Mediation analysis gives an empirical test for ideology’s legitimizing function

Evidence

While the ideas of Marx, Gramsci, Pareto, Mosca, and Moscovici all suggest that ideology justifies group dominance, these ideas provide us with no empirical standard for testing whether any given ideology actually does so in any given situation. In contrast, the notion of mediation provides us with a relatively crisp empirical standard by which to judge whether a given ideology or belief is functioning as an LM. Namely, a given belief, attitude, opinion, or attribution can be classified as an LM if and only if it is found to have a mediational relationship between the desire for groupbased social dominance, on the one hand, and support for hierarchy-enhancing or hierarchy-attenuating social policy on the other hand. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3227

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the operational criterion that sets SD theory apart from Marx, Gramsci, Pareto, Mosca, and Moscovici — the falsifiable mediational standard.
• DEEPTHINKING: The insight that legitimizing myths were previously only a philosophical claim, and mediation analysis converts them into testable hypotheses, is a genuine paradigm/measurement contribution.
• XREF: connects to: SDT converts vague ideology claims into empirically testable mediational hypotheses — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 3227