The Relationship Between Social Identification and System Justification: A Meta-Analytic Test of Relevant Moderators

The association between social identification and system justification, especially amongst low-status groups, is a highly contested issue in the social and political psychology literatures. While some researchers propose that this association should be largely negative, others assume that it should be largely positive. Here, we synthesised the accumulated evidence on this relationship using a 4-level meta-analysis of 84 papers supplying 248 different samples and 359 effect sizes (N_total = 395,855). Overall the association between identification and system justification was positive, although weak (Z_r = 0.11, 95% CI = 0.06, 0.17) and was stronger for high- and intermediate-status groups (Z_r = 0.19, 95% CI = 0.13, 0.25 and Z_r = 0.12, 95% CI = 0.04, 0.20 respectively) but null for low-status groups (Z_r = 0.01, 95% CI = −0.04, 0.06). When theoretically relevant moderators were taken into account, the results further revealed that, for low-status groups, subgroup identification was positively correlated with system justification, but only when status differences were stable and/or legitimate.