Imagine receiving a promotion after years of demanding work. You remember the evenings spent learning, the mistakes you corrected, and the uncertainty you carried. The achievement is real. Yet the story may also include a supervisor who gave you a chance, someone who covered a responsibility at home, or an opening that appeared at the right time. How we fit these parts together shapes what we believe about our own success and the lives of people whose efforts have brought fewer rewards.

Meritocracy appeals to our desire for fair recognition. We want capable people to have opportunities and meaningful work to count. The difficulty begins when this aspiration becomes an explanation for every difference in income, education, or status. Understanding meritocracy requires examining how merit is developed, how it is judged, and how readily achievement becomes a judgment about the whole person.

What Is Meritocracy

Meritocracy has two meanings that are easily blended in conversation. As a principle of fairness, it holds that relevant qualifications and contributions should guide decisions. As a description of society, it claims that these qualities already explain who advances. One concerns what ought to happen; the other concerns what actually happens (Son Hing et al., 2011).

Leanne Son Hing and colleagues examined this distinction across four studies. Wanting rewards to reflect merit was different from believing that the current system already rewards it fairly. Belief in the fairness of existing arrangements was more closely connected with views that justify social hierarchy. A preference for merit alone therefore does not tell us whether someone thinks the present system is fair (Son Hing et al., 2011).

The distinction leaves room for a demanding commitment to fairness. A person can want the most competent applicant selected while questioning whether the selection procedure recognizes competence accurately. They can also ask whether people had comparable opportunities to develop the qualifications being assessed. A measure may capture a real difference in current skill without explaining how that difference arose.

The Origins of Meritocracy

Michael Young popularized the term through The Rise of the Meritocracy, first published in 1958. His book was a sociological satire, written through a fictional account of a society organized around intelligence and effort. It explored what might happen when an elite comes to regard its superior position as thoroughly deserved. The narrator’s confidence is part of the satire, rather than a straightforward statement of Young’s preferred society (Young, 1958/1994).

This history gives the concept an enduring tension. Replacing inherited privilege with demonstrated competence can appear fairer. Yet a hierarchy justified by achievement can still encourage those at the top to see their position as evidence of superior worth. Young’s imagined future invites us to question the moral confidence attached to ranking people, even when the ranking claims to be scientific (Young, 1958/1994).

Why Meritocracy Appeals to Us

The hope that effort matters offers a reason to learn and persist. It also expresses a reasonable objection to favoritism: an applicant should not lose an opportunity simply because someone else has the right family connection. We need to recognize this appeal to understand why criticism of meritocracy can sometimes feel like criticism of work itself.

Ian Hadden and colleagues propose that meritocratic explanations are also cognitively appealing. Effort is a familiar cause, and we often expect more effort to produce more success. A person’s visible actions are easier to bring to mind than less visible conditions, such as access to useful resources. The authors suggest that these habits of explanation help meritocratic beliefs feel obvious. Their proposed combination of mechanisms awaits direct testing (Hadden et al., 2025).

Our perceptions of opportunity can also be inaccurate. Across four studies, Michael Kraus and Jacinth Tan found that participants overestimated American social class mobility. Overestimates were particularly pronounced among younger participants and people who perceived themselves as higher in social class. The findings describe the American samples and mobility measures studied (Kraus & Tan, 2015).

There is a practical difference between hoping that effort can change a life and assuming that opportunity is already widely available. The first can sustain an attempt. The second can discourage us from looking closely at the barriers another person describes. Keeping these beliefs separate allows hope to remain open to evidence.

How Opportunity Shapes Achievement

Qualifications carry histories. An examination result, portfolio, or employment record reflects something a person can currently demonstrate, but it does not display every condition under which that ability developed. Two students might be equally committed while differing greatly in access to a quiet place to study. Equal assessment conditions alone do not establish equal developmental opportunity.

Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren studied more than seven million American families who moved between areas. They compared children who moved at different ages to ask whether spending more of childhood in a particular place affected later outcomes. Children who moved younger tended to grow up with outcomes closer to those of children already living in the destination. This pattern supports the view that neighborhoods help shape later opportunities, beyond differences between the families who live there (Chetty & Hendren, 2018).

These are average effects, and the causal interpretation depends on the study’s assumptions about why and when families moved. They do not fix a child’s destiny. They do show why an account of achievement needs to consider environments alongside individual action. Jo Littler’s cultural analysis adds a related question: who has the resources to develop an ability and make it visible? Time, money, and access can affect participation before anyone reaches the point of formal evaluation (Chetty & Hendren, 2018; Littler, 2018).

For the employee in the opening example, the promotion may recognize genuine competence. Understanding the opportunity to acquire that competence asks a different question. Who received training, who was invited onto a demanding project, and whose responsibilities left time to participate? These are questions about the history of an achievement, rather than reasons to dismiss it.

Meritocracy in the Workplace

Who Decides What Counts as Merit

Merit is meaningful only in relation to a purpose. For a particular position, demonstrated skill may be essential; for a training opportunity, capacity to learn may deserve greater weight. Credentials, experience, effort, and performance can point in different directions. Calling a decision meritocratic does not resolve which qualities matter or how they should be measured (Son Hing et al., 2011; Uhlmann & Cohen, 2005).

Eric Uhlmann and Geoffrey Cohen demonstrated how flexible these judgments can become. In hiring experiments, participants sometimes redefined the qualities needed for a job to fit the credentials of an applicant from a preferred gender group. Evaluators could emphasize education when the preferred applicant was highly educated, then emphasize experience when that applicant’s strengths lay elsewhere. Their definition of an excellent candidate shifted (Uhlmann & Cohen, 2005).

In one experiment, committing to hiring criteria before learning the applicant’s gender eliminated the observed gender discrimination in the relevant comparison. This provides specific support for establishing standards in advance. It also clarifies what can go wrong when a committee decides which qualities matter only after meeting a favored applicant (Uhlmann & Cohen, 2005).

Results can create another distortion. Jonathan Baron and John Hershey found that people judged decision makers more favorably when uncertain decisions produced good outcomes, even when the information available at the time was held constant. Their experiments concerned medical decisions and monetary gambles. Applied cautiously to achievement, the lesson is to examine the quality of the reasoning and the conditions of performance alongside the eventual result. A successful outcome may contain both skill and good fortune (Baron & Hershey, 1988).

The Paradox of Calling a System Meritocratic

An organization can sincerely value fairness and still make biased decisions. Emilio Castilla and Stephen Benard examined this possibility in three experiments involving 445 participants with managerial experience. Participants evaluated employee profiles in hypothetical organizations whose stated values either emphasized meritocracy or did not. In the meritocracy condition, equally performing male employees received larger recommended bonuses than their female counterparts (Castilla & Benard, 2010).

The finding concerns reward decisions under the studied conditions. It does not establish that every organization emphasizing merit becomes more biased. The authors discuss possible explanations involving moral credentials and confidence in one’s objectivity; their experiments did not conclusively identify the mechanism (Castilla & Benard, 2010).

The two lines of workplace research address connected problems. Standards can shift to accommodate a preference, and an assurance of fairness can coexist with unequal rewards for comparable performance. For our promoted employee, the relevant questions concern both the criteria used to recognize competence and the reward attached to that recognition. Good intentions alone cannot answer either question (Uhlmann & Cohen, 2005; Castilla & Benard, 2010).

When Achievement Becomes a Judgment of Worth

Judging What Others Deserve

There is a consequential step between saying that someone performed well and saying that they deserve every advantage they possess. There is another between recognizing poor performance and concluding that the person deserves hardship. Norman Feather’s review shows how deservingness judgments depend on perceived responsibility, personal values, group membership, and liking. What feels like a neutral appraisal may also carry the observer’s assumptions about whose difficulties count (Feather, 1999).

Bernard Weiner’s attributional theory helps explain why our explanation for an outcome matters. We ask whether the cause lies within the person or the situation, whether it is likely to last, and whether the person could control it. A failure blamed on too little effort may draw anger; a failure linked to an unavoidable barrier may draw sympathy. These explanations influence feelings such as guilt, shame, and compassion, even when our account of what happened is mistaken (Weiner, 1985).

The need to see the world as just can also influence how suffering is explained. Carolyn Hafer and Laurent Bègue review research in which threats to a just-world belief sometimes prompted helping and sometimes negative judgments of an innocent victim. The response depended on the conditions. Just-world belief is distinct from meritocracy, but it helps illuminate the temptation to make another person’s hardship seem deserved rather than confront an unfair outcome (Hafer & Bègue, 2005).

Achievement and Contingent Self-Worth

The same movement from outcome to worth can turn inward. A disappointment may feel larger than the lost opportunity: it may seem to reveal what kind of person we are. Jennifer Crocker and Katherine Knight describe contingencies of self-worth as the domains in which people believe they must succeed, or meet a standard, to feel valuable. These investments can motivate effort while also creating vulnerability to failure (Crocker & Knight, 2005).

Their review describes students whose self-esteem rose and fell more strongly with academic outcomes when they had invested their worth in academic success. If the task becomes a test of whether one is worthy, protecting that judgment can compete with learning. The review draws substantially on student research; it does not establish that meritocratic beliefs caused these patterns (Crocker & Knight, 2005).

This distinction helps us ask a more personal question about the promotion: can the employee enjoy the achievement without needing it to certify their value? Work can matter deeply without every evaluation becoming a judgment on the whole self. The ethical position taken here is that dignity should not depend on occupational prestige or income. Young and Littler offer reasons to question that conversion of rank into human worth (Young, 1958/1994; Littler, 2018).

Effort and Fairness Within Unequal Opportunities

Preserving Personal and Collective Agency

Recognizing constraints need not require surrendering agency. Albert Bandura described self-efficacy as a judgment about one’s capability to carry out a course of action. Such judgments influence what people attempt, how they persist, and how they respond to difficulty. Being able to perform an action, however, is different from controlling every condition that determines its eventual reward (Bandura, 1982).

For someone facing a setback, a useful reflection might separate what can be practiced from what requires support or institutional change. An employee may need further training, but may also need access to assignments through which competence becomes visible. Asking about both skill and access keeps improvement grounded in the situation. It avoids making confidence carry a burden that belongs partly to opportunity.

Bandura also discussed collective efficacy and the difficulty of changing social conditions through coordinated action. Effort can take a shared form: people may work to improve the circumstances in which their own and others’ abilities develop. This is where Littler’s criticism of the ladder of opportunity adds depth. A society can ask how particular individuals advance and also how the conditions of ordinary life might improve for everyone (Bandura, 1982; Littler, 2018).

Making Fairness Reviewable

For people making evaluations, the clearest research-based starting point in the studies discussed here is to establish relevant criteria before reviewing candidates. Uhlmann and Cohen support that practice within their experimental setting. Recording the reasons for a decision and examining whether comparable performances receive comparable rewards are reasonable practical extensions. These are ways to make a fairness claim open to scrutiny, rather than a comprehensive intervention shown here to eliminate workplace inequality (Uhlmann & Cohen, 2005; Castilla & Benard, 2010).

Merit is also only one consideration in deciding what is fair. Son Hing and colleagues distinguish equity, equality, and need as principles of distribution. A bonus might recognize contribution; access to a shared discussion might emphasize equal participation; additional learning support might respond to need. These examples illustrate why the purpose of an allocation matters. Competence-based selection cannot settle every question about the resources people should receive (Son Hing et al., 2011).

Returning to the promotion with these questions allows a fuller conversation. The employee’s skill can be recognized, the evaluation can be examined, and the reward can be considered without treating any one of these judgments as a complete account of a person’s life. Supporting effort and examining its conditions become connected responsibilities.

A Few Words by Psychology Fanatic

Return to the promotion and the years of effort behind it. Remembering the people and circumstances that helped does not diminish the work. It gives the achievement a fuller history. There may be gratitude alongside pride, and a clearer sense of what we can offer someone whose abilities have not yet had the same chance to become visible.

The harder act may be extending that curiosity to a person whose life looks very different from our own. We rarely see the whole history behind a reward or a disappointment. Before turning an outcome into a verdict about a person, we can leave room for what we do not know. Fair recognition begins with taking both the effort and the life around it seriously.

Associated Concepts

• Self-Efficacy: Beliefs about capability to carry out a task, influencing effort and persistence.
• The Bootstrap Myth: The belief that effort alone explains success, overlooking unequal resources and opportunities.
• Deservingness Heuristic: A shortcut for judging who merits an outcome, shaped by perceived responsibility, values, and relationships.
• Belief in a Just World: The belief that people generally receive outcomes they deserve; distinct from merit preferences.
• Contingent Self-Worth: Personal value made dependent on success or approval in particular areas of life.
• Outcome Bias: Knowing a result can alter judgments about the decision that produced it.
• Social Mobility: Movement between socioeconomic positions, distinct from beliefs about how easily it occurs.

References

Bandura, Albert (1982). Self-Efficacy Mechanism in Human Agency. American Psychologist, 37(2), 122–147. DOI: 10.1037/0003-066X.37.2.122.
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Baron, Jonathan; Hershey, John C. (1988). Outcome Bias in Decision Evaluation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(4), 569–579. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.54.4.569.
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Castilla, Emilio J.; Benard, Stephen (2010). The Paradox of Meritocracy in Organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 55(4), 543–576. DOI: 10.2189/asqu.2010.55.4.543.
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Chetty, Raj; Hendren, Nathaniel (2018). The Impacts of Neighborhoods on Intergenerational Mobility I: Childhood Exposure Effects. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 133(3), 1107–1162. DOI: 10.1093/qje/qjy007.
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Crocker, Jennifer; Knight, Katherine M. (2005). Contingencies of Self-Worth. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(4), 200–203. DOI: 10.1111/j.0963-7214.2005.00364.x.
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Feather, Norman T. (1999). Judgments of Deservingness: Studies in the Psychology of Justice and Achievement. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3(2), 86–107. DOI: 10.1207/s15327957pspr0302_1.
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Hadden, Ian R.; Darnon, Céline; Doyle, Lewis; Easterbrook, Matthew J.; Goudeau, Sébastien; Cimpian, Andrei (2025). Why the Belief in Meritocracy Is So Pervasive. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 29(2), 101–104. DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2024.12.008.
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Hafer, Carolyn L.; Bègue, Laurent (2005). Experimental Research on Just-World Theory: Problems, Developments, and Future Challenges. Psychological Bulletin, 131(1), 128–167. DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.131.1.128.
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Kraus, Michael W.; Tan, Jacinth J. X. (2015). Americans Overestimate Social Class Mobility. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 58, 101–111. DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2015.01.005.
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Littler, Jo (2018). Against Meritocracy: Culture, Power and Myths of Mobility. Routledge. ISBN: 9781138889552; DOI: 10.4324/9781315712802.
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Son Hing, Leanne S.; Bobocel, D. Ramona; Zanna, Mark P.; Garcia, Donna M.; Gee, Stephanie S.; Orazietti, Katie (2011). The Merit of Meritocracy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(3), 433–450. DOI: 10.1037/a0024618.
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Uhlmann, Eric Luis; Cohen, Geoffrey L. (2005). Constructed Criteria: Redefining Merit to Justify Discrimination. Psychological Science, 16(6), 474–480. DOI: 10.1111/j.0956-7976.2005.01559.x.
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Weiner, Bernard (1985). An Attributional Theory of Achievement Motivation and Emotion. Psychological Review, 92(4), 548–573. DOI: 10.1037/0033-295X.92.4.548.
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Young, Michael (1994). The Rise of the Meritocracy. Transaction Publishers. Original work published 1958. ISBN: 9781560007043.
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