and a reform era, spearheaded by both Republicans and Democrats (Goodwin, 2013). With the passage of laws that abolished child labor and improved worker conditions, politicians began to address social injustices. Subsequently, social Darwinism was morally discredited by the Holocaust, and scientifically discredited by anthropologists (e.g., Franz Boas and Margaret Mead), who argued that culture sets humans apart from animals (Degler, 1991; Whitman, 2017).

To date, social Darwinism has yet to be incorporated in the social psychology of legitimacy (e.g., it is absent from a comprehensive review; Jost & Major, 2001). Nonetheless, it persists as an ideology that justifies systemic inequalities, not least in politics. By casting Americans as “makers” versus “takers,” Republican strategists seek to reduce public spending (e.g., on education, research, and health care) to give tax cuts to the wealthy (Bernstein, 2012; Hiltzik, 2018; Kitcher, 2012; McGreal, 2012). Moreover, several observers have noted that Donald Trump’s worldview is social Darwinian (Beckwith, 2017; Brooks, 2017; Chait, 2017; Mortimer, 2016). During his 2016 presidential campaign, at least some of his followers interpreted his call to “make America great again” as a desire “to reestablish the natural order of white male supremacy and dominance” (M. D. Smith, 2016). Although media narratives often attributed his victory to a populist rebellion (Serwer, 2017), postelection research suggests that sexism and racism played a more important role in voting for Trump than economic anxiety (Schaffner et al., 2018; D. N. Smith & Hanley, 2018), protesting against the government (Hooghe & Dassonneville, 2018), or political identity (Setzler & Yanus, 2018; Valentino et al., 2018). Because he prevailed in the election using blatantly prejudiced rhetoric (Cohen, 2017; Silva, 2018), other Republican candidates have sought to mimic Trump’s approach (Coaston, 2018; Viser, 2018). Expressions of hostility toward women and minorities plausibly signal that, if elected, candidates would dismantle efforts to equalize opportunity to protect the “natural order” (M. D. Smith, 2016). Consequently, supporters of politicians, issues, and policies that defend the status quo may rely on social Darwinism to justify existing social hierarchies.

Overview of Research and Hypotheses

In three studies, we examined attitudes and beliefs that defend systemic inequalities by disenfranchising women, Blacks, or the nonwealthy. In Study 1, we measured rejecting Hillary Clinton in favor of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. In Study 2, we examined two racial issues: justifying police brutality and resisting the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. In Study 3, we measured support for a proposed White House budget designed to dramatically decrease the social safety net to provide tax cuts for the wealthy.

In each study, we measured system justification beliefs, biological essentialism, SDO, and social Darwinism; the first two constructs were specified to pertain to gender, race, or class. Control variables differed by study, but always included political identity, participant gender, age, and socioeconomic status (SES).

In each study, sample sizes exceeded the 395 participants required to provide 80% power to detect even a small regression effect size (f ² = 0.02) using the maximum number of predictors (nine in Study 2), according to G*Power.

Because we are comparing the ideological bases of system justification, we consider ideologies to be antecedents, whereas system justification should mediate their influence on outcomes, which, like ours, pose a challenge to the status quo (Jost, 2019). Our focal hypotheses for each study were as follows:

Hypothesis 1: System justification beliefs (based on gender, race, or class) will account for (i.e., mediate) the associations between ideologies and prejudicial outcomes.

Hypothesis 2: Social Darwinism will provide a stronger basis for system justification beliefs than SDO or essentialism. We expected this to be true when (a) testing for differences between correlations or (b) regressing system justification on ideologies after adjusting for control variables.

To our knowledge, the present research is the first to compare ideological underpinnings of system justification, and the first to include social Darwinism, to address our focal question:

Research Question 1: How are social hierarchies deemed worthy of defense?

Study 1

As the first woman nominated to be U.S. president by a major party, Hillary Clinton was a female vanguard at risk of rejection (Blake, 2016). Indeed, people who justify the gender system also resist accomplished female leaders (Rudman et al., 2012). Social Darwinism, SDO, and gender essentialism should positively covary with rejecting Clinton in favor of Trump, but given that ideologies are used to justify patriarchy, then gender system justification should mediate these effects (Hypothesis 1). If so, then discerning how patriarchy is best defended is a vital task. As a full value justification, we expected social Darwinism to predict gender system justification better than SDO or gender essentialism, whether we test for significant differences among their bivariate associations, or adjust for control variables (e.g., gender and political identity) in regression analyses (Hypothesis 2).

Method

Participants

Americans (N = 402; 221 women) were recruited for a “Psychological Survey” from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and compensated US$0.50. To ensure quality data, we only allowed U.S. workers whose acceptance rate was at least 97% to view the study.¹ Participants completed the study on December 23, 2016, shortly after the presidential election. The majority (N = 384, 80%) were White, 32 (8%) were Black, 19 (5%) were Asian, 18 (5%) were Latino, and nine (2%) reported another ethnicity. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 84 years (M = 37.94 years, SD = 12.97 years).

Materials and procedure

Social Darwinism

In the past, social Darwinism has been operationalized as ruthlessly competitive beliefs (Duckitt, 2001; Miesing & Preble, 1985) or support for unethical behaviors (Bageac et al., 2011), not as endorsing natural selection as the key to social welfare (Crandall & Eshleman, 2005). In an exception, Frey and Powell (2005) employed a measure that more closely captures our definition of social Darwinism (e.g., “The fittest members of our society naturally rise to the top”), but with only three items, its reliability was poor (α = .43). Therefore, we expanded their measure to eight items, scored on a scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 9 (strongly agree). Sample items include, “Policies that promote weaker groups to positions of power threaten the natural order” and “Social reformers who want to make us all equal just do not understand that people are by nature unequal” (see Appendix A). Responses were averaged (α = .92, M = 4.24, SD = 2.00).

Gender essentialism

Items measuring beliefs that gender differences stem from innate qualities were adapted from Brescoll et al. (2013). Participants rated nine items on a scale ranging from 1 (completely disagree) to 11 (completely agree). A sample item is, “Men dominate leadership roles because they are naturally more powerful than women” (see also Figure 1). Responses were averaged (α = .86, M = 5.45, SD = 1.94).

SDO

To measure attitudes toward social hierarchies, SDO-6 (Pratto et al., 1994) consists of 16 items scored on a scale ranging from 1 (very negative) to 7 (very positive). Sample items are, “Some groups of people are simply inferior to other groups” and “All groups should be given an equal chance in life” (reverse scored). Responses were averaged such that high scores reflect a preference for social hierarchy over egalitarianism (α = .95, M = 2.46, SD = 1.31).²

Gender system justification

To assess defending patriarchy, we used Jost and Kay’s (2005) eight-item Gender System Justification Beliefs Scale, with responses ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 9 (strongly agree). A sample item is, “In general, relations between men and women are just and fair” (see Appendix B). Responses were averaged (α = .84, M = 5.04, SD = 1.69).

Candidate support

Responses to the forced choice item, “Which major presidential candidate appealed to you most in 2016?” were coded 1 (Hillary Clinton) 2 (Donald Trump).

Demographics

After indicating their gender, age, and ethnicity, participants reported their political identity using the item, “Which of the following best describes your political orientation?” on a scale from 1 (very liberal) to 5 (very conservative; M = 2.77, SD = 1.14). Participants indicated their SES (“Which of the following best describes your socioeconomic status?”) using four options: (1) working class, (2) middle class, (3) upper middle class, (4) wealthy (M = 1.89, SD = 0.70). Religious identity was measured with two items: “Would you describe yourself as religious?” on a scale from 1 (not at all) to 6 (very much); and “What are your feelings toward orthodox (strict, devout) religious beliefs?” on a scale from 1 (very unfavorable) to 6 (very favorable). These two items were averaged; r(400) = .65, p < .001 (M = 2.92, SD = 1.57).

Procedure

Participants completed the three ideological measures and gender system justification in randomized order, followed by candidate support and demographics. They were then debriefed and compensated.

Results and Discussion

Predicting candidate support

On average, participants favored Hillary Clinton (60%) to Donald Trump (40%), but this preference was stronger for women (67% vs. 33%) than men (51% vs. 49%), χ² = 9.47, p = .001.

Table 1 shows the correlations among all variables except for age, which was uncorrelated with other variables, ps > .08. Participants favored Trump over Clinton to the extent that they were conservative, religious, or scored high on each of the four ideologies, all ps < .001. Supplemental Table S1 shows the descriptive statistics for all of Study 1’s variables, including skew and kurtosis (for each, all variables were within the acceptable range).

Table 1.

Correlations Among Variables (Study 1).

Variable	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	Candidate support
1. Political identity	—							.62***
2. Religious identity	.42***	—						.30***
3. Participant gender	−.14**	.01	—					−.15**
4. SES	.03	.07	−.06	—				.03
5. Gender system justification	.48***	.25***	−.31***	.14**	—			.45***
6. SDO	.38***	.15**	−.22***	.19***	.50 ***	—		.39***
7. Gender essentialism	.42***	.27***	−.19***	.02	.47 ***	.41***	—	.34***
8. Social Darwinism	.47***	.25***	−.24***	.17**	.62 ***	.66***	.56***	.44***

Note. N = 402. Candidate support was coded 1 = Hillary Clinton, 2 = Donald Trump. Participant gender was coded 1 = male, 2 = female. High scores on political and religious identity reflect stronger conservatism or religious identity, respectively. High scores on SES reflect more wealth. Correlations between gender system justification and ideologies are in bold. SES = socioeconomic status; SDO = social dominance orientation.

p < .01. ***p < .001.

Hypothesis 1 is that gender system justification will mediate the effect of ideologies on rejecting Hillary Clinton in favor of Donald Trump. Table 2 shows the results of a logistic regression predicting candidate support from all of Table 1’s variables, with the exception of SES (which was unrelated to candidate support; see Table 1). Only gender system justification and political identity contributed unique variance to candidate support. Next, we computed mediation tests for a dichotomous outcome variable following MacKinnon and Dwyer (1993), using materials provided online (Herr, n.d.). Gender system justification mediated 46% of the effect of social Darwinism on candidate support, Sobel’s Z = 2.52, p =.006; 33% of the effect of gender essentialism on candidate support, Sobel’s Z = 1.84, p = .03; and 12% of the effect of SDO on candidate support, Sobel’s Z = 1.45, p = .07. Supplemental Table S4 shows the full results.

Table 2.

Logistic Regression Predicting Candidate Support (Study 1).

Predictor	b	SE	Wald	p	OR
Political identity	1.37	.18	60.53	<.001	3.93
Gender	–0.01	.29	0.002	.97	0.98
Religious identity	0.09	.10	0.97	.33	1.10
SDO	0.25	.15	3.00	.08	1.28
Gender essentialism	0.05	.09	0.27	.61	1.05
Social Darwinism	0.09	.12	0.55	.46	1.09
Gender system justification	0.30	.12	6.65	.01	1.35

Note. N = 402. Candidate support was coded 1 = Hillary Clinton, 2 = Donald Trump. Participant gender was coded 1 = male, 2 = female. High scores on political and religious identity reflect stronger conservatism or religious identity, respectively. Coefficients significant at p < .05 are shown in boldface. SDO = social dominance orientation.

These findings support Hypothesis 1 and confirm that people who justify the gender system tend to reject accomplished female leaders (Rudman et al., 2012), but how is patriarchy deemed worthy of defense?

Predicting gender system justification

According to Hypothesis 2, social Darwinism will predict gender system justification better than SDO or gender essentialism. We tested this hypothesis twice. First, the correlation between gender system justification and social Darwinism, r(400) = .62, p < .001, was significantly more positive than the correlation between gender system justification and (a) SDO, r(400) = .50, p < .001, Z = 3.94, p < .001, and (b) gender essentialism, r(400) = .47, p < .001, Z = 4.02, p < .001.

Second, we regressed gender system justification 3 times. Step 1 adjusted for demographics, then we examined the change in R² after entering each standardized key predictor in Step 2. The first column of Table 3 shows that social Darwinism accounted for more unique variance in gender system justification (16%), compared with 8% for SDO and 7% for gender essentialism (the full results are shown in Supplemental Table S5.) Thus, Hypothesis 2 was supported.

Table 3.

Percent of Variance Accounted for in System Justification Beliefs Based on Gender, Race, or Class.

Predictor	Study 1 (gender) (%)	Study 2 (race) (%)	Study 3 (class) (%)	M (%)
Social Darwinism	16	8	23	16
SDO	8	3	11	7
Essentialism	7	1	2	3

Note. Results were obtained from separate hierarchical regressions that adjusted for control variables in Step 1 before entering each predictor in Step 2. Full results are shown in Tables S1 to S3 in Supplemental Material. The last column shows the average unique variance accounted for by each predictor across three studies. SDO = social dominance orientation.

In summary, Study 1 uniquely showed that gender system justification predicts gender discrimination when targets were actual presidential candidates, and that social Darwinism was a stronger associate of gender system justification compared with SDO and gender essentialism. In essence, people who believe that social hierarchies result from natural selection also defend patriarchy, which predicts favoring male over female leaders (Rudman et al., 2012).

To our knowledge, the role of system justification as a mediator of ideological effects on gender discrimination was shown for the first time in Study 1, but it is consistent with prior research using basic human needs as antecedents to system justification, and health care and immigration reform as outcomes (Hennes et al., 2012). In both instances, system-challenging attitude objects likely triggered defending the status quo (Jost, 2019). More notably, Study 1 supported our reasoning that social Darwinism is a more powerful foundation for system justification, compared with SDO or essentialism. As shown in Figure 1, only social Darwinism provides a full defense of unequal systems (Crandall & Eshleman, 2005). Nonetheless, both our hypotheses require further tests to warrant confidence.

Study 2

In Study 2, we examined the role of racial system justification in perpetuating racial inequalities in America’s criminal justice system (Alexander, 2012). To do so, we focused on justifying police brutality and resistance to BLM, which were prominent themes during the 2016 presidential campaign (Cobb, 2017; Desjardins, 2018; Lind, 2017). An analysis of more than 19,000 incidents revealed that Blacks suffer police violence approximately 3.5 times more often than Whites (Goff et al., 2016). BLM was initiated in response to police killings of unarmed Black men in an effort to draw attention to the victims’ humanity. Yet, even when exposed to images depicting police violence, only 7% of U.S. participants agreed to sign a petition calling for President Obama to formally support the movement (Casas & Webb Williams, 2018). Prior research in England showed that resisting BLM positively covaried with SDO and negatively covaried with racial contact (Meleady & Vermue, 2018). In a representative sample, system justification positively correlated with resisting BLM for both Maori and European New Zealanders (Osborne et al., 2019). In Study 1, we examined the process by which these predictors work together, in tandem with social Darwinism and racial essentialism, to curb enthusiasm for criminal justice reforms.

To conceptually replicate Study 1, we expected racial system justification to mediate the effect of social Darwinism, SDO, and racial essentialism on justifying police brutality and resisting BLM (Hypothesis 1). Hypothesis 2 is that social Darwinism will predict racial system justification better than SDO or racial essentialism, whether or not we adjust for control variables.

Method

Participants

Participants (N = 424; 247 women) were introductory psychology students from a large research university in New Jersey recruited for a “Social Issues Study” in exchange for partial fulfillment of a research requirement. Of these, 153 (36%) were Asian, 87 (21%) were White, 59 (14%) were Latino, 52 (12%) were Black, 48 (11%) were biracial, and 25 (6%) reported another ethnicity.

Materials and procedure

Ideological measures

We used Study 1’s measures of SDO (α = .94) and social Darwinism (α = .88). To measure essentialism, we used the eight-item Racial Essentialism Scale (No et al., 2008). A sample item is, “How a person is like (e.g., his or her abilities, traits) is deeply ingrained in his or her race. It cannot be changed much” (see also Figure 1). Responses were averaged so that high scores reflect racial essentialism (α = .72, M = 5.34, SD = 1.59).

Racial system justification

We modified the Gender System Justification Scale (Jost & Kay, 2005) by replacing gender with race. A sample item is, “Society is set up so that Blacks and Whites usually get what they deserve.” Responses were averaged so that high scores reflect defending the racial hierarchy (α = .78, M = 4.23, SD = 1.58).

Racial contact

We used a racial contact index that correlates with both explicit and implicit anti-Black biases (Rudman & McLean, 2016). We averaged three items (“Who do you interact with most frequently?” “Who do you have the most positive contact with?” and “Who do you have the most meaningful contact with?”) with responses coded as 0 (Whites), 1 (both equally), 2 (Other), and 3 (Blacks). Thus, a high score reflects relatively more frequent and meaningful contact with Blacks and other minority groups than with Whites (α = .82, M = 1.07, SD = 0.84), which should negatively relate to racial biases (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006).

Racial attitudes

Participants rated their feelings toward Whites and Blacks on separate thermometer scales ranging from 1 (very cold/unfavorable) to 10 (very warm/favorable). The difference between these was computed such that high scores indicated more favorability toward Whites than Blacks (M = −0.47, SD = 2.01). On average, participants reported preferring Blacks to Whites, t(423) = 4.89, p < .001, dz = 0.24.

Justifying police brutality

Participants read an excerpt taken from Blink (Gladwell, 2005; see Appendix C), describing how four White police officers shot and killed Amadou Diallo, an unarmed Black man, after mistaking his wallet for a firearm. Participants reported attributions for the incident using seven items scored on scales ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Two items supported the victim (e.g., “Amadou Diallo was completely blameless during this interaction”) and five items supported the police (e.g., “The police officers were justified in being suspicious of Amadou Diallo”; “To some extent, Amadou Diallo deserved what happened in this interaction”; and “The officers’ actions were tragic but understandable”). After recoding, responses were averaged, so that high scores reflected justifying police brutality (α = .77, M = 3.35, SD = 1.65).

Resistance to BLM

Using the same scale, participants responded to four items after reading, “In the aftermath of several deaths involving police violence, the BLM movement formed, defined as an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise.” The items were as follows: “The Black Lives Matter movement is hurting American society by undermining faith in the criminal justice system and creating racial tensions”; “I do not support the Black Lives Matter movement, which is harming America”; “The Black Lives Matter movement is calling for changes in our society that are sorely needed (e.g., improved police training, monitoring, and punishment for killing unarmed citizens)”; and “I support the Black Lives Matter movement, which is addressing critical problems in our society.” After recoding, responses were averaged such that high scores reflect resisting the BLM movement (α = .87, M = 3.37, SD = 2.30). Resisting BLM and justifying police brutality were positively related, r(422) = .57, p < .001.

Procedure

Participants completed the measures in the order described below, except that the ideological measures were administered in random order. Unless noted otherwise, all items were scaled from 1 (strongly disagree) to 10 (strongly agree). All items within each measure were randomly presented. After completing demographic items (gender, race, political identity, and SES), participants were fully debriefed and compensated.

Results and Discussion

Predicting racial biases

Table 4 shows the correlations among the focal variables (Supplemental Table S2 shows the descriptive statistics). The last two columns show that justifying police brutality and resisting BLM were related in the expected direction to all variables, ps < .01. Table 5 shows the results of hierarchical regressions in which racial system justification was entered in Step 2 after adjusting for control variables. Racial system justification showed incremental validity when justifying police brutality (5%) and resistance to BLM (7%). However, unlike Study 1, so did other variables (e.g., social Darwinism was also an incremental predictor in both equations).

Table 4.

Correlations Among Variables (Study 2).

	Control variables					Ideologies			Racial biases
Variable	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	Police support^a	Resist BLM
1. Political identity	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	.33***	.52***
2. Gender	−.14**	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	−.14**	−.28***
3. SES	.17***	−.03	—	—	—	—	—	—	.15**	.20***
4. Racial contact	−.20***	.11*	−.27***	—	—	—	—	—	−.21***	−.36***
5. Racial attitudes	.33***	−.10*	.22***	−.52***	—	—	—	—	.34***	.43***
6. Racial system justification	.50***	−.35***	.13**	−.36***	.44***	—	—	—	.50***	.68***
7. SDO	.34***	−.17***	.15**	−.19***	.26***	.40 ***	—	—	.34***	.39***
8. Racial essentialism	.19***	−.10*	−.05	−.02	.04	.22 ***	.19***	—	.18***	.20***
9. Social Darwinism	.41***	−.17***	.17***	−.25***	.33***	.55 ***	.47***	.30***	.42***	.54***

Note. N = 424, except for SES (N = 423), due to a missing value. High scores on political identity, SES, racial contact, and racial attitudes reflect greater conservatism, wealth, contact with Blacks, or pro-White attitudes, respectively. Participant gender was coded 1 = male, 2 = female. Correlations between racial system justification and ideologies are in bold. BLM = Black Lives Matter; SES = socioeconomic status; SDO = social dominance orientation.

Justifying police brutality.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Table 5.

Hierarchical Regressions Predicting Justifying Police Brutality (Police Support) and Resisting BLM (Study 2).

Model (outcome)	Step	β	R²Δ	Step	β	95% CI	R²Δ
Model 1 (police support)
Political identity	1	.13	—	2	.06	[−0.07, 0.26]	—
Participant gender	1	−.03	—	2	.03	[−0.09, 0.20]	—
SES	1	.02	—	2	.05	[−0.06, 0.22]	—
Racial contact	1	.01	—	2	.04	[−0.09, 0.23]	—
Racial attitudes	1	.18	—	2	.13	[0.05, 0.38]	—
SDO	1	.15	—	2	.12	[0.07, 0.50]	—
Racial essentialism	1	.06	—	2	.05	[−0.07, 0.22]	—
Social Darwinism	1	.20	.26	2	.11	[0.02, 0.37]	—
Racial system justification			—	2	.31	[0.32, 0.69]	.05
Model 2 (resisting BLM)
Political identity	1	.30	—	2	.21	[0.31, 0.67]	—
Participant gender	1	−.15	—	2	−.07	[−0.32, 0.00]	—
SES	1	.03	—	2	.04	[−0.06, 0.26]	—
Racial contact	1	−.12	—	2	−.08	[−0.36, −0.01]	—
Racial attitudes	1	.14	—	2	.08	[−0.01, 0.36]	—
SDO	1	.06	—	2	.03	[−0.15, 0.34]	—
Racial essentialism	1	.03	—	2	.01	[−0.13, 0.19]	—
Social Darwinism	1	.27	.48	2	.16	[0.18, 0.57]	—
Racial system justification	—	—	—	2	.37	[0.64, 1.06]	.07

Note. N = 423. Standardized coefficients are shown. High scores on political identity, SES, racial contact, and racial attitudes reflect greater conservatism, wealth, contact with Blacks, or pro-White attitudes, respectively. Participant gender was coded 1 = male, 2 = female. Coefficients significant at p < .05 are shown in boldface. Confidence intervals were bias corrected. BLM = Black Lives Matter; SES = socioeconomic status; SDO = social dominance orientation.

Nonetheless, according to Hypothesis 1, racial system justification should mediate the effect of ideologies on both outcomes. We used PROCESS (Hayes, 2018) to provide a bootstrapped test (with 5K samples) of this prediction. Results are shown in Table 6. Model 1 reveals support for Hypothesis 1, as does Model 2. When regressing justifying police brutality, the mediation effect for social Darwinism (b = .19) and SDO (b = .07) were significant. Similarly, when regressing resisting BLM, the mediation effect was significant for social Darwinism (b = .37) and for SDO (b = .13).

Table 6.

Mediation of the Effect of Ideologies on Outcome Variables Through Racial System Justification (Study 2) or Class System Justification (Study 3).

Ideology	Model 1		Model 2		Model 3
	Justifying police brutality		Resisting BLM		Budget support
	b	95% CI	B	95% CI	b	95% CI
X₁ Social Darwinism
Path a	.37	[0.28, 0.46]	.36	[0.27, 0.45]	.55	[0.48, 0.63]
Path b	.51	[0.34, 0.68]	1.04	[0.84, 1.24]	.49	[0.35, 0.62]
Mediation effect (a × b)	.19	[0.11, 0.20]	.37	[0.25, 0.53]	.27	[0.18, 0.37]
Path c	.40	[0.24, 0.57]	.79	[0.58, 0.99]	.39	[0.26, 0.53]
Path c’	.22	[0.04, 0.39]	.40	[0.21, 0.61]	.12	[−0.03, 0.27]
X₂ SDO
Path a	.14	[0.05, 0.23]	.12	[0.04, 0.21]	.12	[0.05, 0.19]
Mediation effect (a × b)	.07	[0.03, 0.13]	.13	[0.04, 0.22]	.06	[0.01, 0.07]
Path c	.29	[0.13, 0.44]	.23	[0.04, 0.43]	.37	[0.25, 0.50]
Path c’	.21	[0.06, 0.37]	.11	[−0.07, 0.28]	.31	[0.19, 0.44]
X₃ essentialism
Path a	.07	[−0.01, 0.07]	.03	[−0.05, 0.11]	−.04	[−0.09, 0.01]
Mediation effect (a × b)	.02	[−0.01, 0.05]	.03	[−0.06, 0.12]	−.02	[−0.05, 0.01]
Path c	.11	[−0.04, 0.25]	.03	[−0.15, 0.21]	−.02	[−0.12, 0.07]
Path c’	.07	[−0.07, 0.21]	−.01	[−0.17, 0.15]	−.003	[−0.09, 0.09]

Note. Coefficients in bold font are significant at p < .05. Either racial essentialism (Models 1 and 2) or class essentialism (Model 3) was the third ideology. The a path links each ideology to the system justification mediator. The b path links system justification to outcome variables and is constant in each model. The c path is the direct effect of each ideology on the outcome variable. The c’ path is the effect of each ideology on the outcome variable after adjusting for the mediator. Covariates were incremental predictors shown in Tables 5 and 8. These were explicit racial attitudes in Model 1, political identity in Model 2, and political identity and SES in Model 3. BLM = Black Lives Matter; SDO = social dominance orientation; SES = socioeconomic status.

Finally, there was no mediation effect for racial essentialism, likely because none of its paths were significant. In the presence of social Darwinism and SDO, racial essentialism did not account for significant variance in either the mediator or the outcomes.

Predicting racial system justification

Next, we turned to our primary aim of discerning how the racial system is deemed worthy of defense. Supporting Hypothesis 2, the correlation between racial system justification and social Darwinism, r(422) = .55, p < .001, was significantly more positive than the relationship between racial system justification and (a) SDO, r(422) = .40, p < .001, Z = 3.55, p < .001, and (b) racial essentialism, r(422) = .22, p < .001, Z = 6.50, p < .001.

As in Study 1, we compared the ideologies’ incremental validity. Table 3 shows that social Darwinism contributed 8% of the variance to racial system justification, compared with 3% for SDO and 1% for racial essentialism (Supplemental Table S6 provides the full results.).

In summary, Study 2 conceptually replicated Study 1 by showing that racial system justification mediated the effect of ideologies on justifying police brutality and resistance to BLM, and that social Darwinism was a stronger predictor of racial system justification compared with SDO or racial essentialism. In essence, social Darwinists are especially likely to defend a system of racial inequalities, which predicts attitudes that pose an existential threat to Black Americans.

Although prior research has shown that SDO (Meleady & Vermue, 2018) and system justification (Osborne et al., 2019) are associated with resisting BLM, we uniquely examined (a) the process by which ideologies and racial system justification contribute to prejudicial outcomes and (b) the prominence of social Darwinism as an ideological basis for defending the racial status quo in Study 2. Having supported our hypotheses in the domains of racial and gender prejudice, we next turned our attention to classism (i.e., prejudice against or in favor of people belonging to a particular social class).

Study 3

A preference for small government, popularized by social Darwinists in the 1800s, has led conservatives to consistently propose fiscal policies that would reduce public spending (e.g., on Social Security and health care) to provide economic benefits to the rich (Hiltzik, 2018; Kitcher, 2012; McGreal, 2012). However, it is unknown whether public support for this trade-off dovetails with class system justification and ideological beliefs grounded in biological determinism, including social Darwinism.

On May 23, 2017, the White House proposed a budget that would dramatically decrease the social safety net to accommodate tax cuts for the wealthy. To assess support for the budget, we conducted Study 3 on May 29, 2017.

Hypothesis 1 is that class system justification will mediate the associations between ideologies and support for the proposed budget. Hypothesis 2 is that social Darwinism will predict class system justification better than SDO or class essentialism.

Method

Participants

Participants (N = 676; 357 women) were American MTurk workers recruited for a “Policy Opinion Study” in exchange for US$1.00. Of these, 528 (78%) were White, 53 (8%) were Black, 49 (7%) were Asian, 26 (4%) were Latino, 15 (2%) were biracial, and five (1%) reported another ethnicity. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 86 years (M = 39.21 years, SD = 13.02 years).

Materials and procedure

Budget support

Participants were informed that

On May 23rd, the White House presented its proposed budget for 2018. In order to pay for tax benefits for the wealthy (costing $582 billion) and a 10% increase in military spending (costing $574 billion), the following cuts were proposed. Please indicate your level of opposition or support of each proposed budget cut.

Eight items scaled from 1 (strongly oppose) to 6 (strongly support) followed. The two focal items were, “Reducing the budget for SNAP, the federal food stamp program, by 25%, cutting $193 billion from the budget” and “Significantly reducing the budget for health insurance for the poor (Medicaid), welfare (TANF), the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and disability insurance (SSDI), cutting $1.7 trillion from the budget” (α = .89). The remaining six items were used as a smokescreen (they proposed cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Institutes of Health, the Environmental Protection Agency, foreign aid, and eliminating government funding for Planned Parenthood).

Class system justification

The Economic System Justification Scale (Jost & Thompson, 2000) consists of 17 items, many of which assess social Darwinism (e.g., “Laws of nature are responsible for differences in wealth in society”) and class essentialism (see below). To provide a conservative test of our hypothesis, we created an instrument more comparable with previous system justification scales. We did so by using four items from the original measure (e.g., “There are many reasons to think that the economic system is fair”) and three modified items from the Gender System Justification Scale (Jost & Kay, 2005) such as, “Everyone in America (regardless of their class at birth) has a shot at wealth and happiness” (see Appendix D). Responses were averaged so that high scores reflected defending the class system (α = .93).

Ideological measures

We used the same measures of SDO (α = .95) and social Darwinism (α = .93). To measure class essentialism, we used three essentialism items from Jost and Thompson (2000) including, “Poor people are not essentially different from rich people biologically” (reverse scored), and three items from a prior Class Essentialism Scale (Kraus & Keltner, 2013) such as, “Due to biology, a person’s social class is pretty much determined at birth” (see Appendix E). These items were averaged so that high scores reflected greater class essentialism (α = .75).

Procedure

Participants completed the measures in the order described, except that the ideological measures were performed in randomized order. All items within each measure were randomly presented. After completing demographic items identical to those used in Study 1, including two items for religious identity, r(674) = .73, p < .001, participants were fully debriefed and compensated.

Results and Discussion

Supplemental Table S3 shows the descriptive statistics. Table 7 shows the correlations among all measures except for participant age, which only significantly correlated with religious identity, r(674) = .15, p < .001. The last column shows that budget support covaried with each variable in Table 7, suggesting that conservatives, men, wealthy participants, and religious people were relatively supportive of reducing the social safety net, as were those who scored high on each ideology.

Table 7.

Descriptive Statistics and Correlations Among Variables (Study 3).

Variable	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	Budget support
1. Political identity	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	.55***
2. Religious identity	.43***	—	—	—	—	—	—	.24***
3. Participant gender	−.12**	.13**	—	—	—	—	—	−.12**
4. SES	.04	.06	.01	—	—	—	—	.15***
5. Class system justification	.59***	.30***	−.17***	.17***	—	—	—	.64***
6. SDO	.53***	.18***	−.22***	.11**	.62 ***	—	—	.58***
7. Class essentialism	.23***	.15***	−.08*	.04	.29 ***	.41***	—	.26***
8. Social Darwinism	.61***	.25***	−.19***	.11**	.76 ***	.72***	.40***	.60***

Note. N = 676. High scores on political identity, SES, and religious identity reflect greater conservatism, wealth, or religious identity, respectively. Participant gender was coded 1 = male, 2 = female. Correlations between class system justification and ideologies are in bold. SES = socioeconomic status; SDO = social dominance orientation.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Predicting budget support

Table 8 shows the results of hierarchically regressing budget support on class system justification in Step 2, after entering control variables in Step 1. In Step 2, class system justification accounted for 4% unique variance to budget support. However, political identity, SES, and SDO were also significant in Step 2.

Table 8.

Hierarchical Regression Predicting Budget Support (Study 3).

Predictor	Step	β	R²Δ	Step	β	95% CI	R²Δ
Political identity	1	.25	—	2	.20	[0.18, 0.41]	—
Participant gender	1	.01	—	2	.02	[−0.06, 0.12]	—
SES	1	.09	—	2	.06	[0.01, 0.18]	—
Religious identity	1	−.02	—	2	−.01	[−0.10, 0.08]	—
SDO	1	.25	—	2	.21	[0.19, 0.44]	—
Class essentialism	1	−.02	—	2	−.002	[−0.10, 0.09]	—
Social Darwinism	1	.22	.45	2	.08	[−0.03, 0.27]	—
Class system justification	—	—	—	2	.33	[0.36, 0.62]	.04

Note. N = 676. Standardized coefficients are shown. High scores on political identity, SES, and religious identity reflect greater conservatism, wealth, or religious identity, respectively. Participant gender was coded 1 = male, 2 = female. Coefficients significant at p < .05 are shown in boldface. Confidence intervals were bias corrected. SES = socioeconomic status; SDO = social dominance orientation.

Hypothesis 1 expects class system justification to mediate the effect of ideologies on budget support. To test this hypothesis, we repeated Study 2’s analytic strategy. Results are shown in Table 6 (Model 3). When regressing budget support, the mediation effect was significant for social Darwinism (b = .26) and for SDO (b = .06). Thus, Hypothesis 1 was supported. (There was no mediation effect for class essentialism; as in Study 2, none of the paths were significant.)

Predicting class system justification

We next turned to our primary goal of comparing the ideological bases of class system justification. Supporting Hypothesis 2, the correlation between class system justification and social Darwinism, r(674) = .76, p < .001, was significantly more positive than the correlation between class system justification and (a) SDO, r(674) = .62, p < .001, Z = 7.24, p < .001, and (b) class essentialism, r(674) = .29, p < .001, Z = 14.68, p < .001.

To compare their incremental validity, Table 3 shows the results of separately regressing class systemic justification on social Darwinism, SDO, or class essentialism in Step 2, after adjusting for demographics in Step 1 (using standardized predictors). Social Darwinism accounted for more variance (23%) in economic system justification, compared with 11% for SDO and 2% for class essentialism (Supplemental Table S7 shows the full results).

In summary, Study 3’s findings extended the pattern shown for gender and racial system justification in Studies 1 and 2 to class system justification in two main ways: by demonstrating (a) the mediating role of class system justification when predicting support for a budget that disenfranchised the nonwealthy and (b) the key role of social Darwinism as an ideological basis for defending the class system. Social Darwinism accounted for more than twice the variance in class system justification, compared with SDO, and 11.5 times more variance compared with class essentialism (see Table 3). This result occurred even under conservative conditions (i.e., after removing social Darwinian items from class system justification; cf. Jost & Thompson, 2000).

General Discussion

Consistent with system justification theory (Jost & Banaji, 1994), people who justified social hierarchies based on gender, race, or class were also likely to possess attitudes and beliefs that disenfranchise women, Blacks, or nonwealthy Americans who depend on the social safety net. These findings echo prior research showing that people who defend unequal systems are more likely to reject nontraditional women (Rudman et al., 2012; Yeung et al., 2014), affirmative action policies (Phelan & Rudman, 2011), and progressive health care and immigration reforms (Hennes et al., 2012). System defense is likely to be invoked whenever opposition to the status quo or challenges to social hierarchies arise (Jost, 2019). But how are systems that reinforce inequality deemed worthy of defense?

To address that question, we compared the predictive utility of three ideologies that are grounded in biological determinism: social Darwinism, SDO, and essentialism. Prior research has shown that system justification mediates the effect of basic human needs on opposition to progressive reforms (Hennes et al., 2012; for a review, see Jost, 2019). Unique to the present research, system justification consistently mediated the associations between ideologies and prejudicial outcomes based on gender, race, and class. The pattern supports Hypothesis 1 and our reasoning that system justification stems from ideologies rooted in biological determinism (and not only from human needs; Hennes et al., 2012). Such ideological bases were evident from observed associations between system justification and SDO (Douglas & Sutton, 2014; Williams & Eberhardt, 2008), as well as essentialism (Brescoll et al., 2013; Morton et al., 2009). But which ideology affords the best justification for defending unequal systems?

A priori, we identified social Darwinism as a stronger candidate because, unlike essentialism or SDO, it not only explains why social hierarchies exist and why they are preferable but also justifies mistreating “inferior” groups as both natural and necessary for the sake of “improving the human race” (Crandall & Eshleman, 2005, p. 250). As expected from Figure 1, social Darwinism contributed more variance to system justification beliefs than either essentialism or SDO, whether we tested for differences among bivariate correlations, or adjusted for control variables in regression analyses. Table 3’s last column shows that averaged across studies, social Darwinism accounted for almost twice as much variance to system justification beliefs (13%) compared with SDO (7%), and more than 4 times as much variance compared with essentialism (3%). These findings fully support Hypothesis 2. They also suggest that among the ideologies we compared, social Darwinism best captures the latent variable of biological determinism that predicts defending unequal systems.

Because our hypotheses were supported whether social hierarchies were based on gender, race, or class, social Darwinism may have wide-ranging utility for the psychology of legitimacy. It is well established that acute threats motivate defending social hierarchies (e.g., Brescoll et al., 2013; Hennes et al., 2012; Rudman et al., 2012). By contrast, the present research suggests that social Darwinism may chronically legitimize social hierarchies. When people believe that power disparities are the result of a biological contest—that Nature has mandated them—they are rendered inviolate. Attempts to even the playing field may be rejected as a threat to human welfare because inequality is both inevitable and preferable—a result of natural processes that should not be altered. Thus, social Darwinism fuels a struggle that pits the desire to preserve a particular social order against the American creed of egalitarianism and the quest for universal civil rights.

Constraints on Generality and Future Directions

The present research revealed a consistent pattern whether participants were older (and largely White) or undergraduates (and racially diverse). As noted, our samples are likely to be more liberal than representative samples (see Note 1). Although more conservative participants should respond similarly, there are other characteristics that may constrain the generality of our results (Simons et al., 2017).

First, tests comparing the ideological correlates of system justification are predicated on the quality of our measures. To adjust for their variable reliability, we computed the attenuated correlations between system justification and each ideology (Murphy & Davidshofer, 1991). Supplemental Table S8 shows no change in the results. That is, in each study, social Darwinism remained a significantly stronger correlate of system justification, compared with SDO and essentialism.

Second, our findings may be circumscribed to the United States. Key tenets of system justification theory have been supported cross-culturally (for a review, see Jost, 2019), and both SDO and system justification were associated with resisting BLM movement in England (Meleady & Vermue, 2018) and in New Zealand (Osborne et al., 2019). Nonetheless, future research is necessary to generalize our findings to other cultures.

Third, the current political climate suggests that social Darwinism is experiencing a renaissance in the United States, which may have expedited Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election (Chait, 2017). Might our results be limited to this time period? Absent prior research, we have no means of comparing across time. However, America has been moving toward unregulated capitalism and rising income inequality for decades—features of the Gilded Age that prompted the invention of social Darwinism to legitimize them (Fraser, 2008; Kitcher, 2012; Krugman, 2007). Therefore, although it seems unlikely that our findings are temporally limited, it remains a distinct possibility. We have no reason to believe that our results depend on other characteristics of the participants, materials, or context.

By considering gender, racial, and class systems, our findings imply that “the system” being justified reflects the preservation of a “natural order” in which wealthy White men are judged to be genetically selected to wield power and authority over other groups. Consequently, efforts to improve equal opportunity may be resisted as attempts to undermine the human species. How might researchers intervene? Because social Darwinism is pernicious, we do not recommend manipulations designed to increase it. Instead, we encourage attempts to decrease social Darwinism to undermine defending systemic inequalities as natural and inevitable.

Potential strategies include educating people about evolutionary theory’s emphasis on the importance of cooperation (over competition) to human survival (Benbow, 2013; Kropotkin, 1902/2006). Moreover, raising historical awareness about the danger of the ideology, including the fact that Nazis relied on America’s embrace of social Darwinism (e.g., to legitimize brutality toward Native Americans) to justify Germany’s internment camps and genocide (Whitman, 2017) might have a depressive effect. Furthermore, illuminating why people endorse social Darwinism would be useful for designing interventions. For example, people who perceive civil rights as a zero-sum game (Norton & Sommers, 2011) might be especially prone to a social Darwinian worldview, particularly at a time when many White Americans fear being outnumbered demographically (Craig & Richeson, 2014). Because our findings reveal that social Darwinism in America has yet to be defeated, it is vital for future research to determine how best to combat it.

Supplemental Material

Rudman_Online_Appendix – Supplemental material for Justifying Social Inequalities: The Role of Social Darwinism

Supplemental material, Rudman_Online_Appendix for Justifying Social Inequalities: The Role of Social Darwinism by Laurie A. Rudman and Lina H. Saud in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

Supplemental Material

Supplementary_Tables_S1-S8 – Supplemental material for Justifying Social Inequalities: The Role of Social Darwinism

Supplemental material, Supplementary_Tables_S1-S8 for Justifying Social Inequalities: The Role of Social Darwinism by Laurie A. Rudman and Lina H. Saud in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

Footnotes

Appendix A (Studies 1–3)

Appendix B (Study 1)

Appendix C (Study 2)

Appendix D (Study 3)

Appendix E (Study 3)

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Laurie A. Rudman

Notes

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material is available online with this article.

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