The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic has had a detrimental effect on people's mental health. Drawing on the palliative function of ideologies, we suggest that people rely on system‐justifying beliefs to mitigate psychological distress during the pandemic. We conducted three studies with correlational and experimental designs to examine whether and how system‐justifying beliefs can buffer against psychological distress during COVID‐19, and whether this effect may vary across social classes. The results indicated that (a) system‐justifying beliefs alleviated psychological distress during the pandemic, (b) personal control mediated this relationship and (c) this effect was consistent across all social classes. This study provides robust evidence for the palliative function of system‐justifying beliefs during a massive global health crisis (i.e. COVID‐19).

中文翻译：

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在 COVID-19 大流行期间，系统性信念正当化可以缓冲心理困扰


2019 冠状病毒病 （COVID-19） 大流行对人们的心理健康产生了不利影响。利用意识形态的姑息功能，我们建议人们依靠系统合理的信念来减轻大流行期间的心理困扰。我们进行了三项具有相关和实验设计的研究，以检查系统合理的信念是否以及如何缓冲 COVID-19 期间的心理困扰，以及这种影响是否可能因社会阶层而异。结果表明，（a） 系统合理的信念减轻了大流行期间的心理困扰，（b） 个人控制介导了这种关系，以及 （c） 这种影响在所有社会阶层中都是一致的。这项研究为在大规模全球健康危机（即 COVID-19）期间系统证明信念的姑息作用提供了有力的证据。