Madeira Ana Filipa, Costa-Lopes Rui, Dovidio John F, Freitas Gonçalo, Mascarenhas Mafalda F
Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal.
Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, United States.
Front Psychol. 2019 Sep 19;10:2007. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02007. eCollection 2019.
Psychological interest in Meritocracy as an important social norm regulating most of the western democratic societies has significantly increased over the years. However, the way Meritocracy has been conceptualized and operationalized in experimental studies has advanced in significant ways. As a result, a variety of paradigms arose to understand the social consequences of Meritocracy for intergroup relations; in particular, to understand the adverse consequences of Meritocracy for disadvantaged group members. The present research seeks to understand whether there is strong support for the idea that (manipulated) Meritocracy disproportionally affects members of low status groups, and also to understand which specific components of this norm have been successfully manipulated and to what consequences. And this is particularly important given the recent call for greater transparency in how the success of experimental manipulations is reported. Thus, we carried out a systematic review examining the content of different prime tasks, summarizing prime manipulation checks' effectiveness, and analyzing whether priming Meritocracy leads to less favorable orientations toward low status groups. Results across 33 studies revealed that despite the existing differences in the components highlighted, the salience of any of the Meritocracy dimensions facilitates the use of internal causal attributions, negative evaluations and stereotyping toward low status groups, affecting negatively decisions involving low-status group members, particularly in specific domains, as organizational contexts. These results carry both practical and theoretical implications for future research on the role of Meritocracy in intergroup settings.
多年来，作为一种规范大多数西方民主社会的重要社会规范，精英统治在心理学领域的受关注程度显著提高。然而，在实验研究中，精英统治的概念化和操作化方式有了重大进展。结果，出现了各种范式来理解精英统治对群体间关系的社会影响；特别是，理解精英统治对弱势群体成员的不利影响。本研究旨在了解是否有强有力的证据支持这样一种观点，即（被操纵的）精英统治对低地位群体成员的影响不成比例，同时也了解这一规范的哪些具体成分被成功操纵以及会产生什么后果。鉴于最近有人呼吁提高实验操纵成功报告方式的透明度，这一点尤为重要。因此，我们进行了一项系统综述，研究不同启动任务的内容，总结启动操纵检查的有效性，并分析启动精英统治是否会导致对低地位群体的不太有利的态度。33项研究的结果表明，尽管所强调的成分存在差异，但精英统治任何一个维度的显著性都有助于对低地位群体使用内部因果归因、负面评价和刻板印象，对涉及低地位群体成员的决策产生负面影响，尤其是在特定领域，如组织环境中。这些结果对未来关于精英统治在群体间环境中作用的研究具有实际和理论意义。
