Meritocracy: A terrific tyranny?

Has the aristocracy of inherited privilege given way to a meritocratic elite?

Somewhere in the world, separated by geography and circumstance, two children are born. It is entirely possible that one of them will be far more successful than the other, thanks to the additive effects of hundreds of little accidents of birth that would rig the game of life in one of their’s favour.

Imagine, for a second, that the country the children were born in was a monarchy, and one of them was born into the royal family. Immediately and automatically, the playing field would become so uneven that the child born into a ‘common’ family would have no chance of competing.

Now imagine that one of them belonged to a group that was historically downtrodden — perhaps they belonged to a lower caste, or to a race that was considered inferior. Once again, the scales have tipped at birth — for no fault of theirs, this child will in all likelihood have a less successful life than their counterpart.

Evidently, both these children deserve an equal chance at having a happy and successful life. This is part of the reason why it is generally agreed that aristocratic or plutocratic systems are less than ideal.

The assumption, and one that most of us buy into, is that, rather than accidents of birth, our merit should dictate whether we are successful or not. While this might sound great in theory, the truth is that a meritocracy has its own failings too and it is important for us to recognise these failings if we aspire to be a just society.

In an actor’s roundtable in 2020, Ananya Pandey, actor Chunkey Pandey’s daughter, spoke about how “everyone has their own journey and their own struggle” when asked about nepotism within the industry. Siddhanth Chaturvedi, then an upcoming actor without an influential family background, countered her argument in a way that instantly resonated with people on social media. He said, “jahaan humare sapne poore hote hain, wahin inka struggle shuru hota hai (their struggle begins where our dreams are fulfilled).”

This sentiment was something that people across India seemed to connect with, and Chaturvedi became an instant poster boy for speaking out against an unfair system.

Where meritocracy fails us

Wanting merit rather than circumstance to guide success is not a recent idea by any means. Ancient philosophers across the world have spoken about how people who were virtuous and of high ability should be the ones to govern a society.

At first glance then, meritocracy seems like the ideal antidote to societies like monarchies or caste-based hierarchies, given that talent and effort seem to guide success. We all like to feel that we have risen to the top due to our own efforts, and we conveniently disregard the effect that luck and circumstance play in the journey.

In response to a question about how important hard work is to get ahead in life, 84 per cent of respondents in the British Social Attitudes Survey of 2009 said it was either essential or very important. However, only 14 per cent and 31 per cent of the respondents thought that having a wealthy family or well-educated parents played an important role respectively. Similar sentiments seem to echo around the world — nearly two-thirds of Americans were found to agree with the statement “people are rewarded for intelligence and skill”.

But the data suggests a different story. At top universities in America, including five in the Ivy League, more students were found to come from the top one per cent of the income bracket than from the entire bottom 60 per cent combined. I would guess that this is not very different in India, although I could not get my hands on similar data.

Even when it comes to competitive examinations like the SAT, the scores of students are highly correlated to family income. The richer a student’s family, the higher their SAT scores are. Not just this, but students who score the highest are also usually from families where both parents have college degrees.

While this might be true of high school scores as well, tests like the SAT and possibly competitive entrance exams in India, seem particularly vulnerable to the effects of parental income. This is, at least in part, due to the fact that these competitive exams are more “coachable” than high school test scores seem to be. In the US, as in India, several industries have cropped up to boost the chances of children whose parents can afford to spend on private coaching.

In the words of Harvard professor Michael J Sandel, who wrote the book ‘The Tyranny of Merit’, “the aristocracy of inherited privilege has given way to a meritocratic elite that is now as privileged and entrenched as the one it replaced.”

All this is not to bring into question the talent and hard work of people who are successful. It is just to say that the line between merit and success is not as uncomplicated and straightforward a one as we generally assume.

A question of paradox

Ironically then, meritocracy seems to have fallen into the trap that it was designed to avoid.

Daniel Markovits, Professor at Yale Law School, who wrote the book The Meritocracy Trap, has spoken at length about what meritocracy was initially designed to overcome. For one, he says, if people were rewarded for their efforts and talent rather than their breeding, the assumption was that we would have a more capable elite. Secondly, the appeal of a meritocracy was that it would open up wealth and power to more people than a traditional aristocracy would. Opening up opportunities based on fair competition seemed like a great idea, and one that Markovits says did work to a certain extent when it was first established in the US.

With time, however, the returns from meritocracy started diminishing — the concept, which initially helped universities like Yale become less of a breeding ground for the wealthy and more of a level playing field, essentially created a new elite. And one that was extremely effective at consolidating their advantages in society. Rather than operate on the aristocratic assumption that their children would automatically receive generational wealth, the new beneficiaries of the meritocracy were extremely motivated about educating their children and training them to be successful in a meritocratic system.

Another change that helped consolidate meritocrats’ hold over society was that the kinds of jobs that were getting created and were the most lucrative were the ones that were tailored to the new elite. Today, the advantages of an elite education transcend financial benefits — the boost in status that higher education from an elite university provides a student is unmatched. This is why parents are willing to pay inordinate sums of money and employ illicit means to get their children admitted to an elite university.

Unfortunately, meritocracy has also had the unwelcome side effect of making only some kinds of jobs worthy of a “high status”. Around the world, this has led to deep resentment by the masses against the elite. A higher education, boosted by the belief that we deserve the rewards that it gives us, has the potential to make us look down upon those less educated than us. And indeed, this is what studies have found. People with a college degree have been found to have more bias against less-educated people than against other disfavoured groups.

A belief in meritocracy doesn’t just create a sense of arrogance in the winners, but also a deep sense of humiliation in those left behind by the system. Interestingly though, as many scholars have recently argued, the meritocratic system has pitfalls for winners as well. People who graduate from the best universities and hold the highest paying jobs are often working themselves to death, and taking a twisted sense of pride in doing so. We are worthy only if we are meritorious, we feel. High schoolers about to make the decision of where to go to college often feel a sense of doom — are they supposed to believe that their entire lives, and indeed, their entire worth, is tied to whether an elite college accepts them? And is this a fair expectation to place on a 16-year-old?

The psychological angle

Research in psychology suggests that a belief in meritocracy causes more selfish and discriminatory behaviour in people, in addition to making them less self-critical. This shouldn’t be surprising, given that believing people are rewarded for their hard work and talent can lead to the immediate assumption that someone who is not successful is either lazy or lacks talent.

There is a strong link between ideas of merit and justice, as was uncovered in a 2014 study on how people view income redistribution during two kinds of games — one that involved luck, and another that involved skill. People who played a game of skill first were found to be less likely to support redistribution of income, as compared to those who played a game of luck.

If believing in meritocracy causes us to be more critical of income redistribution, could thinking about the role that luck plays in our lives have the opposite effect? In his book ‘Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy’, economist Robert H Frank cites a fascinating study by Yuezhou Huo to illustrate just this. In Huo’s study, participants who were asked to think about the role that external factors (such as luck) had to play in something good that had happened in their lives were much more likely to be generous than those who had been asked to think about the role that their own traits or actions had to play.

Merely reflecting on the role that fortune has to play in our lives seems to make us more grateful, and in turn more generous. But in a meritocratic world, it seems almost antithetical to the idea of personal accomplishment and merit to acknowledge the role of external factors such as luck and upbringing.

Scholars are divided as to what might be a better system than a pure meritocracy, but until we have all the answers, it is worth examining meritocracy for what it is — a system that has many flaws, and negative consequences for both the “winners” as well as the “losers” — rather than tell ourselves the lie that success is determined purely by inherent worth.

The author is a neuroscience PhD turned science writer who is fascinated by the workings of the brain and how we can ‘rewire’ it to our advantage.

The Mind’s Eye is a bi-monthly column that explores neuroscience in everyday life.