Shaping Perceived Fairness: Meritocratic Belief, and Inequality Awareness and Gender

• In Event: Social Psychology Section Open Call Paper Session

Abstract

This study examines how meritocratic belief, structural inequality awareness, and gender shape young adults’ perceptions of fairness in education and employment within a highly stratified society. Although prior research links rising inequality to shifts in public attitudes, less is understood about the cognitive pathways through which individuals interpret opportunity structures. Using South Korea as a case marked by rigid mobility and intense competition, this study analyzes nationally representative data from the 2023 Social Integration Survey (N = 2,293) and estimates ordered logit models to assess how attitudinal orientations translate into fairness judgments. Findings show that meritocratic belief strongly and consistently increases perceived fairness across both institutional domains for men and women, underscoring its role as a legitimating schema. Structural inequality awareness, however, produces a gender‑differentiated pattern: it has minimal impact on education fairness but substantially lowers women’s—while slightly raising men’s—fairness perceptions in employment. These results highlight fairness as a contested interpretive terrain where meritocratic and sensitivity to structural barriers collide and where gendered experiences shape how individuals evaluate opportunity. The study underscores the need to integrate belief systems, gender dynamics, and institutional context to understand how people navigate fairness in unequal societies.

Author

• Seungyeon Yang, The Ohio State University