Me:: it's family background and luck more than 'meritocracy'. The authors' proposed 'moderated causal model' makes sense Ian R. Hadden, Céline Darnon, Lewis Doyle, Matthew J., Sébastien Goudeau, Andrei Cimpian :: Why the belief in meritocracy is so pervasive - ScienceDirect
Discovered: Jan 14, 2025 19:14 Me:: it’s family background and luck more than ‘meritocracy’. The authors’ proposed ‘moderated causal model’ makes sense Ian R. Hadden, Céline Darnon, Lewis Doyle, Matthew J., Sébastien Goudeau, Andrei Cimpian :: Why the belief in meritocracy is so pervasive - ScienceDirect via grimalkina’s toot
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- Read the whole thing: Ian R. Hadden, Céline Darnon, Lewis Doyle, Matthew J., Sébastien Goudeau, Andrei Cimpian : Why the belief in meritocracy is so pervasive - ScienceDirect
‘You can make it if you try.’
This is the rallying cry of meritocracy: that hard work – not luck or family background – determines success in life. The appeal of this idea runs deep [1]. Although people recognize, to varying degrees across countries [2], that factors other than hard work matter, they typically fail to grasp the true extent of their influence. For example, people underestimate the levels of inequalities in wealth [1] and overestimate the extent to which people move between economic strata through their own efforts [3]. This ‘myth of meritocracy’ is far from cost-free: it contributes to the acceptance and legitimation of historical inequalities between demographic groups. For example, when people believe they live in a meritocratic society, they are less likely to support policies that reduce income inequality [4] and more likely to allocate resources to individuals who already have the most [5].
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Instead, a more promising avenue is to invoke a more nuanced and more accurate moderated causal model, wherein the dose–response relation between effort and success is calibrated by external factors (Figure 1C). This conveys the reality that the same amount of effort yields greater dividends for people in more favorable social circumstances (e.g., better-resourced schools, better-connected families). Just as a seed planted in fertile soil will fare quite differently from an identical one planted in a desert, the same ‘dose’ of effort does not take everyone equally far. This moderated causal model, with its balance of accuracy and intuitive appeal, is likely to be a valuable communication device in efforts to debunk the myth of meritocracy.