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Contexts of System Justification and System Evaluation: Exploring the Social Comparison Strategies of the (Not Yet) Contented Female Worker Hart Blanton, Greg George and Jennifer Crocker Group Processes Intergroup Relations 2001 4: 126 DOI: 10.1177/1368430201004002004 The online version of this article can be found at: http://gpi.sagepub.com/content/4/2/126

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Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 2001 Vol 4(2) 126–137

Contexts of System Justification and System Evaluation: Exploring the Social Comparison Strategies of the (Not Yet) Contented Female Worker Hart Blanton and Greg George University at Albany, State University of New York

Jennifer Crocker University of Michigan

Those who are historic targets of discrimination seem surprisingly likely to accept their situation, a phenomenon Jost and Banaji (1994) call system justification. One assumption in system justification theory, however, is that the need to justify builds over time as individuals develop an investment in the system they have implicitly helped to perpetuate. This possibility was tested as it relates to social comparison of pay. An experimental study involving 100 participants (50 men and 50 women) found that women made intragroup comparisons with other women to gauge their satisfaction with a pay rate when it was framed as compensation for past work but they made intergroup comparisons with men to gauge their satisfaction with a pay rate when it was framed as part of an offer for future employment.

keywords depressed entitlement, discrimination, equity, social comparison, system justification A C C O R D I N G to the theory of system justification ( Jost, 1997; Jost & Banaji, 1994; Jost & Burgess, 2000), there is a learned tendency to accept the status quo and to justify the social order created by existing social groups, organizations, and societal institutions. Two important consequences of this, it is argued, are the tendency to view group differences in social status as justified, appropriate and natural, and the tendency to resist changes in these arrangements, even

when such changes would bring about beneficial outcomes for the individual (see also Lerner, 1980; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999).

Author’s note Hart Blanton, Department of Psychology, SUNY at Albany, Albany, NY 12222, USA. [email: [email protected]]

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An illustrative example of system justification effects can be found in what Crosby (1982) has dubbed the ‘paradox of the contented female worker’. This is the tendency for women to be satisfied with their salaries even when they are working for an organization that has known discriminatory practices. Paradoxical contentment appears to stem in part from diminished pay expectations of women. In this use, pay expectations are often ‘diminished’ for women because they expect less pay than men for work that they evaluate at the same or at a higher level of performance than men do when they rate their own work. This definition is important because, in situations in which women (rightly or wrongly) evaluate their work more negatively than men, it might follow that they would also expect corespondingly less pay than men. Studies have demonstrated situations, however, in which women want less pay than men, even holding performance evaluations constant. Moreover, women often expect less pay than men when they are presented with novel tasks in the laboratory and have little basis even for knowing how to evaluate their performance (Callahan-Levy & Messe, 1979; Major, McFarlin, & Gagnon, 1984). The tendency to expect less pay for comparable work has been termed ‘depressed entitlement’. Major (1987, 1994) has advanced one account for this tendency by arguing that women, when assessing pay fairness, often engage in a conservative style of social comparison. Accordingly, they compare their own pay only with that of other women. To test this hypothesis, Major and Forcey (1985) conducted a laboratory experiment in which they assigned male and female college students to work on a bogus ‘job’. Afterwards, these participants were paid for their work and then asked to rank order their preference for seeing the pay given in the past to male workers, to female workers, or to workers in general. Major and Forcey found that both men and women preferred comparisons with other same-sex workers. Because women are historically the target of pay discrimination, however, the consequence of adopting such a comparison strategy in real life is that it could cause them not to detect gender discrimination

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when it exists (see also Bylsma & Major, 1992, 1994). Over time, as a same-sex comparison standard is internalized, women may then come to expect less pay even in new work contexts (Desmarais & Curtis, 1999). Thus, intragroup comparison can reinforce women’s satisfaction in the face of wage discrimination, which can ultimately reinforce the stability of the system that is discriminating against them (Major, 1994; Major & Testa, 1989). Interestingly, when women are exposed to social comparison information, either about the similar performance level of comparable others or about the elevated pay expectations of comparable others, their pay expectations increase (Bylsma & Major, 1992; Major et al., 1984). In summary, both women and men prefer same-sex comparisons but only women are expected to experience depressed entitlement as a result. Exposure to cross-gender comparison information may be a route to increasing women’s sense of entitlement. Unfortunately, it does not appear that women are typically interested in this information—even when an opportunity for viewing this information is presented to them,

Learning to justify It is important to note that one of the assumptions in system justification is that individuals ‘learn’ to justify the system as a way of coming to terms with the social arrangement they are helping to promote. This view seems to be shared by Major (1994) who argues that, ‘The disadvantaged often come to believe that they deserve their lesser outcomes’ (p. 294, emphasis added) This notion that individuals learn to justify the system is consistent with research on cognitive dissonance indicating that people are most likely to justify unwanted outcomes when their own actions have played a part in bringing them about (e.g. Cooper & Fazio, 1984). In sum, there is reason to predict that people will be most likely to justify discriminatory systems that they have reinforced through the complicity of membership. Interestingly, the assumption that justification develops over time reveals possible contexts in

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which the historically disadvantaged might actively investigate and then resist systemic discrimination. Specifically, when individuals do not have a history of inclusion in a system, such that they do not yet feel a need to justify its reward structure, they may approach it with a skeptical eye and be resistant to accepting arrangements that are discriminatory. Consider the example of a woman who is working in a company that discriminates against her for her gender. If she has been working for this company for a number of years and has a history of implicitly accepting its practices through her continued employment, system justification theory predicts that she will not question the salary structure. She should thus adopt the conservative style of intragroup social comparison suggested by Major when gauging pay satisfaction. Now imagine how this would change if this woman did not have a history of employment at this firm. Suppose she is not currently working for the company, but that she is instead offered a job by them at a specified salary and that she has to decide whether or not to accept their offer of employment. How would the woman determine her wage satisfaction in this situation? It seems likely that she would want to know how the offer she received compares with offers given to men in the past. Because this woman has no investment in the current practices of the firm, she has nothing to lose by determining whether or not these practices are fair. Thus, we predict that this woman would engage in intergroup social comparison. If in the process she discovers that her salary falls short of what has been offered for comparable work to men in the past, then it seems likely that she would be dissatisfied with the job offer. To the extent that she has other options, she should investigate these as well and then join the company that she believes will treat her most fairly (all other factors being equal).

Intergroup comparisons and system evaluation In the current study, we adopted the procedure used by Major and colleagues to determine if

level of investment in a system influences social comparison choice (e.g. Major & Forcey, 1985). Inspired by the above example, male and female participants were asked to perform the laboratory task used by Major and Forcey and then given a ‘pay rate’ that was framed either as compensation for work just completed or as part of an offer for future employment. Consistent with the results of Major and colleagues, we predicted that both men and women would make intragroup comparisons when the pay rate was described as compensation for past work. However, we predicted that women would make intergroup comparisons when the pay rate was described as part of a job offer. This second prediction was based on the assumption that college women would realize that they are the historically disadvantaged group. As a result, their social comparisons in response to a job offer should be oriented toward what we would term ‘system evaluation’. This occurs when individuals actively look for information that will help them determine if a system of rewards is fair and just. Thus, women should make intergroup social comparisons in response to a job offer to assess the possibility of systemic gender discrimination. Because men are historically advantaged, we predicted that they would make intragroup comparisons in both contexts.

Method Participants and design Fifty men and 50 women at the University at Albany participated in this study in partial fulfillment of an introductory psychology course requirement. A 2 (Sex of Participant) 2 (Context: Past work; Job offer) between-subjects factorial design was employed.

Procedure Participants were run individually. Upon arriving to the laboratory, they were each met by a male experimenter who gave a description of a task they were to complete. This description was adapted from Major and Forcey (1985). Participants were told that they were to predict the success in college of several bogus ‘student applicants’, based on various types of information

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provided, such as SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores, rank in high school class, and high school grades. In this description, participants were given one of two rationales for this task. In the past work condition, they were told that the purpose of the study was to determine the factors influencing pay satisfaction. Thus, they were told that that this ‘job’ typically paid between US$5.25 and $7.35 and that the amount they would be paid would depend on the experimenter’s evaluations of their job performance. In the job offer condition, they were told that the purpose of the study was to determine the factors influencing employment decisions. Thus, they were told that that they would perform a ‘screening task’ and then be given an offer of employment. They were further told that the pay they would be offered would be based on the going rate of US$5.25 to $7.35 and that the specific amount they would be offered would depend on the experimenter’s evaluation of their performance on the screening task. Following the task description, participants in all conditions reported the pay they expected and rated how they thought they would perform on the job. They were then given 10 minutes to work on the job while the experimenter waited in an adjacent room. The experimenter returned when participants were done with the task and then exited with their materials, ostensibly to evaluate their performances. While the experimenter was in the other room, participants rated their performance on the task. When the experimenter returned, he assigned all participants a pay rate of US$6.25/hour. It should be noted that the participants were not given actual money at this time. The reason for this was that doing so would create a confound across contexts, as it was not possible to give money to participants in the job offer condition. Thus, all participants were given a slip of paper with their pay rate. In the past work condition, this was described as the rate they had earned for the work they had just completed. In the job offer condition, this was described as the hourly rate they would be given, were they to take the job in the future. Pilot testing of the experimental manipulation on 20 participants (10

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male and 10 female) revealed that this pay rate was construed differently, as a function of the experimental manipulation. Participants in the pilot study were handed a questionnaire immediately after receiving the pay slip and asked to rate the extent to which they agreed with four statements. These responses were made on 11-point Likert scales, with endpoints of –5 (not at all) to +5 (extremely). In comparison to the past work condition, both males and females in the job offer condition had significantly higher endorsement of the statements ‘this pay represents money I can receive for future work I can perform’ (M = 3.50, SD = 1.35 versus M = 0.30, SD = 2.06; t(18) = 4.11, p < .001), ‘my work on this task has yielded an offer for future employment’ (M = 2.10, SD = 1.29 versus M = –1.60, SD = 3.20; t(18) = 3.39, p < .001), and ‘I have completed my work assignment and can now expect to be paid’ (M = 2.40, SD = 1.65 versus M = –4.10, SD = 0.74; t(18) = 11.39, p < .001). In contrast, those in the job offer condition had significantly lower endorsement of the statement, ‘I have not begun my work assignment and will only be paid after I begin work’ (M = –0.10, SD = 1.91 versus M = 4.70, SD = 0.48; t(18) = 3.39, p < .001). These findings suggested that the manipulation altered the construal of the pay rate in a way that was consistent with the theoretical framework. As a result, we predicted that it would alter interest in same-sex versus cross-sex comparisons in the current study. To test this, the 50 participants in the current study were given a chance following the presentation of a pay rate to choose between either same-sex or cross-sex social comparison information to help them gauge their satisfaction with the pay rate. After making their comparison choices, participants completed a set of ancillary ratings related to pay fairness and pay satisfaction and they then filled out a one-item manipulation check.

Measures Pre-task expectations After the task instructions but before beginning the task, participants completed a short questionnaire in which they listed the hourly rate that they expected to earn using an open-ended response format. Also at

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this time, they rated how well they thought they would perform on the job using a 1 (ver y poorly) to 7 (outstanding) Likert scale. Post-task evaluations While the experimenter was grading this performance, the participants rated how well they thought they had performed on the task, using a 1 (very poorly) to 7 (outstanding) Likert scale. Social comparison information After receiving the pay rate from the experimenter, participants were told that we wanted to know if they were satisfied with the hourly rate they had just received. To help them in this regard, they were presented with a ‘Wage Order Sheet’ in which they were to state their social comparison preferences. As in Major and Forcey (1985), participants were informed that they could see the pay rate of past participants and were then asked to rank order their preference for seeing the average male pay rate, the average female pay rate, and the average combined male/female pay rate. The possible rankings were a 1 (most preferred), 2, or 3 (least preferred). Pay evaluations Once the participants made their social comparison preferences, the experimenter left the room in apparent search of the social comparison information. At this time, participants rated the pay rate in terms of its fairness and in terms of their satisfaction with it. Both ratings were made on 7-point Likert scales, with endpoints of 1 (not at all fair/satisfied) to 7 (completely fair/satisfied). Manipulation check As a final measure, participants completed a manipulation check by checking the (one) statement they believed to be true: ‘I was told that I would be given an offer of employment following this study’, or ‘I was not told that I would be given an offer of employment following this study’. With the exception of three participants who did not check either statement, all participants checked the statement appropriate for their experimental condition. We chose to report the results on all of the participants because the results did not differ when these three individuals were

excluded from the analyses. After the manipulation check, the experimenter returned and informed participants that the study was over and then administered a full process debriefing.

Results Depressed entitlement First to ensure that the modified procedure yielded a depressed entitlement effect, we analyzed the effects of gender and context on pay expectations. Based on the definition of ‘depressed entitlement’ as pay expectations that are diminished relative to work expectations, we covaried out participants’ initial performance expectations in this analysis. In this way, we were able to determine if women wanted less pay than men, even when they expected to perform at the same level as them. We thus conducted a 2 (Sex) 2 (Context) analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) on the pay expectations, with expected performance treated as the covariate. Findings revealed only a marginally significant interaction between context and sex (F(1, 95) = 3.63, p < .06). The reason for this can be understood by inspecting the simple main effects of context. Consistent with prior work on the depressed entitlement effect (e.g. Major et al., 1984), a significant simple main effect of sex was found in the past work condition, (F(1, 95) = 4.77, p < .03). Specifically, holding performance evaluations constant, women expected 26 cents less pay (Madjusted = $6.39, SE = .08) than men (Madjusted = $6.65, SE = .08)—even though their performance expectations were held to the same level. In the context of a job offer, however, women’s pay expectations (Madjusted = $6.66, SE = .08) were 6 cents higher than those of men (Madjusted = $6.60, SE = .08). This amount of money did not represent a significant difference in pay expectations (F(1, 95) < 1). This indicates that the amount of pay women wanted for a job offer was not significantly less than what men wanted. Another way of conceptualizing this pattern of means is to note that, when the pay rate was framed as part of a job offer instead of compensation for past work, women’s pay expectations increased by 27 cents an hour (F (1, 95) = 5.16, p < .03), whereas men’s pay

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expectations did not change (F < 1). In summary, the past work condition replicated the standard depressed entitlement effect but this effect was entirely eliminated when the pay was framed as part of a job-offer.1

Comparison preferences To determine the effect of context on the comparison choices of men and women, we first computed the percent of participants in each condition who preferred same-sex comparisons over cross-sex comparisons (e.g. Major et al., 1984). With women, this was the percent of participants who gave comparison with other women a higher priority than comparison with men. With men, this was the percent of participants who gave comparison with other men a higher priority than comparison with women. These percentage scores were analyzed using the factorial test of proportional data (Rosenthal & Rosnow, 1985). This test for proportions is not an F but a standard normal deviate, Z. This procedure revealed a significant main effect of context (z = 3.67, p < .002), a significant main effect of gender (z = 5.28, p < .001), and a significant interaction between context and gender (z = 2.11, p < .04). The main effect of context occurred because a greater percentage of those in the past work condition (M = 84%) than in the job offer condition (M = 56%) preferred same-sex comparisons over cross-sex comparisons. The main effect of gender occurred because a greater percentage of men (M = 90%) than women (M = 50%) preferred same-sex comparisons over cross-sex comparisons. The interaction occurred because this gender effect was greater in the past work condition than the job offer condition. The percentage scores for each condition are presented in Figure 1, and simple main effects analyses were incorporated to aid in the interpretation of these results. With men, there was no significant context effect. Roughly the same percent of men preferred in-group comparison in the past work condition (M = 96%) as in the job offer condition (M = 84%) (z = 1.44, p > .15). Among women, however, there was a significant context effect (z = 3.47, p < .001). This was due to the fact

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that a significantly greater proportion of the women preferred in-group comparison information in the past work condition (72%) than in the job offer condition (28%). These results support our predictions. They indicate that the instruction set in the job offer condition moved women toward a same-sex comparison preference, whereas it had no such effect on comparison strategies of men.2 In further support of our predictions, percentage scores in all four of the 2 (gender) 2 (context) experimental conditions were found to differ significantly from a criterion value of 50 percent (z > 2.01, p < .05). This indicates that all groups except the group of women in the job offer condition exhibited a significant preference for same-sex comparisons. Among the women in the job offer condition, there was a significant preference for cross-sex comparisons.

Pay evaluations In an ancillary set of analyses, we sought to determine how participants evaluated the pay after they had received it. Ratings of pay fairness and pay satisfaction were strongly associated (r(98) = .67, p < .01). However, we chose to analyze these two outcomes separately. When individuals view reward allocations as unfair, they may nonetheless feel satisfied with a poor outcome. They can do this by noting that they did the best one could hope, given the unfair system of rewards (Major, 1994). Thus, we first conducted a 2 (Sex) 2 (Context) ANOVA on pay fairness to determine if the change in context influenced gender differences in perceptions of pay fairness. They did. We found a marginally significant effect of sex (F(1, 96) = 5.29, p < .06), such that women (M = 4.40, SD = 1.28) viewed the pay as less fair than men (M = 4.86, SD = 1.13). However, this main effect was qualified by a significant interaction with context (F(1, 96) = 6.25, p < .04). Simple main effects analyses revealed that the gender effect was significant in the job offer condition (F(1, 96) = 8.37, p < .01). Specifically, women in the job offer condition perceived the pay as less fair (M = 3.96, SD = 1.21) than men in the same condition (M = 4.92, SD = 1.08). In contrast, there were no gender differences in the fairness

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Figure 1. The percent of participants in each condition who preferred same-sex comparisons over oppositesex comparisons. Percentages in all four conditions differed significantly from the criterion value of 50%, representing no preference.

ratings for women (M = 4.84, SD = 1.21) versus men (M = 4.80, SD = 1.19) in the past work condition. This suggests that the job offer condition caused women to be more skeptical than men about the pay they had just received. An alternative way of thinking of this effect is revealed by inspecting the simple main effects of context. These showed that the job offer instruction set lowered the fairness ratings of women (F(1, 96) = 7.03, p < .01), but they did not lower the ratings for the men (F(1, 96) < 1). To determine if the sex context effect was due to initial differences in expected pay, this score was entered as covariate in the analysis above. As a covariate, expected pay did account for a significant amount of the variance in perceived fairness (F(1, 95) = 10.14, p < .01). This caused the sex context interaction to drop just

below conventional levels of significance (F(1, 95) = 3.00, p < .09), and it led to a slight reduction in the effect of context on fairness for women (F(1, 95) = 4.46, p < .06). Thus, there was some evidence that the job offer frame increased women’s perception that the pay they received was unfair by raising their pay expectations, though the evidence was less than conclusive. With respect to pay satisfaction, the analyses revealed only a marginally significant effect of context (F(1, 96) = 2.93, p < .09), such that those in the job offer condition (M = 4.10, SD = 1.28) showed a tendency to be less satisfied with the pay rate than those in the past work condition (M = 4.54, SD = 1.28). Although the interaction term with sex was not significant, simple main effect analyses revealed a pattern similar to that

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found with pay fairness. The context effect was marginally significant for the women (F(1, 96) = 3.10, p < .08) (past work M = 4.52, SD = 1.42; job offer M = 3.88, SD = 1.20), whereas it was not significant for men (F < 1) (past work M = 4.56, SD = 1.16; job offer M = 4.32, SD = 1.35). These findings indicate that, to the extent that the job offer frame did lower pay satisfaction, this was at least as true for the women as it was for the men. When initial pay expectations were entered as a covariate, this new variable accounted for a significant amount of variance in pay satisfaction, (F(1, 95) = 18.46, p < .01) and the context effect for women became nonsignificant (F < 1).

Discussion The results of this study are clear. Replicating past research, when women were given a pay rate and told that it was for work already completed, they had lower pay expectations than men and they sought in-group social comparisons with other women. In contrast, when women were given a pay rate that was framed as a job offer, their pay expectations raised to those of men and they sought out-group comparisons with men. Moreover, when the pay rate was framed as part of a job offer, women evaluated their pay rate with a more critical eye than did the men. Even though they were given the exact same pay rate as the men, they were less satisfied with it than the men were and they viewed it as less fair than men did. Taken as a whole, the pattern of results in the job offer condition is not at all consistent with the notion of ‘paradoxical contentment’. If anything, the women receiving the job offer appeared less content than the men. They expected the same pay as the men before the job offer. Once they received it, however, their social comparison indicated suspicion that they may have received less pay than the men. Moreover, these women showed a greater tendency than the men did to assume that the pay rate they had received was not fair. What is striking about the discontent generated in the job offer condition, however, is that it was completely eliminated by a subtle framing manipulation. When the pay rate was presented as compensation for past work,

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women avoided cross-sex comparisons and assumed that the pay allocation was fair. This pattern offers strong support of a system justification viewpoint ( Jost, 1997). It suggests that women will question rewards when they have no investment in the system of allocations but that they will stop questioning rewards once they become members in the system. These findings suggest both a positive and a negative story. On the one hand, they suggest that women, as historic targets of discrimination, approach new social arrangements expecting the same compensations as men. They further suggest that women will actively seek out information about new arrangements that will help them detect systematic discrimination and that they will be less likely than men to be content with a current reward structure when they know it may be discriminatory. This pattern of results seems to indicate that people who have been disadvantaged in the past might avoid entering unnecessarily into new arrangements that are not in their favor. On the other hand, these findings suggest that even the slightest participation in a system can lead those who have been disadvantaged in the past to lower their expectations, to avoid the detection of discrimination, and to remain content in the face of discrimination. This second pattern of results seems to indicate that women will mostly accept their current situations. Thus, any tendency to question a new system of rewards may disappear quickly once a person has chosen to participate in it. This all would suggest that the negative story has more staying power than the positive story. Nonetheless, we suggest that the positive story deserves greater study in the future. We would argue that the negative story has more typically captured interests of social psychologists. The literature is replete with instances in which those who are historically disadvantaged seem to embrace, or at the very least accommodate, the systems that are discriminating against them (e.g. Jost & Banaji, 1994; Lerner, 1980; Ruggerio & Taylor, 1997; Sidanius, 1993). This pattern has been especially well documented with respect to women’s paradoxical contentment in the face of inequitable reward structures (e.g.

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Bylsma & Major, 1992, 1994; Crosby, 1982; Major, 1994). The reasons for this focus are numerous, including the historical interests among social psychologists in such topics as selfdefeating behavior, the irrationality of human judgment, and desires to self-justify. One could also argue that research has explored the negative story more than the positive because there is a more pressing social concern in understanding the maladaptive responses to situations rather than adaptive ones. We would point out, however, that social psychology is limited to studying what individuals will do under a given set of circumstances (McGuire, 1983). Thus, if both the situations leading to system justification and the situations leading to system evaluation can occur, a literature that focuses primarily on the contexts of system justification can create a misperception of the individual as the overly passive recipient of discrimination and prejudice. It is our hope that this study will encourage greater attention to the positive story. Just as individuals are quick to justify systemic discrimination, they may be quick to question and to challenge it when they do not feel invested in the status quo. There are certainly individual differences that influence these outcomes. For instance, women who are politicized with respect to gender seem more prone to engage in intergroup comparisons than women who are not (e.g. Martin, 1986). There are perhaps a variety of contextual factors that have similar effects, moving the individual from a conservative stance of system justification to a more politicized stance of system evaluation. The current study illustrates one such instance of this but its purpose was to draw attention to a more general class of situations. For instance, even those who have historically accepted discrimination may challenge the status quo when there are signs the current system is changing. To provide an example relevant to gender inequities and wage, it may be that a woman who has not challenged the fairness of her salary will actively investigate the manner in which newly instituted merit pay increases are handed out. Recent evidence for this has come from a study of women’s pay expectations before and after a

new bonus program was instituted. Graham and Welbourne (1999) found that the introduction of gainsharing programs in two companies caused women to shift from being more satisfied than the men in their company with their pay to being less satisfied than them. Consistent with our framework, these authors speculated that the new program gave women a greater feeling of control over their pay and thereby gave them greater reason to question if they had been disadvantaged in the past relative to men. Thus, when reward allocations change, individuals who have accepted the ‘old system’ without question may start to ask if the ‘new system’ is taking them in the right direction (see also Elster, 1983; Pettigrew, 1964). We hope that this and other possibilities like it will be explored in future research on feelings of entitlement. In this way, we may better understand the situations leading both to system justification and to system evaluation.

Limitations and future directions As with any study, there are limitations in the current study that restrict the conclusions that can be drawn. First and foremost, we have presented the results from a single study. Future research will need to use a diversity of samples, methods, and experimental operationalizations to determine the boundary conditions of this effect. In this way, we can more fully determine when the historically disadvantaged will actively evaluate and question versus passively accept and justify. Future studies should do this in part by determining if these results would generalize to different samples of women. The current study was conducted on a sample of young and educated women, most of whom who would be largely inexperienced in the work force. One might predict that samples such as this would not exhibit depressed entitlement. Past research indicates, however, that this is not the case (e.g. Major, 1994). In fact, Jost (1997) found depressed entitlement even among women in a prestigious ivy league college. The tendency for even the most advantaged college students to show depressed entitlement suggests that this is a robust phenomenon that would be even more pronounced among groups in which

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such tendencies would be most expected (Prentice & Miller, 1992). Although system justifying tendencies among college students suggest that system justification is a robust phenomenon, the same cannot be said of system evaluating tendencies. It is admittedly less compelling to show that advantaged college students are quick to evaluate pay allocations. It may very well be that college student samples are moved more easily to a stance of system evaluation than less advantaged samples. A sample with a longer history of discrimination in the work place may approach even new arrangements with a jaded expectation of and a passive acceptance toward discrimination (see Desmarais & Curtis, 1999). Research should also address possible artifacts associated with the chosen methodology. Our procedure was adapted from past studies of depressed entitlement (e.g. Major & Forcey, 1985). Evidence that findings using this paradigm mimic findings observed in the field suggest that it has some psychological realism. Nevertheless, our ability to eliminate the ingroup comparison effect with the use of a subtle framing manipulation highlights just how fragile this effect may be. It is possible that other seemingly tangential aspects of the methodology are actually necessary for this effect to occur. For instance, same-sex comparison preferences may occur in these studies either because the work tasks or the measure of comparison choice was relatively novel. If so, this would indicate a threat to the validity of both current and past studies using this approach. In general, we would argue against the overreliance on this methodology in future studies. Moreover, future work should determine the degree to which intergroup and intragroup social comparison processes and system justification effects contribute to the gender gaps in pay that have been documented in the past (e.g. Dixon & Carroll, 1995; Frieze, Olson, & Good, 1990; Hagan, 1990). Finally, future studies should test other instantiations of system evaluation. If it is true that people do not justify systems prior to investment, then one should find evidence that other system-justifying tendencies are reduced when investment in the system is diminished. For

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instance, Jost and Burgess (2000) have shown that groups that have been disadvantaged in the past seem to reinforce their diminished status through out-group favoritism. Similarly, Jost and Banaji (1994) have shown that groups that have been negatively stereotyped in the past seem to reinforce their diminished identity through ingroup stereotyping. If these tendencies do reflect the workings of a system-justification motive, then they too should be reduced when individuals are entering into social arrangements. Possibilities such as these should be explored in future research so that we may better understand when individuals will accept the systems that put them at a disadvantage and when they will instead question them.

Notes 1. An initial analysis indicated that women did not expect to do significantly better or worse than men on the task. Performance expectations were used as a covariate in these analyses, however, because nonsignificant deviations in performance expectations could influence the statistical significance of gender and context on pay expectations. Even with the covariate removed, however, women did not want less pay than the men in the job offer condition (F(1, 96) < 1), whereas they did want less pay than men in the past work condition (F(1, 96) = 4.04, p < .05). 2. Two alternative analytic methods could be used to test this pattern of predictions. First, because the study used an equal number of participants per condition, it is permissible to apply a standard analysis of variance procedure on the percent of participants in each condition making in-group comparisons (Lunney, 1970; Winer, 1971). This procedure replicated the significant effect of sex (F(1, 96) = 26.67, p < > 001), the significant effect of context (F(1, 96) = 13.07, p < > 001), and the significant context sex interaction (F(1, 96) = 4.27, p < .05). Furthermore, the simple main effect of context was significant for women (F(1, 96) = 2.42, p < .05) but not for men (F(1, 96) = 1.20, ns). Alternatively, a significant linear interaction could have been tested using logistic regression. This was done by dummy-coding context (0 = past work; 1 = job offer;) and gender (0 = male; 1 = female) and then regressing ingroup preference on context, gender and the multiplicative cross-product ( Jaccard, Turrisi &

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Wan, 1990; Jaccard, 2000). Probably due to the fact that this procedure suffers from low statistical power with small n’s ( Jaccard, 2000), this analytic procedure failed to uncover a significant sex context interaction (B = –.37, Wald = .08, p > .50). However, application of the same procedure to uncover simple main effects revealed a significant simple main effect of context for women (B = –1.89, Wald = 9.00, p < .001), but not for men (B = –1.15, Wald = .23, p > .20). These simple main effects are consistent with predictions, though the lack of an interaction effect suggests that the significance levels found for the interaction using the other two methods should be viewed with caution.

Acknowledgements Jennifer Crocker was supported by NSF grant SBR 9596226 when this research was conducted, and by NIMH grant 1 R01 MH58869–01 during preparation of this manuscript. The authors would like to thank Charlene Christie, Tonya Dodge, Jim Jaccard, Kim McClive and Anne E. Stuart for comments and assistance on earlier drafts.

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Biographical notes hart blanton is an assistant professor at the University at Albany, where Greg George received his masters degree. His research links categorization and comparison processes to social judgment, social influence and behavioural selfregulation. jennifer crocker is a professor in the Department of Psychology and the Faculty Associate at the Research Centre for Group Dynamics. Her research interests are in the areas of contingencies of self-worth and social stigma.

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