What's Hard Work Got to Do With It? Investigating Meritocracy Beliefs and Interracial Dialogue

• In Event: Ethnicity and Race in Communication: Top Papers

Abstract

Meritocracy is an important ideological belief recently critiqued for its presumed unidimensional nature. This study investigated how two component parts of this belief- descriptive and prescriptive meritocracy- may be differentially linked to measures of prejudice, social standing, and interracial dialogue. Quantitative survey data were collected from 435 student respondents and confirmed that descriptive and prescriptive meritocracy are connected to multiculturalism in antagonistic ways. Using the comprehensive measure of meritocracy discrepancy this data additionally revealed, that over the course a semester, a diversity class succeeded in cultivating trust in the context of interracial dialogue, and that this success was achieved, in part, by changing student beliefs in meritocracy.

Authors

• Aaron Castelan Cargile, California State U

• Yuping Mao, California State U, Long Beach

• Stacy Young, California State U, Long Beach