Five studies (total valid N = 834) examined whether objectification (i.e., being treated as a tool or an object to achieve others’ goals) reduces people’s perceived authenticity and subjective well‐being. Participants who experienced more objectification (Studies 1a and 1b), imagined being objectified (Study 2), or recalled a past objectification experience (Study 3) felt less authentic and reported lower levels of subjective well‐being than their counterparts. Moreover, perceived authenticity mediated the link between objectification and subjective well‐being (Studies 1a–3). In addition, offering objectified participants an opportunity to restore authenticity could enhance their well‐being (Study 4). Taken together, our findings highlight the crucial role of authenticity in understanding when and why objectification decreases subjective well‐being and how to ameliorate this relationship. Our findings also imply the effect of authenticity in understanding various psychological outcomes following objectification.

In three studies, we investigated the impact of economic inequality on beliefs about meritocracy and potential mechanisms among the Chinese. Study 1 (N = 19,641) longitudinally substantiated that beliefs about meritocracy abate in tandem with the increasing inequality perception but not objective economic inequality (Gini coefficient). Studies 2a (N = 140) and 2b (N = 269) experimentally showed that inequality perception decreases belief in meritocracy. The lower classes were less willing to believe in meritocracy than the upper classes when exposed to inequality cues (Studies 1 and 2b). In Study 3 (N = 218), we again manipulated the level of economic inequality and found that laypeople construing distribution as unfair mediated the relationship between inequality perception and meritocratic belief. We highlighted that people's interpretation of economic inequality might influence their beliefs about merit.