Meritocracy in Brazil, China and USA: identifying inconsistencies in the Preference for the Merit Principle Scale through Exploratory Graph Analysis.

Abstract

The belief that individuals should be rewarded according to merit for their effort and talent has become increasingly widespread, yet efforts to measure it remain contested. Meritocracy has been conceptualized both as an ideology that justifies inequality and as an ideal of distributive justice, with some studies emphasizing its descriptive nature, whether it is perceived as existing in society. Others analyze it as prescriptive, framing it as a desirable social norm. This study focuses on the Preference for the Merit Principle (PMP), the most widely used prescriptive measure of meritocracy. It demonstrates that its assumed unidimensionality, encompassing the principles of equity, equality, and need, is untenable across sociocultural contexts. To that end, we compared the dimensionality and internal consistency of the PMP across three national samples using Exploratory Graph Analysis (EGA): a prototypically WEIRD country (United States), a non-WEIRD BRICS country (China), and our own sample of 136 Brazilian university students. Results consistently favored multifactorial over unidimensional structures across all three countries, with greater heterogeneity observed in the non-WEIRD samples. In the Brazilian sample, four unstable dimensions were identified: Need (reverse), Equity, Equality (reverse), and Competitive Equity. Criterion validity analyses revealed divergent and contradictory associations: equity was negatively associated with hierarchical beliefs, whereas denial of Need showed a marginal negative association with support for affirmative action policies. Given the low reliability of some PMP dimensions, these results should be interpreted with caution. These findings urge greater caution in applying the PMP across sociocultural contexts and call for treating prescriptive meritocracy as a multidimensional, contextually embedded belief system.