System Dependency and Social Identity Salience: A Comment on Bonnot and Krauth-Gruber (2017)

This brief commentary discusses the following paper: Bonnot, V., & Krauth‐Gruber, S. (2017). System‐justifying behaviors: When feeling dependent on a system triggers gender stereotype‐consistent academic performance. European Journal of Social Psychology. doi: 10.1002/ejsp.2201 It is proposed that (1) manipulations of system dependency may also manipulate social identity salience, (2) measures of system dependency may also measure social identity salience, and consequently that (3) social identity salience can explain the effects of system dependency.  This proposal is consistent with recent claims that personal and/or group motives (personal and/or social identity) can explain system justification effects more parsimoniously than system justification theory’s proposition that these effects are motivated by a separate system justification motive.