Finding (dis-)advantaged system justifiers: A bottom-up approach to explore system justification theory

System Justification Theory (SJT) postulates that individuals are motivated to justify the status quo, including the paradoxical prediction that those who are disadvantaged (e.g., lower social status) by the prevailing system will justify the system more than those who are advantaged by the prevailing system. We test if this assumption holds in an entire sample, or only among subsets of a sample using a bottom-up approach, Correlational Class Analysis. Using a representative sample from four European countries (Ntotal = 5157) we found six subpopulations. The first subpopulation (Justifiers, ntotal = 1256; 24%) was consistent with SJT, that is, system justification and social status were negatively correlated. The second subpopulation (Rejectors, ntotal = 1688; 33%), however, was characterized by a positive correlation between social status and system justification, which contrasts with the prediction of system justification theory. The other four subpopulations (Ntotal = 2211; 43%) were characterized by an ambivalent pattern. That is, at least one social status indicator, but not all, supported the prediction that disadvantaged individuals justified the system more than advantaged individuals. These heterogeneous patterns would be undetected using traditional approaches. Further, our results show that inequality salience is lower, trust in political institutions is higher, and support for political violence is higher among Justifiers compared to Rejectors. We discuss how understanding the interrelations between multiple indicators of social status and how they differ between subpopulations can help us to obtain a more comprehensive picture regarding under which circumstances and for whom system justification theory applies.