1. IKEGAMI, Tomoko1 & YADA, Naoya1 (1Osaka City University, Japan)
When and how do political conservatives become harsh toward the disadvantaged?: The role of complementary stereotypes in meritocratic societies
IKEGAMI, Tomoko1 & YADA, Naoya1 (1Osaka City University, Japan)
Introduction
Method
Results
Discussion
Participants
800 Japanese male and female adults
(age range: 30 to 50)
Procedure
　　WEB survey was conducted through
　 　survey company.
Measurement
●Demographic attributes
Age, Gender, Income, Education…
●Beliefs in Complementarity
(Kay & Jost, 2003)
Endorsement of each of 9 items on a 7-point scale as below:
・A person who has recently experienced
　a string of bad breaks probably has
　something good coming to him or her.
・Everything comes out even in the end.
●Political Orientation
(conservative vs. liberal)
Agree or disagree with each of 13 political issues on a 7-point scale as below:
・Budget cut for social welfare
・Employment expansion for women
●Perceived Legitimacy of Meritocracy
Desirable or Undesirable regarding each
of 12 items on a 7-point scale as below:
“One’s future success is determined
　by his/her achievements.”
“A person of no ability is disregarded.”
Legitimacy of Meritocracy
Hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed a significant positive effect of complementary stereotypes and political conservatism on legitimacy of meritocracy. More importantly, the interaction term between the two reached a significance level.
⇒　Table 1
Table 1 Multiple regression
Further analyses indicated that promotion effect of complementary stereotypes on perceived legitimacy of meritocratic society was accentuated among political conservatisms than political liberals
　　⇒　Figure 1.
Political conservatisms are more likely than liberals to endorse meritocracy, indicating that political conservatisms are more harsh toward the disadvantaged in meritocratic society.
People who hold stereotypical beliefs in complementarity are more likely to endorse meritocracy, indicating complementary stereotypes create an illusion of equality thereby buffer against threats to egalitarian worldview caused by meritocracy.
Political conservatisms are more likely to rely on palliative function of complementary stereotypes because they are pressed to reconcile　the two predominant values: meritocracy and egalitarianism.
Our result suggests that the complementary stereotypes promote the rights of the strongest.
<References>
Henry & Pincus (1978). Psychological Report, 42,
Kay & Jost (2003). JPSP, 85,
Kay et al. (2007). AESP, 39,
Meritocracy and egalitarianism are equally predominant in contemporary societies. But the former sometimes collides with the latter. How do people reconcile these two values?
Political conservatives generally tend to express negative attitudes toward the disadvantaged in egalitarian society (Henry & Pincus, 1978). How can they come to do that?
We argue that complementary stereotypes serve to mitigate feelings of compunction for harsh treatment toward the disadvantaged.
The endorsement of stereotypical beliefs in complementariness (i.e., The world is a balanced place) is associated with the perceived fairness of the status quo (Kay & Jost, 2003).
Complementary stereotypes create an illusion of equality by ascribing compensating virtues to the disadvantaged and corresponding vices to the advantaged (Kay et al., 2007).
We examine the hypothesis that political conservatives are more likely than liberals to rely on such palliative function of complementary stereotypes to legitimize the meritocracy because they are required to appear to be both meritocratic and egalitarian in contemporary societies.
Step 1
Step 2 β p
Complementary stereotypes (CS)
.090
.010
.079
.025
Political conservatism (CON)
.208
< .001
.204
CS ×CON
.070
.045 R2
.050
.055
⊿R2　step1→ step2　　
.005
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Conclusion
Aim & Hypothesis
Acknowledgements
・This study is a part of our larger research project sponsored by a grant-in-aid from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science(No & 15H03448).
・Correspondence concerning this research should be addressed to Tomoko Ikegami at
Figure 1 Perceived legitimacy as a function
of political orientation and beliefs in
complementary stereotypes.