The Meritocratic Illusion: Inequality and the Cognitive Basis of Redistribution

Arthur Blouin, Anandi Mani (), Sharun Mukand () and Daniel Sgroi ()
Additional contact information
Arthur Blouin: University of Toronto
Anandi Mani: University of Oxford
Sharun Mukand: University of Warwick
Daniel Sgroi: University of Warwick

No 17180, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Can inequality in rewards result in an erosion in broad-based support for meritocratic norms? We hypothesize that unequal rewards between the successful and the rest, drives a cognitive gap in their meritocratic beliefs, and hence their social preferences for redistribution. Two separate experiments (one in the UK and the other in the USA) show that the elite develop and maintain "meritocratic bias" in the redistributive taxes they propose, even when not applied to their own income: lower taxes on the rich and fewer transfers to the poor, including those who failed despite high effort. These social preferences at least partially reflect a selfserving meritocratic illusion that their own high income was deserved. A Wason Card task confirms that individuals maintain their illusion of being meritocratic, by not expending cognitive effort to process information that may undermine their self-image even when incentivized to do otherwise.

Keywords: inequality; meritocracy; redistribution; populism; motivated reasoning; social preferences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D63 D82 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 55 pages
Date: 2024-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-ltv and nep-neu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp17180.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17180

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().