Political arrangements can reshape individual minds to preserve them.
Evidence
While Greenwald (1980) sees only an analogy between the practices of conservative systems of government and the cognitive tendency to avoid change, we suggest a more direct link: political systems that seek to preserve the status quo at all costs may produce people whose minds work to preserve the status quo at all costs. We assume that biases such as “cognitive conservatism” (e.g., Greenwald, 1980; Janoff-Bulman, 1992) acquire the particular effects they do because they operate in the context of unequal social systems requiring substantial ideological justification, as suggested by critical aspects of feminist and Marxist philosophies. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2932
Categorization
- XREF: A social-psychological formalization of the Foucault/Marx line that power relations are inscribed in subjectivity - bears directly on the reader’s strategic-essentialism bind being a collective, structural phenomenon rather than a merely individual one. — connects to: Authoritarian political systems can shape minds that preserve the status quo — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2932; Repeated ideological formulas work like magic rituals to enclose the mind. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 384; Some policies are self-consciously designed to entrench themselves and their creators. (+2 more)
- QUESTION: If unequal systems literally reshape cognition to be conservative, what grounds exist for believing a disadvantaged actor could hold an identity ‘strategically’ or ‘ironically’ at all - the cognitive-performative presupposition of Spivak’s move looks structurally foreclosed for subordinate groups.
Broader Connections
- Authoritarian political systems can shape minds that preserve the status quo
#exemplifies(0.95) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2932 - Repeated ideological formulas work like magic rituals to enclose the mind.
#expands(0.85) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 384