University of Hypocrisy
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/college-admissions-wealth-ivy-league-meritocracy/671618/
Evan Mandery notes:
System justification is the idea that people tend to defend not only their individual actions but also the social, economic, and political systems to which they belong—even if these systems work to their detriment.
This is the opposite of what economists and political scientists normally argue happens. Consider how people react to income inequality. The leading rational-choice model holds that as income inequality increases, more voters will support redistributive tax policies and vote accordingly. Son Hing’s research suggests that the opposite is true. As inequality rises, people become less accurate in their estimates of how much inequality exists. More important, they adjust their perception of what they think is fair. Indeed, survey data show that as the wage gap between low- and high-wage earners exploded in the United States from 1987 to 1999, people widened their judgment of what difference was appropriate. This sets in motion a vicious cycle. The more inequality exists, the more likely people are to believe that society operates meritocratically.
People tend to fall prey to the “just-world hypothesis,” a bias toward believing that the world operates fairly. “It’s hard to have no sense of control,” Son Hing told me, “and to believe that the odds are stacked against you.” So when something bad happens to someone, we tend to search for explanations about why they deserved their fate.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/college-admissions-wealth-ivy-league-meritocracy/671618/
Evan Mandery notes:
System justification is the idea that people tend to defend not only their individual actions but also the social, economic, and political systems to which they belong—even if these systems work to their detriment.
This is the opposite of what economists and political scientists normally argue happens. Consider how people react to income inequality. The leading rational-choice model holds that as income inequality increases, more voters will support redistributive tax policies and vote accordingly. Son Hing’s research suggests that the opposite is true. As inequality rises, people become less accurate in their estimates of how much inequality exists. More important, they adjust their perception of what they think is fair. Indeed, survey data show that as the wage gap between low- and high-wage earners exploded in the United States from 1987 to 1999, people widened their judgment of what difference was appropriate. This sets in motion a vicious cycle. The more inequality exists, the more likely people are to believe that society operates meritocratically.
People tend to fall prey to the “just-world hypothesis,” a bias toward believing that the world operates fairly. “It’s hard to have no sense of control,” Son Hing told me, “and to believe that the odds are stacked against you.” So when something bad happens to someone, we tend to search for explanations about why they deserved their fate.