The just world hypothesis as an argumentative resource in debates about unemployment benefits

Goodman, Simon; Carr, Philippa

doi:10.1002/casp.2314

Cited by 12 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Due to their ordinariness, affluence is warranted as accessible to anyone to legitimise inequality in society as others are not effortful enough. This draws upon individualistic ideology such as just world arguments (Goodman and Carr, 2017) and wealth as earned by individuals not the result of collective effort (Carr, 2020). The use of individualistic ideology presents the super-rich in entertainment documentaries as deserving in a meritocratic environment due to their increased skills and work ethic.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such individualism presents wealth as being solely earned and ignores the role that the state (and public spending from taxation) has played in creating the economic conditions for their wealth. Goodman and Carr (2017) offered a discursive re-evaluation of Lerner's (1980) concept of 'belief in a just world ' (p. 11) showing how Just World arguments were drawn upon to justify inequality. Individuals utilise Just World arguments to legitimise limited redistribution in the form of welfare benefits (Goodman and Carr, 2017).…”

Section: Discursive Social Psychology and The Construction Of The Super-rich In The Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Goodman and Carr (2017) offered a discursive re-evaluation of Lerner's (1980) concept of 'belief in a just world ' (p. 11) showing how Just World arguments were drawn upon to justify inequality. Individuals utilise Just World arguments to legitimise limited redistribution in the form of welfare benefits (Goodman and Carr, 2017). These arguments use Just World ideology to justify inequality in society on the basis of economic productivity.…”

Section: Discursive Social Psychology and The Construction Of The Super-rich In The Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

‘You come back fighting. That’s what gives you the drive to achieve’: The extraordinary psychological construction of the super-rich in entertainment documentaries

Carr

Goodman

Jowett

et al. 2021

Discourse & Society

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Inequality in society is legitimised through the ‘meritocracy myth’ and existing research claims that the affluence of the super-rich is the result of their superior traits. Discursive Social Psychology examines the ways in which psychological concepts such as personality traits function in talk. This research explores how entertainment documentaries construct the traits of the super-rich to legitimise their wealth. A corpus of 41.5 hours of terrestrial UK televised broadcasts that used the term, ‘super-rich’ was analysed. This explored how wealthy individuals are presented as having superior psychological qualities compared to the general public in relation to their greater drive and resilience. However, wealthy individuals also talk about the development of superior traits as a response to adversity. Entertainment documentaries draw upon individualistic ideology to present wealth inequality as a natural consequence of individual differences and as a result, the current distribution of wealth is ‘just’ despite its negative consequences for all.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discursive Social Psychology and The Construction Of The Super-rich In The Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discursive Social Psychology and The Construction Of The Super-rich In The Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

‘You come back fighting. That’s what gives you the drive to achieve’: The extraordinary psychological construction of the super-rich in entertainment documentaries

Carr

Goodman

Jowett

et al. 2021

Discourse & Society

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The historical provenance and the action orientation of attributions of unemployment based on the idea of a just world were explored in a study by Goodman and Carr (2017). Analyzing televised discussions about benefit claimants, the authors pointed out that the idea of a just world has been variously used by participants and it has been oriented to different rhetorical functions.…”

Section: Unemployment Agency and Discursive Social Psychologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Agency and Accountability in (Un)Employment-Related Discourse in the Era of “Crisis”

Figgou

2019

Journal of Language and Social Psychology

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This study explores the ways in which young people orient to and manage their agency in (un)employment-related discourse in “crisis ridden” Greece. It focuses on data elicited by semistructured interviews with 40 people, aged between 18 and 29 years. Interviews were analyzed by the principles of critical discursive social psychology. Analysis indicated that, in the context of accounting for job loss, participants mobilized the rhetoric of “crisis,” managing to negotiate complaints, without directly identifying a blame-worthy party. In the context of discussing effective job seeking, however, interviewees were concerned to depict themselves as active agents. Paradoxically, success in job seeking was depicted as the result of accepting unfavorable job opportunities. Finally, when participants unfolded their plans to emigrate, unemployment was related to structural flaws of the Greek labor market and “crisis” narratives were contested. Different constructions of agency are seen to reflect the contingencies of both local (interactional) and broader (historical) contexts.

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“…For example, Wiggan's () analysis of the UK government's 2010 Green and White Papers on welfare reform found three linked themes: “worklessness,” which, he argues, serves to pathologize a lack of paid employment as both an individual failing and a societal phenomenon to be addressed; a “culture of dependency” preventing people from taking up available work; and the rationality and necessity for punitive measures to reform welfare. More recently Goodman and Carr () looked at how people involved in televised discussions concerning welfare mobilized discursive resources to frame arguments about entitlement to benefits. They found that people often drew on competing arguments that the world is both just and unjust and that they frequently used just world arguments to legitimate social inequalities.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social citizenship and social psychology

Anderson

Gibson

2020

Social & Personality Psych

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This paper outlines the concept of social citizenship, which was first theorized in the late 1940s alongside the creation of the UK welfare state and concerns citizens' rights to a basic income and standard of living. It suggests that social citizenship-particularly welfare provision-is a useful and important topic for social psychological research, albeit one that has been largely overlooked. We provide an overview of key developments in social citizenship and consider the impact of 30-plus years of neoliberal governance in Western democracies, which has resulted in ongoing changes to how welfare rights and responsibilities are configured, such as policies that make social citizenship rights contingent on conduct. We outline social scientific work that examines these shifting ideas of citizenship, personhood, welfare, and conditionality and make the case for a critical discursive psychological approach, which we illustrate with a brief empirical example. We suggest that critical discursive social psychology is particularly well-placed to examine how psychological assumptions are built into both policy and lay discourse and how these can legitimate interventions designed to work on the conduct of the unemployed, such as therapeutic and behavior change initiatives. Finally, we argue that psychology is faced with a choice; while there are opportunities for the discipline to contribute to the design and implementation of such initiatives, to do so requires accepting the basic values of the underpinning neoliberal agenda. Instead, it is vital to place these assumptions under the critical microscope and explore how they work to obscure structural disadvantage.

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The just world hypothesis as an argumentative resource in debates about unemployment benefits

Cited by 12 publications

References 23 publications

‘You come back fighting. That’s what gives you the drive to achieve’: The extraordinary psychological construction of the super-rich in entertainment documentaries

‘You come back fighting. That’s what gives you the drive to achieve’: The extraordinary psychological construction of the super-rich in entertainment documentaries

Agency and Accountability in (Un)Employment-Related Discourse in the Era of “Crisis”

Social citizenship and social psychology

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