ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Soc. Psychol.
Sec. Attitudes, Social Justice and Political Psychology
Volume 3 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frsps.2025.1525321
This article is part of the Research TopicCurrent Research on the Palliative Effect of IdeologyView all 3 articles
The Palliative and Pernicious Effects of Racial System Justification for the Racially Privileged and the Racially Oppressed
Provisionally accepted
- 1New York University, New York City, United States
- 2Long Island University-Brooklyn, Brooklyn, New York, United States
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Across two studies, we examined the relationship between racial system justification, ethnicracial identity, and well-being (Studies 1 -2) in racially advantaged and disadvantaged groups, namely, White and Black US participants. Among White Americans (Study 1, N = 371), racial system justification predicted the likelihood of reporting zero (i.e., vs. one or more) bad mental health days. This palliative effect of system justification was also reflected by its association with well-being mediated by decreased ethnic-racial self-hatred, and to a lesser extent, ethnicracial salience. In a sample of Black American participants (Study 2, N = 414), we tested the palliative system justification-well-being association by examining correlates of psychological distress, hypothesizing that there would be either a positive or negative relationship with psychological distress, depending on the relationship between racial system justification and ethnic-racial identity attitudes. No direct effect between racial system justification and psychological distress emerged, though we found some evidence of both a negative and positive indirect association between racial system justification and psychological distress through increased racial salience and increased racial self-hatred respectively. We further found a negative indirect association between racial system justification and psychological distress through decreased racial salience. The results point to simultaneous palliative and pernicious effects of RSJ reflected in its opposing associations with psychological well-being and the underlying racial identity attitudes that explain these associations.
Keywords: system justification, Disadvantaged groups, Ethnic-racial identity, Racial attitudes and identities, Racial salience, racial self-hatred, race, Racism
Received: 09 Nov 2024; Accepted: 19 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Bertin, Soyeju and Saunders. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Jeannine Alana Bertin, New York University, New York City, United States
Benjamin Saunders, Long Island University-Brooklyn, Brooklyn, 11201, New York, United States
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