Relationship between adherence to meritocratic beliefs and family income

• Autor(a) principal: Silva, Amanda Borba Ramos
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Outros Autores: Wachelke, João Fernando Rech
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Psicologia Revista (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://revistas.pucsp.br/index.php/psicorevista/article/view/47263
• topic: meritocracia; ideologia; estratificação social; meritocracia; ideología; estratificación social; meritocracy; ideology; stratification

Meritocracy can be considered an ideology that cooperates to justify the inequalities between the classes existing in the economic system. This is done by valuing characteristics such as competitiveness, ability and individual effort, disregarding historical, cultural and socioeconomic factors. The aim of the research was to characterize adherence to meritocratic beliefs, linking the responses obtained to the social conditions of participants. A sample of 1.233 adults completed a structured interview, indicating the degree of agreement with three sentences regarding the role of individual effort for success, the relationship between ability and remuneration, and social inequality. The results indicated that the income of the individuals is associated with the perception of the meritocratic logic, since subjects with higher incomes tended to question the generalizations, but they did not stop adhering to their logic with vehemence, valuing effort and maintenance of wage differences based on social value added to certain skills. In contrast, subjects with less access to resources have shown to believe in meritocracy with less questioning, thus emerging the ideological characteristics of meritocracy and the dominant conceptions of more affluent social classes.