Meritocracy and opposition to affirmative action: Making concessions in the face of discrimination.

Son Hing, Leanne S., Bobocel, D. Ramona, Zanna, Mark P.·2002·Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
DOI 10.1037//0022-3514.83.3.493

Abstract

Typically, people who strongly endorse the merit principle and believe that outcomes should be given to those most deserving oppose affirmative action (AA) programs that violate this principle. However, how do they respond to AA when faced with a great deal of workplace discrimination? The authors hypothesized that people who care strongly about merit should be motivated to combat discrimination because it biases the assessment of merit. Consequently, these individuals should make concessions for AA. The authors found support for their hypothesis when investigating (a) participants' preexisting perceptions of workplace discrimination and (b) experimentally induced perceptions of discrimination. They discuss the implications of these results for the psychology of meritocracy and for resistance to AA.

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  2. Aversive racism
    Dovidio, John F., Gaertner, Samuel L. · 2004 · Advances in Experimental Social Psychology
  3. Understanding attitudes toward affirmative action programs in employment: Summary and meta-analysis of 35 years of research.
    Harrison, David A., Kravitz, David A., Mayer, David M., Leslie, Lisa M., Lev-Arey, Dalit · 2006 · Journal of Applied Psychology
  4. Perceived discrimination as worldview threat or worldview confirmation: Implications for self-esteem.
    Major, Brenda, Kaiser, Cheryl R., O'Brien, Laurie T., McCoy, Shannon K. · 2007 · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
  5. Understanding Affirmative Action
    Crosby, Faye J., Iyer, Aarti, Sincharoen, Sirinda · 2006 · Annual Review of Psychology

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Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.

This page
CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Meritocracy and opposition to affirmative action: Making concessions in the face of discrimination. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1037//0022-3514.83.3.493
The paper
Son Hing, L. S., Bobocel, D. R., & Zanna, M. P. (2002). Meritocracy and opposition to affirmative action: Making concessions in the face of discrimination. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.83.3.493

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.