System Trust Mediates the Relationship Between Belief in a Just World and Acceptance of Social Inequality in European Countries

ABSTRACT Why do people who are more motivated by justice show greater acceptance of social inequality even when they live in unjust contexts? This question goes beyond the well‐known link between Belief in a Just World (BJW) and acceptance of injustice requiring a framework that incorporates system trust and societal justice. We present a new perspective on this question by proposing an analytical multilevel justice model that predicts that the relationship between BJW and acceptance of social inequality is mediated by system trust and moderated by societal justice at the country level. Using data from 27 European countries ( N = 47,086), we found robust evidence that system trust mediates the positive relationship between BJW and acceptance of social inequality and shows a legitimizing role of system trust in countries with low, but not high, societal justice. We discussed these findings in the context of the previously unexamined interplay between personal and societal contracts in social inequalities based on BJW.