CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 92Social and Intergroup PsychologySocial Power and Status DynamicsIntergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies

Belief in school meritocracy as a system-justifying tool for low status students

Open access
Wiederkehr, Virginie, Bonnot, Virginie, Krauth-Gruber, Silvia, Darnon, Céline·2015·Frontiers in Psychology
DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01053PMC PMC4519673
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

The belief that, in school, success only depends on will and hard work is widespread in Western societies despite evidence showing that several factors other than merit explain school success, including group belonging (e.g., social class, gender). In the present paper, we argue that because merit is the only track for low status students to reach upward mobility, Belief in School Meritocracy (BSM) is a particularly useful system-justifying tool to help them perceive their place in society as being deserved. Consequently, for low status students (but not high status students), this belief should be related to more general system-justifying beliefs (Study 1). Moreover, low status students should be particularly prone to endorsing this belief when their place within a system on which they strongly depend to acquire status is challenged (Study 2). In Study 1, high status (boys and high SES) were compared to low status (girls and low SES) high school students. Results indicated that BSM was related to system-justifying beliefs only for low SES students and for girls, but not for high SES students or for boys. In Study 2, university students were exposed (or not) to information about an important selection process that occurs at the university, depending on the condition. Their subjective status was assessed. Although such a confrontation reduced BSM for high subjective SES students, it tended to enhance it for low subjective SES students. Results are discussed in terms of system justification motives and the palliative function meritocratic ideology may play for low status students.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01053

Cites

51 of 51 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Ideology moderates the translation from social class to social cognition and behaviour.

    “there is evidence of the moderating impact of ideology on the translation from social class to social cognition and behaviour (e.g., Wiederkehr, Bonnot, Krauth‐Gruber, & Darnon, 2015)”

    From The psychology of social class: How socioeconomic status impacts thought, feelings, and behaviour (2018) · cites this paper as Wiederkehr, Bonnot, Krauth‐Gruber, & Darnon, 2015

    Study 1 Results (page unavailable) report that belief in school meritocracy was associated with belief in a just society among low-SES students but not high-SES students, although the SES interaction was only marginally significant (p = 0.08). This supports a qualified link between class, ideology and social cognition. The General discussion (page unavailable) says behavioral implications require future research, so the claimed moderation of behavior is not established. (LLM, conf=0.86)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Wiederkehr, V., Bonnot, V., Krauth-Gruber, S., & Darnon, C.
Affiliations
  • Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
  • Université Paris Descartes (FR)
Corresponding author
Darnon, Céline
ORCID
Venue
Frontiers in Psychology
Publisher
Frontiers Media SA
Published
2015-07-30
Volume
6
Pages
1053-1053
ISSN
1664-1078 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01053
PMC
PMC4519673
OpenAlex
W1511181678
Cited by
92
References
51
Citations by year
2026: 12 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 14 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 3
FWCI
17.69
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
cc-by
Locations
  • Frontiers in Psychology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • HAL (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
Funders
  • Agence Nationale de la Recherche (A.N.R.-11-INEG-002 01)
  • Association Neurofibromatoses et Recklinghause
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social Power and Status Dynamics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies
Keywords
system justification, social class, socioeconomic status, gender differences, subjective social status, upward mobility, selection process, university admission

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review