Owuamalam Chuma Kevin, Rubin Mark, Spears Russell
Division of Organisational and Applied Psychology, University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, Semenyih, Malaysia.
The University of Newcastle, Canberra, New South Wales, Australia.
Br J Soc Psychol. 2019 Mar 28. doi: 10.1111/bjso.12323.
The debate between the proponents of SIMSA and SJT does not pivot on whether system justification occurs - we all agree that system justification does occur. The issue is why it occurs? System justification theory (SJT; Jost & Banaji, 1994, British Journal of Social Psychology, 33, 1) assumes that system justification is motivated by a special system justification motive. In contrast, the social identity model of system attitudes (SIMSA; Owuamalam, Rubin, & Spears, , Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27, 2) argues that there is insufficient conclusive evidence for this special system motive, and that system justification can be explained in terms of social identity motives, including the motivation to accurately reflect social reality and the search for a positive social identity. Here, we respond to criticisms of SIMSA, including criticisms of its social reality, ingroup bias, and hope for future ingroup status explanations of system justification. We conclude that SJT theorists should decide whether system justification is oppositional to, or compatible with social identity motives, and that this dilemma could be resolved by relinquishing the theoretically problematic notion of a system justification motivation.
支持系统正当化模型（SIMSA）和系统正当化理论（SJT）的双方之间的争论，并非围绕系统正当化是否会发生——我们都认同系统正当化确实会发生。问题在于它为何会发生？系统正当化理论（SJT；约斯特和巴纳吉，1994年，《英国社会心理学杂志》，第33卷，第1期）假定，系统正当化是由一种特殊的系统正当化动机所驱动。相比之下，系统态度的社会认同模型（SIMSA；奥瓦马拉姆、鲁宾和斯皮尔斯，《心理科学当前趋势》，第27卷，第2期）认为，这种特殊的系统动机缺乏确凿证据，并且系统正当化可以用社会认同动机来解释，包括准确反映社会现实的动机以及寻求积极社会认同的动机。在此，我们回应了对SIMSA的批评，包括对其社会现实、内群体偏见以及对未来用内群体地位解释系统正当化的希望的批评。我们得出结论，SJT理论家应该确定系统正当化是与社会认同动机相对立还是相容，并且这种困境可以通过摒弃理论上存在问题的系统正当化动机概念来解决。
