Economic Inequality Perception Dampens Meritocratic Belief in China: The Mediating Role of Perceived Distributive Unfairness

Abstract

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.

Special Education and Meritocratic Inclusion

“…One explanation for this relation could come from the fact that the more individuals believe in meritocracy, the less likely they are to support the implementation of pedagogical methods oriented toward equity (Darnon et al, 2018(Darnon et al, , 2021. Inversely, people may lose faith in meritocracy, if they feel that its distribution system is unfair (Zhu et al, 2022).…”

“…Although the concept of meritocracy goes back hundreds of years, the psychosocial studies of school meritocracy are quite recent (see Trevisan et al, 2021 for a review). As developed above, meritocracy has long been associated with fairness as a concept that justifies the unequal distribution of benefits and rewards (Deutsch, 1975) or as a belief that underpins a system (Zhu et al, 2022). Authors investigating school meritocracy point to its conflicting impact on students: they are considered fundamentally equal while being engaged in a series of tests whose purpose is to make them unequal (Mijs, 2016).…”

“…In the literature, the idea that results in society should be distributed based on merit is expressed by prescriptive meritocracy (Deutsch, 1975), while descriptive meritocracy, on the other hand, relates to the idea that meritocracy already exists in society (Darnon et al, 2018; Zhu et al, 2022). In educational contexts, the former refers to the idea that schools must offer everyone the same opportunities to demonstrate their skills and merit in the course of a continuous latent competition (Butera et al, 2021).…”