Revista de Estudios Sociales

rev. estud. soc. | eISSN 1900-5180 | ISSN 0123-885X

¿Desigualdad o dignidad? Justificación del sistema por dominio específico y minimización paliativa de la discriminación percibida entre grupos minorizados en Chile

No. 95 (2026-01-31)
  • Joaquín Bahamondes
    Universidad Católica del Norte, Chile
    Identificador ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3777-8233

Resumen

En este artículo se examinan los mecanismos psicológicos a través de los cuales las creencias que justifican el sistema mitigan los efectos adversos de la discriminación percibida sobre el bienestar de los miembros de grupos históricamente marginados en Chile. Basándose en la hipótesis de estatus-legitimidad y en la teoría de la justificación del sistema, el análisis examina si las creencias que legitiman el orden sociopolítico pueden cumplir una función paliativa, especialmente cuando se corresponden con una dimensión específica de injusticia para una identidad social determinada. Así pues, se realizaron dos estudios en los que participaron mujeres y mapuche; ambos grupos ocupan posiciones estructuralmente desfavorecidas en la sociedad chilena. En el estudio 1 (N = 1,046) se replicaron los resultados observados anteriormente en contextos WEIRD, lo que demostró que las creencias que justifican el sistema —operacionalizadas por medio de evaluaciones de equidad sistémica específicas de género y etnia— moderan la relación entre el estatus del grupo y el bienestar, al atenuar las percepciones de discriminación entre los socialmente desfavorecidos. Los resultados de los modelos subsecuentes de mediación moderada muestran que las creencias más fuertes en la justificación del sistema reducen la brecha de discriminación percibida entre los participantes desfavorecidos y favorecidos, lo que reduce las disparidades en el bienestar. En el estudio 2 (N = 777) se amplía el análisis anterior al estudiar qué ámbito específico de la equidad del sistema —igualdad distributiva, respeto, dignidad y tradición— es el que mejor predice la discriminación percibida (o la ausencia de esta). Mediante el uso de ítems de diferencial semántico y modelos de regresión cuadrática, los resultados muestran que, para las mujeres, la reducción de la discriminación por motivos de género se alinea con opiniones moderadas sobre la justicia distributiva. Sin embargo, entre los participantes mapuche, la dignidad percibida y el respeto social son más importantes para explicar la atenuación de las percepciones de discriminación. En conjunto, estos hallazgos ofrecen nuevas pruebas de que los efectos paliativos de la ideología son específicos de cada ámbito y subrayan la necesidad de desglosar la legitimidad del sistema en cada uno de sus componentes para comprender mejor la dinámica psicológica del afrontamiento ideológico. Al contextualizar estos mecanismos dentro de una sociedad latinoamericana, esta investigación avanza en las explicaciones teóricas de la justificación del sistema y destaca cómo distintos grupos identitarios legitiman la desigualdad aferrándose a diferentes ámbitos de la equidad del sistema.

Palabras clave: bienestar psicológico, creencias de legitimidad, discriminación percibida, equidad específica del dominio, grupos minoritarios, justificación del sistema

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