ICS Working Papers Nº1/2017

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ICS WORKING PAPERS 2017
manner. To solve this conflict, people seek justifications that allow them to express prejudice
without being publicly or psychologically censored. Thus, the existence of justifications
facilitates the expression of prejudice and meritocracy may serve as one of these justifications
(Crandall & Eshleman, 2003). However, justification is probably not a prerequisite for
meritocracy to have its effect in the case of implicit prejudice. The current effect seems to
reflect more associative processing.
Alternatively, one could construe the effect of meritocracy as an alleviation of the
individual’s automatic tendency to suppress prejudiced associations. In fact, earlier research as
shown that people – with chronic egalitarian goals - are able to suppress the effects of
unwanted implicit associations (Moskowitz, Gollwitzer, Wasel, & Schaal, 1999). It may be the
case that meritocracy temporarily “suppresses the suppression” which results in stronger
levels of implicit prejudice. This alternative explanation is actually concordant with the lack of
implicit prejudice we observed in Study 2 at Time 1 (cf. Figure 2 ). Both the hypothesis that the
facilitation of negative associations derives from inferences caused by the activation of
meritocracy and the idea of an alleviation of a suppression tendency need to be tested more
directly in future research.
In respect to the impact of meritocracy on actual behavior, we would expect such a
link presumably through the changes occurring at the implicit prejudice level. That is,
considering that implicit prejudice is a significant predictor of impulsive behavior (through a
basic affective reaction, Dotsch & Wigboldüs, 2008), we would hypothesize that priming
meritocracy would, indirectly, lead to a more aversive behavioral reaction towards a low-
status group.
The current research further expands on what is known about the malleability of implicit
prejudice by showing that, also the activation of ideas with an a priori positive nature may lead
to socially negative responses such as implicit prejudice. In fact, in trying to understand the
nature of a process we benefit as much from knowing the factors that inhibit it as from
knowing the factors that promote it. This is even more significant when we investigate how a
core value of western societies may carry such aversive effects.
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