Economic System Justification Scale

What it measures

This scale measures the ideological tendency to see the economic system, and the inequality it produces, as fair, legitimate and natural rather than as unjust or changeable. Items cover beliefs that hard work is rewarded, that differences in wealth reflect the natural order or people's achievements, and that poverty cannot be eliminated. The scale was introduced by Jost and Thompson (2000) as the economic counterpart to general system justification. Girerd, Jost, and Bonnot (2023) administered the 17 items while validating their Neoliberal Orientation Questionnaire, in a nationally representative sample of 580 French adults and a sample of 449 U.S. university students.

Response format

7-point Likert (totally disagree to totally agree) in Girerd et al. (2023); the original study used a 9-point agreement scale

Scale items

• If people work hard, they almost always get what they want.
• The existence of widespread economic differences does not mean that they are inevitable. (r)
• Laws of nature are responsible for differences in wealth in society.
• There are many reasons to think that the economic system is unfair. (r)
• It is virtually impossible to eliminate poverty.
• Poor people are not essentially different from rich people. (r)
• Most people who don't get ahead in our society should not blame the system; they have only themselves to blame.
• Equal distribution of resources is a possibility for our society. (r)
• Social class differences reflect differences in the natural order of things.
• Economic differences in the society reflect an illegitimate distribution of resources. (r)
• There will always be poor people, because there will never be enough jobs for everybody.
• Economic positions are legitimate reflections of people's achievements.
• If people wanted to change the economic system to make things equal, they could. (r)
• Equal distribution of resources is unnatural.
• It is unfair to have an economic system which produces extreme wealth and extreme poverty at the same time. (r)
• There is no point in trying to make incomes more equal.
• There are no inherent differences between rich and poor; it is purely a matter of the circumstances into which you are born. (r)

Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.

Usage notes & scoring

McDonald's omega was .81 in Sample 1 and .86 in Sample 4 (Girerd, Jost, and Bonnot 2023); the scale was not used in their Samples 2 and 3. Economic system justification correlated .56 with the Neoliberal Orientation Questionnaire in both samples. Seven items are reverse-scored (r); higher scores indicate stronger justification of the economic system. In the original U.S. study (Jost and Thompson 2000) alpha was lower (.73), and economic system justification was associated with political conservatism, opposition to equality and ethnocentrism. For the general (non-economic) system justification measure see ID 1945.

Citation

Girerd, L., Jost, J. T., & Bonnot, V. (2023). How neoliberal are you? Development and validation of the Neoliberal Orientation Questionnaire. International Review of Social Psychology, 36(1), 11.

Keywords

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