Re-Examining Buchel et al.’s (2021) Test of the Status Legitimacy Hypothesis

Abstract

The status-legitimacy hypothesis posits that low-status groups more strongly endorse social hierarchies and disadvantageous systems (i.e., engage in system justification), particularly under extreme societal inequality. Buchel et al. (2021) found supportive evidence for this hypothesis based on a 28-nation survey (N = 48,802). However, other large-scale studies have produced contradictory evidence. Consequently, we re-examined Buchel et al.’s (2021) data, this time breaking down the critical status $\times$ inequality interaction and visualizing the patterns with scatterplots. Contrary to the status-legitimacy hypothesis, our results often showed that both objective and subjective status were associated with system justification in the opposite direction–even in contexts of high societal inequality. However, higher societal inequality sometimes reduces the system justification gap between status groups. We discuss the implications of these mixed findings for the debate around the existence of a system justification motive.