Belief in school meritocracy as a system-justifying tool for low status students

Abstract

The belief that, in school, success only depends on will and hard work is widespread in Western societies despite evidence showing that several factors other than merit explain school success, including group belonging (e.g., social class, gender). In the present paper, we argue that because merit is the only track for low status students to reach upward mobility, Belief in School Meritocracy (BSM) is a particularly useful system-justifying tool to help them perceive their place in society as being deserved. Consequently, for low status students (but not high status students), this belief should be related to more general system-justifying beliefs (Study 1). Moreover, low status students should be particularly prone to endorsing this belief when their place within a system on which they strongly depend to acquire status is challenged (Study 2). In Study 1, high status (boys and high SES) were compared to low status (girls and low SES) high school students. Results indicated that BSM was related to system-justifying beliefs only for low SES students and for girls, but not for high SES students or for boys. In Study 2, university students were exposed (or not) to information about an important selection process that occurs at the university, depending on the condition. Their subjective status was assessed. Although such a confrontation reduced BSM for high subjective SES students, it tended to enhance it for low subjective SES students. Results are discussed in terms of system justification motives and the palliative function meritocratic ideology may play for low status students.

Why Do People from Low‐Status Groups Support Class Systems that Disadvantage Them? A Test of Two Mainstream Explanations in Malaysia and Australia

“…Endorsing a status system as fair allows the subjectively lower classes to hope that the system will permit them to achieve a higher social status in the future (Owuamalam et al., ; cf. Wiederkehr, Bonnot, Krauth‐Gruber, & Darnon, ). The more one believes that a status system is fair, the more one can hope that the system will allow changes that improve one's group outcomes in the future.…”

How Meritocracy is Defined Today?: Contemporary Aspects of Meritocracy

“…In modern society, meritocracy has allowed low status group members to dream about improving their social status, economic class, and place in the hierarchy, implanting the ideology that everyone has a chance of succeeding if they cultivate the required abilities (Wiederkehr et al, 2015). In this vein, meritocracy has served as an engine of meritocratic upward mobility for maintaining social order and calming social unrest.…”

“…There is, ironically, a strong belief that success is a valid indicator of personal effort and performance (Wiederkehr et al, 2015). From this point of view, the idea of meritocracy as an ideology and a system in which rewards are impartially distributed according to individual talent has gained support from people at the bottom of the social ladder in a given society (Chong, 2014;Newman et al, 2015).…”

“…As the meaning of meritocracy became more positive in its transition from Western societies, researchers started linking it to the notions of political ideology, capitalism, and the "American Dream" in response to the contemporary social atmosphere (Panayotakis, 2014;S´liwa & Johansson, 2014;Newman et al, 2015;Wiederkehr et al, 2015;So, 2015;Cobb II & Russell, 2015). Panayotakis (2014), in particular, insisted that the meritocratic illusion was largely amplified by the public education system in the United States and other capitalist countries.…”

Measurement issues of the social class in social psychology of education: Is it a category mistake?

“…Curtin, 2011;Rubin & Wright, 2015;Soria, Stebleton, & Huesman, 2013;Wiederkher, Bonnot, Krauth-Gruber, & Darnon, 2015). As Keefer, Goode, and Berkel (2015) found the relevance of the class consciousness in the social and political psychology literature, it is shown that the current use of subjective measure misses some important picture about social class.…”