‘To succeed at work, you just need to work hard’: How beliefs in professional meritocracy serve to blame unemployed people - Archive ouverte HAL Accéder directement au contenu
Article Dans Une Revue Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology Année : 2023

‘To succeed at work, you just need to work hard’: How beliefs in professional meritocracy serve to blame unemployed people

Résumé

Abstract Unemployed people constitute a stigmatized group. They are perceived as lazy hucksters who could find a job if they just really tried. The aim of the present work was to identify mechanisms underlying this negative perception of unemployment in the context of intergroup relationships. Specifically, we focused on the influence of meritocratic beliefs on the tendency to attribute unemployment to the unemployed individuals themselves. In three experimental studies, participants had to explain the situation of a person presented either as ‘working’ or as ‘looking for a job’. Before this task and in an ostensible unrelated study, meritocratic beliefs were measured. Results showed that participants high in meritocratic beliefs explained unemployment less externally and more internally than participants low in meritocratic beliefs. Interestingly, these differences in causal attributions between high and low meritocratic believers appeared specifically for unemployment in Studies 1 and 2. Taken together, these results suggest that high meritocratic believers tend to consider that unemployed individuals are responsible for their unfortunate situation and have only themselves to blame. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement .

Domaines

Psychologie

Dates et versions

hal-04334657 , version 1 (11-12-2023)

Identifiants

Citer

Charlotte Rauscher, Eva Louvet, David Bourguignon. ‘To succeed at work, you just need to work hard’: How beliefs in professional meritocracy serve to blame unemployed people. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 2023, 34 (1), pp.e2762. ⟨10.1002/casp.2762⟩. ⟨hal-04334657⟩
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