Environmental pollution and climate change threaten the well-being of the planet and survival of human beings. Yet attempts at preventing environmental destruction are rare and often met with apathy, denial, and resistance. These responses can be understood by applying findings from system justification theory, which states that people are motivated to defend and bolster the status quo to reduce dissonance, anxiety, and epistemic uncertainty, and to maintain a sense of order and justice in the world (Jost et al., 2004). Support for the current state of affairs and resistance to change are further exacerbated by threat. Therefore, system justification tendencies are predicted to result in greater denial of and resistance to taking action against the threat of environmental destruction.
This hypothesis was tested in four studies. An analysis of the 1999-2000 World Values Survey revealed that persons who reported stronger beliefs related to system justification, including resisting social change, holding a free-market ideology, and having right-wing political preferences, were less willing to bear personal costs for environmental protection, and were more likely to prioritize economic growth over environmental well-being. In addition, political partisanship and ideological orientation independently predicted environmental attitudes. A second study among undergraduates showed that engaging in general and economic system justification were highly significant predictors of many facets of environmental attitudes, including less willing to accept the possibility of an ecological crisis or of limits to industrial growth, less concern about the tenuousness of balance within nature or about abiding by the constraints of nature, and more anthropocentrism. A third study demonstrated that holding a conservative ideology predicted less pro-environmental attitudes, and this effect was mediated by system justification tendencies. Finally, a structural equation modelling approach provided further evidence that system justification tendencies predict more negative environmental attitudes, which in turn predict less pro-environmental behaviors and actions.
These results indicate that attempts to improve environmental attitudes and behavior need to take into consideration the detrimental role of system-justifying processes.