Abstract

The current investigation examined whether socioeconomic status (SES) would moderate the relation between unfair treatments and the system-justifying beliefs (SJB). A sample of 335 Korean adults completed questionnaires assessing unfair treatments, system-justifying beliefs, and subjective SES. The results revealed that the association between unfair treatments and system-justifying beliefs varied according to participants’ SES. That is, among participants with higher SES, SJB decreased as they experienced more unfair treatments. In contrast, the pattern was reversed for participants with lower SES such that unfair treatments were positively associated with SJB. Moreover, we also investigated how the predicted SES differences in the association between unfair treatments and SJB would be related to one’s metal health, in order to examine the adaptive function of SJB. We found a significant moderated mediation effect. Specifically, unfair treatments were associated with decrease in SJB, which, in turn, were associated with decrease in mental health among higher SES participants. Conversely, for lower SES participants, unfair treatments were positively associated with mental health, indirectly through increase in SJB. We also note that the direct association between unfair treatments and mental health was stronger (compared to indirect effect) and negative regardless of participants’ SES in spite of positive indirect effect among lower SES participants. These results suggest that the relation between unfair treatments and system-justifying beliefs varies as a function of one’s SES and moreover, such SES differences could indirectly impact their well-being.