How does Belief in Prescriptive Meritocracy Interact with Need as a Justice Principle to Predict Support for Socioeconomic Inequalities?

Bartz, Emma (2025) How does Belief in Prescriptive Meritocracy Interact with Need as a Justice Principle to Predict Support for Socioeconomic Inequalities? Bachelor thesis, Psychology.

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Abstract

The belief in meritocracy is of two types: descriptive and prescriptive meritocracy. Prescriptive meritocracy describes the belief that society should distribute achievements based on merit, disregarding ethnicity, inheritance and social class as determinants for social mobility. Prescriptive meritocracy promotes an ideal, merit-based societal structure. Descriptive meritocracy describes the belief that society does distribute achievements based on merit and is linked to system-justification beliefs and the structural exclusion of disadvantaged individuals. A key gap in the literature concerns how merit and need, as principles of justice, interact to shape support for policies. Specifically, this paper investigates the effect of prescriptive meritocratic beliefs on support for redistributive policies, considering belief in need as a justice principle as moderator. The survey required participants (N = 258) to complete several measures, including on prescriptive meritocratic beliefs, endorsement of need as a justice principle and support for redistributive policies. The results disconfirmed all three hypotheses: prescriptive meritocracy and need were not found positively associated; need was not found a positive predictor of support for policies and need was not found a moderator between prescriptive meritocracy and support for policies. This study contributes to the literature on need-based justice distribution and the reduction of socioeconomic inequalities in societies with prevailing meritocratic beliefs.

Item Type:	Thesis (Bachelor)
Supervisor name:	Al-Amine, M.
Degree programme:	Psychology
Differentiation route:	None [Bachelor Psychology]
Date Deposited:	09 Jul 2025 09:01
Last Modified:	09 Jul 2025 09:01
URI:	http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/5390

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