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Abstract Does believing that “effort doesn't pay” in society shape how people view dishonest‐illegal transgressions? Across five studies, we show that when people view societal success as non‐meritocratic—that is, more dependent on luck and circumstances than on hard work—they are more lenient in their moral judgements of dishonest‐illegal transgressions. Perceiving society as non‐meritocratic predicted greater justifiability of dishonest‐illegal transgressions in the United States (Study 2), and across 42 countries ( N = 49,574; Study 1). And inducing participants to view society as non‐meritocratic increased justifiability of others' dishonest‐illegal transgressions, via greater feelings of sympathy (Studies 3 and 4). Next, we investigated the contours of these effects. Perceiving societal success as non‐meritocratic rather than based on hard work causes people to view dishonest‐illegal transgressions as more justifiable if they are perpetrated by the poor, but not the rich (Study 4), and if the dishonest‐illegal transgressions are related to economic striving, such as money laundering and dealing illegal drugs (Study 5). In sum, when people see a social system as unfair, they show greater tolerance for dishonest‐illegal transgressions perpetrated to circumvent the system.
Koo et al. (Fri,) studied this question.