Abstract
System Justification theory, to the author’s knowledge, has yet to explore the activation of system threat by a person with multiple marginalized identities in a position of socio-political power such as presidency. In this study, a new vignette was utilized to activate system threat with a vignette that depicts a Black transgender woman (Btw) as president of the U.S. This is a violation of the status quo which grants positions of socio-political power almost exclusively to privileged groups such as white men (wm). To manipulate system threat, two vignettes were used. The Btw vignette was identical to the control vignette, the white man vignette, except for the grammatical subject. Both grammatical subjects were depicted as president of the U.S. It was hypothesized the Btw condition would activate system threat which would result in heightened prejudice and discrimination as measured by scales of racism, sexism and transphobia. A political orientation scale and a COVID-19 scale were also included. For, literature suggests system threat should increase conservative values and reduce COVID-19 health protective behaviors. Before mean comparisons, a set of ordinal Multi group Confirmatory Factor Analyses (MGCFA’s) were fit to investigate group measurement invariance. The scales that satisfied measurement invariance were racism, sexism, conservativism and transphobia. Latent and observed mean comparisons showed consistently, although not significantly, that participants in the Btw condition had higher means than the wm condition. This study concludes by addressing study limitations and discussing avenues for future study replication and extension.