Perceived instability plus illegitimacy spurs subordinate groups to reject inferiority

Evidence

However, decades of research into ethnic-group relations suggest that ethnocentrism among stratified groups is, or at least it has been, very much a one-way street. Milner (1975, 1981) and Giles and Powesland (1975) summarize a great deal of evidence that minority or subordinate group members—such as the American Blacks, the French Canadians, the New Zealand Maoris, or the South African Bantus—have frequently tended to derogate the in-group and display positive attitudes toward the dominant out-group. In other words, deprived groups are not always ethnocentric in the simple meaning of the term; they may, in fact, be positively oriented toward the depriving out-group. Data of this kind are not consistent with a simple application of RCT. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2691 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Several consequences follow from taking system-justification seriously as a social-psychological phenomenon. First, to the extent that members of disadvantaged as well as advantaged groups possess at least some needs for system justification, they should internalize a sense of inferiority and experience considerable ambivalence concerning their own group membership. Second, specific stereotype contents should emerge to rationalize particular divisions of labor and unequal distributions of social roles. Third, complementary stereotypes – stereotypes of both disadvantaged and advantaged groups that have both favorable and unfavorable content – should be fairly common, insofar as these lend legitimacy to the system as a whole. Fourth, essentialist forms of stereotyping should be especially effective at satisfying system-justification needs, insofar as they render intergroup differences not only substantial and real but also natural and necessary. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1399 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Chosen inferiority is not contentment but assumed rebellion and despair; Low expectations for girls produce their own inferiority complex — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1938; Class inferiority functions as an empirically unfalsifiable sense of the rulers’ hidden worth. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 501 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Subordinate groups often internalize dominant-group evaluations and derogate their own group #complicates (0.90) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2691
• System justification drives even disadvantaged groups to internalize inferiority #complicates (0.88) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1399