UC Berkeley

People in the U.S. generally overestimate racial economic equality in contemporary society. A growing body of research suggests that the belief that the world is fair and just—i.e., belief in societal fairness—is a reliable predictor of the magnitude of these overestimates. The present work examined whether disrupting individuals' belief in the meritocratic opportunity structure in the U.S., via exposure to evidence of rising economic inequality, can subsequently reduce their tendency to overestimate contemporary racial economic equality. Across four studies (N = 4512), including one high-powered, pre-registered replication with a nationally representative sample, we found that reminding people of rising societal economic inequality, compared with control information, led them to generate more accurate estimates of the current state of racial income and wealth equality (Studies 1–4). Further, restoring individuals' faith in U.S. meritocracy by informing them that social mobility in the country is still possible, despite rising economic inequality, reduced the effect of rising inequality information on racial wealth gap perceptions (Studies 3 and 4). We discuss the implications of our findings for both theory and social policy.