Meritocracies get their start at your local high school

By Casey Johnston

If we ever develop meritocratic views, we are most likely to get them in our adolescence, according to a study published in Science last Thursday. When researchers had kids of various ages divide resources they had earned with partners, the children tended to divide them equally, while older teenagers were more likely to divide the resources depending on what they felt each party had earned.

To humans, fairness often involves consideration of circumstances. For example, if someone at work is more productive, many people would consider it fair for him to be paid more money, though he has no more need or rank than his colleagues. It's not obvious how this evaluation process enters the fairness equation, and researchers have wondered how and when we start to take things like effort into account.

To study this, they set up a game where teams of children in grades five through twelve were given access to two websites. One allowed them to earn credits by completing tasks, an analogue of hard work, and the other let them play games or watch videos. At the end of each round, each pair of kids was awarded either 8¢ or 4¢ for each credit he earned, a measure that introduced an element of luck.

The researchers then added the pairs' earnings together, and asked one of the kids to divide the money between them. They found that kids in fifth grade tended to be more egalitarian, dividing the money equally regardless of how much either had earned.

However, meritocratic views began to sneak in as the subjects' age increased: older adolescents not only gave partners less money for earning less, but also awarded themselves less when they had not been as productive. There was also a small but steady number of what the researchers termed "libertarian" subjects, who divided the money exactly as it had been paid out, without considering the aspect of luck.

Based on this study, most people seem to gain the ability to judge fairness based on relevant criteria (how hard someone worked) while ignoring irrelevant criteria (whether the person was lucky enough to receive the higher payout) through age and experience. Unless they're "libertarians," in which case, everyone's playing the hand he or she is dealt.