Priming meritocracy increases implict prejudice

Meritocracy is a prevalent norm characterizing most modern societies according to which social status and rewards should depend on individual effort and hard work. Despite its ubiquity, the effects of meritocracy have never been analyzed outside the field of explicit attitudes. Thus, expanding on the small body of studies that focus on the positive factors that promote the emergence of socially negative responses, we investigated the effect of priming meritocracy on the expression of implicit racial prejudice. Results from two experimental studies consistently showed that priming meritocracy results in higher levels of implicit prejudice (Studies 1 and 2) and elicits both inter- (Study 1) and intra-individual (Study 2) variations of the levels of prejudice.