Inequality leads people to believe they're less able and deserve the disadvantage, argues Jeffrey Butle

Butler, Jeffrey

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7/12/2016The belief in meritocracy perpetuates inequalityblogs.lse.ac.uk /businessreview/2016/07/12/the-belief-in-meritocracy-perpetuates-inequality/Nature, nurture or neither: what accounts for the stubborn persistence of inequality even in modern economies? Thisquestion is of perennial interest both on moral grounds and on economic grounds. We should want others to fullyrealise their potential and their inability to do so may constrain economic growth as individuals’ unrealised incomepotential may become lost profits or innovation opportunities for firms. In a new study, I provide evidence from aseries of experiments suggesting that a key tenet of modern society, merit-based allocation of resources, may be aculprit.In contrast to the most widely accepted explanations for inequality persistence, I lay out an explanation that reliesneither on nature (actual differences in traits, such as intelligence) nor nurture (differences in parentally- orculturally-instilled values, such as work ethic).  This novel explanation does not even require the existence ofexternal barriers to success like discrimination.In a nutshell, my explanation is one of self-discrimination caused by experienced inequality through a psychologicalphenomenon labeled “Just World Beliefs:” a deep-seated need to believe that the world is just and fair.  Just WorldBeliefs have been well documented in social psychology and found to be both powerful and universal as evidencedby such unfortunately familiar behaviour as blaming victims for their own misfortunes.What is a just and fair world?  In a society where resources ought to be allocated based on merit, because merit is acombination of effort and ability, a just world may be one in which one’s relative position in society is substantiallydetermined by one’s relative ability. Reconciling this conception of a just and fair world with one’s own initialdisadvantage requires believing that this disadvantage is merited.  To the extent that merit is about ability,experienced inequality requires the disadvantaged to believe they are relatively less able.  If it sounds far-fetched,consider that this was essentially the plot of the novel in which the (then satirical) term “meritocracy” was coined(Young, 1958).In order for relative ability beliefs to matter, however, a second ingredient is necessary.  Ability-based competitionmust play a large role in determining economic success at some point along the career path. The quintessentialexample of this condition being met is the annual ritual of students competing for coveted spots at prestigious1/4colleges. To be clear, the logic is that if experienced inequality causes the disadvantaged to believe they arerelatively less able, then because of their own self-discriminatory beliefs they are more reluctant than their actualability would warrant to choose career paths depending on ability-based competition. Because these are exactly thecareer paths that confer economic success, initial disadvantage itself may make escaping disadvantage less likely.To provide evidence for this source of self-perpetuating inequality, I conduct several experiments using a commonmethodology. I randomly assign unequal pay for an ability-intensive task (e.g., an IQ test).  Participants knowwhether they are being relatively well paid or relatively poorly paid and that this assignment to pay level is random.After completing the task, I elicit participants’ beliefs about their relative performance on the task, i.e., whether theyperformed above or below the median.Since the task is constructed to be transparently about ability, participants’ reported beliefs should be informativeabout their assessments of their relative ability: participants who report performing above the median on an IQ testare plausibly revealing they believe themselves to possess above-median intelligence. In order to rule out importantand obvious confounds, I conduct additional treatments in which: i) everybody in a session is either well paid orpoorly paid; as well as ii) other sessions in which pay is unequal but task performance depends more on effort thanon ability (e.g., counting occurrences of a specific letter).Results in all of my experiments support the view that experienced inequality undermines relative ability beliefsdirectly.  Even though participants’ actual performance never varies with pay level, those disadvantaged by my payscheme believe they perform substantially worse. The pattern in beliefs that emerges is summarised in the figurebelow, reproduced from the paper.  In this figure “PI Treatment” denotes that participants knew they were being paidunequally, whereas “Control” denotes that participants did not know about pay levels other than their own. Theimplication of the figure is that experiencing disadvantageous inequality (“Low Pay”, “PI Treatment”) significantlyreduces the proportion of participants believing they were above-median performers relative to the same pay levelwithout experienced inequality (“Low Pay”, “Control”).  At the same time, knowledge of advantage inflatesperformance beliefs.2/4In a series of follow-up experiments, I show that the effect of experienced inequality on beliefs is not plausiblyexplained by changes in effort provision – a result that was already suggested by the lack of an effect on actual taskperformance. Moreover, I document that effect on beliefs is strong enough to affect participants’ subsequentwillingness to compete on an ability-intensive task.Considered together, the implications of my findings are that policies aimed at eliminating external barriers tosuccess may not be sufficient to eradicate inequality.  When individuals must choose paths leading to success,inequality itself may lead the disadvantaged to select sub-optimally, discriminating against themselves in way thatperpetuates initial inequality.♣♣♣Notes:This post is based on Inequality and Relative Ability Beliefs , The Economic Journal, Volume 126, Issue 593,pages 907–948, June 2016The post gives the views of its authors, not the position of LSE Business Review or the London School ofEconomics.Featured image credit: Pixabay, Public DomainBefore commenting, please read our Comment Policy.3/4Jeffrey V. Butler is Assistant Professor of Economics at Louisiana State University. He is abehavioural and experimental economist working at the intersection of economics, sociology andpsychology.  His research investigates how the social environment affects economic outcomesboth directly and indirectly. He holds degrees from the University of Southern California andHarvard University as well as the University of California, Berkeley where he receivedhis PhD ‘under the excellent guidance of George A. Akerlof, Shachar Kariv and John Lie(Sociology)’. Copyright © 2015 London School of Economics4/4

The belief in meritocracy perpetuates inequality

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