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amount of research has examined how social comparison processes affect perceptions of deservingness, relatively little research has examined how SJBs affect perceptions of deservingness. Recent research from our laboratories aims to fill the gap in our understanding of how group status and SJBs affect perceptions of personal entitlement and deservingness (O’Brien & Major, 2006).

System-justifying beliefs are belief systems that justify hierarchical and unequal relationships among groups in society (Jost & Hunyady, 2002; O’Brien & Major, 2005). Different cultures have different belief systems to justify social inequality (e.g., the caste system in India). In the United States, examples of SJBs include the Protestant work ethic and beliefs in a just world, meritocracy, personal control, and individual mobility (Crandall & Eshelman, 2003; Lerner, 1980; Major et al., 2002, Major, Kaiser, O’Brien, & McCoy, 2007; Weber 1904/1958). These belief systems justify the social system by explaining differences in the distribution of social and material goods in terms of differences in individual effort, talent, and merit and by holding people responsible for their outcomes (Crandall, 1994; Furnham, 1990; Lerner, 1980; Jost & Hunyady, 2002; Major, 1994).

Although individuals differ in the extent to which they endorse them, SJBs are widely endorsed by individuals of all levels of social status (Crandall, 1994; Furnham & Proctor, 1989; Jost & Hunyady, 2002; Kluegel & Smith, 1986). The apparent consensus of these beliefs gives them social validity in the eyes of those who encounter them (Ridgeway, 2001; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Thus, SJBs gain their power to legitimize social inequality through their presumed collective endorsement within a culture (Major, 1994).

Justice scholars have offered three major explanations for why people endorse SJBs. First, people have a natural tendency to assume that what “is” is what “ought” to be (Heider, 1958). This tendency is commonly known as the naturalistic fallacy. Cognitive biases, such as the naturalistic fallacy and other status quo biases, lead people to assume that existing social hierarchies are good, and better than any possible alternatives (Eidelman & Crandall, this volume). Second, people are motivated to endorse SJBs because of a psychological need to believe that the world at large is a just and fair place (e.g., Jost & Banaji, 1994; Lerner, 1980). By legitimizing the social hierarchy, SJBs help individuals to maintain their belief that the world is a fair, predictable place. Third, high-status groups endorse SJBs because they reinforce their relatively privileged position in society (Jost, Burgess, & Mosso, 2001; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). People from high-status groups have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. They also have the power and means to see that SJBs are prominently represented in the culture and that they are the prevailing explanations for social inequality.

Scholars have speculated that SJBs play a role in maintaining group differences in feelings of entitlement (Major, 1994; Jost & Hunyady, 2002). System-justifying beliefs may lead people to infer that groups that possess more social goods (high-status groups) must have greater inputs (e.g., intelligence, skill) than groups with fewer social goods (low-status groups) (Jost & Hunyady, 2002; Major, 1994; O’Brien & Major, 2006; Ridgeway, 2001). The inference that high-status groups have more inputs than low-status groups may lead to the conclusion that high-status groups deserve greater outcomes than low-status groups. Consequently, even when people from low-status groups become aware of their own position of relative advantage or disadvantage, they may nonetheless appraise it as fair if they endorse SJBs.

System-justifying beliefs are thought to create group differences in perceived entitlement by enhancing the degree to which differential outcomes are seen as legitimate reflections of differential inputs. This leads to the hypothesis that SJBs will increase the sense of entitlement among people from higher-status groups and decrease the sense of entitlement among people from lower-status groups (Jost & Hunyady, 2002; Major, 1994). Some preliminary data consistent with the hypothesis that SJBs will decrease the sense of entitlement among people from low-status groups comes from work by Hafer and Olson (1989). Participants were denied an opportunity to obtain “bonus points” on a computer task that would have helped them to obtain a desirable outcome. On a subsequent questionnaire that purportedly provided the psychology department with feedback about the experiment, participants were asked to rate the fairness of the procedures used to assign bonus points. The belief in a just world, one type of SJB, was positively related to the perceived fairness of the procedures. Thus, under conditions of personal deprivation, a condition similar to that which people from lowstatus groups experience, the belief in a just world was related to perceptions of fairness. In the following sections, we describe two studies that more directly examine the effect of SJBs and group status on entitlement (O’Brien & Major, 2006).

Endorsement of System-Justifying Beliefs and Personal Entitlement

In an initial test of this hypothesis, we measured individual differences in endorsement of SJBs and examined how these beliefs interacted with group status to predict entitlement to pay. We predicted that the more men endorsed SJBs, the more pay they would feel entitled to receive for their work. In contrast, we predicted that the more women endorsed SJBs, the less pay they would feel entitled to receive for their work.

An experimenter approached 57 participants on the campus of the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) and asked them to complete a

short questionnaire. The questionnaire contained a short vignette that asked them to imagine that a professor hired them to work on a data entry project. Participants then indicated how much they deserved to be paid for the summer job. In addition, participants completed a shortened measure of SJBs adapted from O’Brien and Major (2005).

The results of the study were consistent with predictions. As expected, the more men endorsed SJBs, the greater their entitlement to pay for the summer job (β = .36, p < .05), whereas the more women endorsed SJBs, the lower their entitlement to pay for the summer job (β = –.35, p < .07).

Interestingly, we did not find gender differences in entitlement overall. The traditional gender difference in entitlement only emerged among individuals who strongly endorsed SJBs. The main effect of gender on entitlement may not have been significant because this study examined hypothetical future work, rather than work that has already been performed. Blanton and colleagues found that women were more likely to exhibit depressed entitlement relative to men for past work than for future work (Blanton et al., 2001). Integrating cognitive dissonance and system justification theories, they hypothesized that women would be more likely to exhibit depressed entitlement for past work than for future work, because the need to engage in effort justification applies to past, but not future work. Consistent with their hypotheses, they found that women paid themselves less money than men in a “past work” condition, but not in a “future work” condition. Realizing that they cannot change the past, women may be more likely to accept and rationalize the past than they are to justify outcomes that have not yet occurred. Thus, the hypothetical nature of this study may explain why there was no overall gender difference in entitlement. However, it is important to note that group status still interacted with individual differences in SJBs to affect entitlement in this hypothetical scenario, even in the absence of overall gender differences.

Although this initial study provided support for our hypotheses, the correlational nature of the study did not allow conclusions about the causal relationship between SJBs and entitlement. Therefore, we conducted another study in which we manipulated the salience of system justification motives and followed up on some of the ideas from our initial study.

Salience of System Justifying Beliefs and Personal Entitlement

Our second study on the relationship between SJBs and personal entitlement attempted to improve upon our first study in several ways (O’Brien & Major, 2006). First, in addition to asking participants how much they deserved to be paid for their work, participants were also asked to pay themselves a “bonus pay.” Second, instead of asking participants to imagine working at a

summer job, participants actually performed work in the laboratory. Based on Blanton and colleagues’ research (2001), we hypothesized that a gender difference in entitlement would emerge under conditions in which participants actually worked, instead of imagined hypothetical, future work as they did in our previously described study. Consistent with research by Major and colleagues (1984), we hypothesized that women would pay themselves less for their work.

Finally, and most importantly, instead of measuring endorsement of SJBs as an individual difference variable, we manipulated the salience of SJBs using a priming methodology developed by McCoy and Major (2007) that activates meritocratic beliefs. In the United States, meritocratic beliefs are one of the most powerful types of SJBs. If the status hierarchy is based on merit, the logical inference is that those who have higher status must also be more talented, valuable, hardworking, or in other ways more meritorious than those who have lower status. Meritocracy cues are ubiquitous in American society. From media advertisements (e.g., Nike’s “Just do it” advertising campaign) to children’s stories (e.g., The Little Engine that Could: “I think I can”), most Americans are regularly exposed to the central message that individual advancement is possible for anyone through hard work and talent. The pervasiveness of this message in American society means that most Americans are aware of meritocratic beliefs, even if they do not personally endorse them. Therefore, their thoughts, feelings, and behavior may be influenced by this message whenever cues in the environment (e.g., motivational posters, advertisements, etc.) make it salient. McCoy and Major (2007) demonstrated that when the belief in meritocracy is activated, people are more likely to engage in system-justifying behaviors. Thus, our second study examined the effect of situationally activating meritocratic beliefs, a type of SJB, on the experience of entitlement among men and women. We hypothesized that the SJB prime would increase the sense of entitlement for men, but decrease the sense of entitlement for women.

Forty college students at the University of California Santa Barbara agreed to participate in exchange for $8, which they were paid immediately upon their arrival. After participants were paid, we asked them to work on a clerical task for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, the experimenter stopped the participants and told them that it was time to move on to the second task, a scrambled sentence task that contained the prime manipulation. This prime was developed by McCoy and Major (2007) and requires participants to unscramble 20 sets of five words into four-word sentences (see also Bargh & Chartrand, 2000; Srull & Wyer, 1979). These sentences unscrambled to make SJBs or neutral content salient. For example, in the SJB prime condition, sample word sets include “effort positive prosperity leads to” (unscrambled to

“effort leads to prosperity”) and “deserve people rich house it” (unscrambled to “rich people deserve it.”). Participants in the neutral condition unscrambled sentences that were unrelated to SJBs (e.g., “a compute time calculator saves” and “cakes she fluffy likes cats”). Participants were told to notify the experimenter once they had unscrambled all 20 sentences. After participants completed the prime manipulation, they completed a short questionnaire that asked participants to indicate the hourly pay that they deserved for the kind of work they had just completed. In addition, participants were also given an opportunity to pay themselves bonus pay. The experimenter gave participants an envelope containing four $1 bills and four quarters. The experimenter told participants to read the instructions inside the envelope and then left the room. The instructions told participants to “take what you think is fair for the work you completed. Please pay yourself the money that you feel you deserve.” Afterwards, participants put the envelope with any remaining change in a folder full of other envelopes. Thus, we made every effort to lead participants to believe that the amount of bonus pay that they paid themselves would be anonymous.

Consistent with predictions, the SJB prime interacted with participant gender to affect self-reported entitlement. Men said that they deserved significantly more hourly pay when they were primed with SJBs than in the control condition (F(1, 36) = 5.27, p < .05). In contrast, women said that they deserved less pay in the SJB prime condition than in the control condition, although this difference was not statistically significant. Contrary to our predictions, but consistent with the previous study we described, in the control condition there were no gender differences between men and women in selfreported entitlement. It was only in the SJB prime condition that gender differences in self-reported entitlement emerged.

We also examined the bonus pay that participants paid themselves. To correct for individual differences in work performed, we created an average bonus pay variable by dividing the total bonus pay that participants took by the units of work they completed. The pattern of results for average bonus pay differed from the pattern of results for self-reported entitlement. First, there was a significant main effect of gender, such that women gave themselves less average bonus pay than men. Second, to our surprise, the interaction between gender and SJB prime was not significant. These differences between average bonus pay and self-reported entitlement were particularly surprising in light of the fact that other research suggested that behavioral and self-report measures of entitlement are related (Pelham & Hetts, 2001). Social psychologists often view behavioral measures as superior to selfreport measures (e.g., Crosby, Bromley, & Saxe, 1980). However, in this case, self-reports may actually be a purer measure of entitlement. Other than the

motivation to engage in socially desirable responding, participants have little incentive to lie about self-reported entitlement. In contrast, in addition to entitlement and social desirability concerns, participants’ motivations to take the bonus pay may also be affected by other factors such as how much they need or desire the money. Therefore, the behavioral measure may be subject to more sources of error, which may explain why the SJB prime manipulation did not impact the behavioral measure. More research is needed to shed light on the relationship between self-report and behavioral measures of entitlement.

Summary

O’Brien and Major (2006) reported two studies generally supporting the hypothesis that SJBs will interact with group status to impact the sense of entitlement. An initial study showed that the more a man endorsed SJBs, the more pay he felt entitled to receive for a summer job. However, the more a woman endorsed SJBs, the less pay she felt entitled to receive for a summer job. A follow-up study showed that situationally activating SJBs had a similar impact on self-reported personal entitlement. Men believed that they deserved greater hourly pay for their work on a laboratory task when SJBs were salient relative to a control condition. Women believed that they deserved less hourly pay for their work when SJBs were salient relative to a control, although for women this effect did not achieve statistical significance.

Strategies for Reducing Group Differences in Entitlement

Many scholars have argued that group differences in feelings of personal entitlement help to perpetuate and maintain inequalities in the distribution of wealth (Major, 1994; Olson & Hafer, 2001; Jost & Hunyady, 2002; Ridgeway, 2001). Decreasing group differences in personal entitlement may help reduce widespread inequalities in the distribution of wealth by increasing discontent among the underprivileged and increasing their willingness to voice protest. One path to decreased group differences in entitlement may be through personal rejection of SJBs. Hafer and Olson (1993) conducted a longitudinal survey of a group of working women in Canada who ranged from low-wage clerical workers to higher-wage teachers and administrators. At time 1, researchers measured the strength of participants’ belief in a just world. One month later, participants completed a self-report measure of whether or not they had performed behaviors directed at improving their own job status (e.g., “obtained information about courses I can take to improve my professional qualifications”) and improving the status of working women within the previous month (e.g., “argued in favor of giving women special opportunities for jobs”). The more women rejected the belief in a just

world, the more likely they were to have taken assertive actions to improve both their own situation and the situation of women in general.

We believe these findings may be explained by the impact of SJBs on feelings of personal entitlement—when people feel they are not getting what they deserve, they are more likely to engage in personal or collective protest. The research we described earlier demonstrated that the traditional gender difference in feelings of entitlement only emerged among individuals who strongly endorsed SJBs (O’Brien & Major, 2006, Study 1). Women who rejected SJBs tended to have feelings of personal entitlement equal to or greater than their male counterparts.

Furthermore, removing system-justifying cues from the environment may also help to reduce the impact of system justification processes on group differences in feelings of personal entitlement. In our research, we found that gender differences in feelings of personal entitlement only emerged under conditions in which participants were exposed to system-justifying cues. Under control conditions in which these cues were absent, there were no gender differences.

DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

Most of the research to date on status differences in entitlement has focused on gender. An important issue to address for future research is whether or not race and ethnicity impact entitlement in a similar manner as gender. Major (1994) hypothesized that group differences in outcomes are a necessary precondition for the emergence of group differences in entitlement. Like women, ethnic minorities are underpaid for their work relative to the highstatus group; however, the pay gap between men and women is larger than the pay gap between ethnic minorities and whites (e.g., Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Moreover, ethnic minorities such as African Americans and Latino Americans are more likely than women to reject SJBs (Major, 1994; O’Brien

&Major, 2005). Finally, many African Americans believe that their economic conditions are the result of discrimination (Sigelman & Welch, 1991; Kluegel

&Smith, 1986). These factors suggest that ethnic differences in entitlement may be smaller than gender differences in entitlement, but definitive research in this area is desperately needed. Given the results of O’Brien and Major’s research (2006), even if there are no overall ethnic differences in feelings of entitlement, ethnic differences in feelings of entitlement may emerge among individuals who strongly endorse SJBs and in circumstances in which situational cues activate SJBs.

In the present chapter, we have examined how SJBs perpetuate and maintain group differences in entitlement. The belief systems on which we

have focused all center on one core belief—the belief that we live in a meritocratic system that rewards individual differences in talent and effort. We chose to focus on these merit-reinforcing beliefs because they form the basis of the dominant ideology in America (Kluegel & Smith, 1986). Recent research, however, suggests that SJBs can take different forms (Jost & Kay, 2005; Kay & Jost, 2003; Kay et al., 2007). For example, Kay and colleagues have shown that compensatory stereotypes such as the “poor but happy” stereotype and the “dumb blonde” stereotype may also justify inequality by encouraging people not to worry about group differences in outcomes by reassuring them that “no one has it all.” Compensatory stereotypes typically depict highand low-status groups as possessing their own unique strengths and weaknesses. For example, men are stereotyped as being agentic, but not communal, whereas women are stereotyped as being communal, but not agentic (Rudman & Glick, 2001).

To our knowledge, past research has not examined how compensatory stereotypes may affect personal entitlement among members of highand low-status groups. We suspect that, like other SJBs, compensatory stereotypes may increase personal entitlement among members of high-status groups and decrease personal entitlement among members of low-status groups. High-status groups are typically stereotyped as being high in competence (although low in warmth), which may lead them to feel entitled to greater monetary compensation (e.g., Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002). Low-status groups are frequently stereotyped as low in competence (although high in warmth), which may lead them to feel less entitled to monetary compensation. Finally, the compensatory nature of the stereotypes may lead lowand high-status groups to feel satisfied with these arrangements by reminding them that “no one has it all” (Kay et al., 2007). The effect of compensatory stereotypes on personal entitlement remains an interesting avenue for future research.

CONCLUSION

The issue of how status inequalities are maintained and perpetuated has become an important issue in psychological research (e.g., Jost & Major, 2001). The present chapter suggests that social comparison processes, SJBs, and the resulting sense of depressed (or elevated) entitlement play an important role in this process. Group differences in entitlement may have far-reaching implications for many life outcomes in that entitlement probably plays a strong role in the types of jobs for which people apply, salary negotiations, and more. It may also impact the decision to engage in forms of collective protest (e.g., Hafer & Olson, 1993). Research described in this chapter, however, does

offer a faint glimmer of hope for the eventual elimination of gender differences in entitlement because it suggests that, under circumstances in which people engage in intergroup comparison rather than intragroup comparison and under circumstances in which people explicitly reject SJBs or in which SJBs are not salient, gender differences in entitlement may decline or disappear altogether.

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