Beliefs in individual responsibility and just deserts subtly justify existing hierarchies.

Evidence

While these are all fairly obvious examples of HE-LMs, there are also more subtle, yet no less powerful examples of HE-LMs. In contemporary American and Western cultures, among the most important of HE-LMs are the notions of “individual responsibility,” the Protestant work ethic, internal attributions for the misfortunes of the poor, and the set of ideas and assumptions collectively referred to as “political conservatism.” What all these ideas and doctrines have in common is the notion that each individual occupies that position along the social status continuum that she has earned and therefore deserves. From these perspectives then, the particular configuration of the hierarchical social system is fair, legitimate, natural and perhaps even inevitable. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3216

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: how mainstream values like ‘personal responsibility’ and the Protestant work ethic function as subtle hierarchy-justifying ideologies rather than neutral moral commitments.