Politische Überzeugungen beeinflussen die Ansichten der Amerikaner über den Zusammenhang zwischen Vielfalt und Verdienst bei der Einstellung. Liberale glauben, dass Diversitätsbemühungen die Chancen erhöhen, die beste Person einzustellen. Konservative glauben, dass Diversitätsbemühungen die Wahrscheinlichkeit verringern, die beste Person einzustellen.

Do Americans Believe Diversity Is the Enemy of Meritocracy?

Research explores belief in a tradeoff between diversity efforts and fairness.

KEY POINTS

Political beliefs affect people’s beliefs about the relationship between diversity and merit in hiring.

Political liberals believe that diversity efforts enhance the opportunity to hire the best person.

Political conservatives believe that diversity efforts hamper the likelihood of hiring the best person.

These results are focused on individuals in the United States.

References

Apfelbaum, E. P., Suh, E. Y., & Wu, Y. (2026). Belief in a diversity–meritocracy trade-off. *Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 131*(1), 1–21. [https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000482](https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/pspa0000482)

https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fpspa0000482

Conservatives are pedophile supporters and dumb so makes sense.

Well conservatives would think that because they’re morons.

Conservatives tend to believe that white people are more intelligent and capable than people of other races even though just looking around you can see it isn’t true.

They used to have to look for qualified people, now they can hire their frat bro. Used to be that frat bro had to be more qualified than any other minority applicant, now you don’t even have to pretend the guy you’re hiring is qualified.

Edit: but what did we expect from a government of reality TV stars and Fox hosts?

Because most conservatives are white cis people and they don’t understand (because they’ve never experienced) systemic inequality

real groundbreaking discoveries here

Because conservatives believe that the best person is always white. Unless they are hiring staff for their country clubs.

I hate to say it, but I think they’re both right. I’ve personally seen people discriminated against for not being a white man. I’ve also seen people discriminated against because they were a white man. For the same position by different people. The biggest issue with the pro-DEI crowd is they are very passionate when it’s about people of color, but you talk about the discrimination against non Chinese or non Indians in the tech industry and suddenly they couldn’t care less. They’re very selective about the demographics they want more representation from and very careful not to alienate the demographics who support them.

Suppose there is a pool of 100 candidates of various ethnicities. Let’s assume that there is a set of objective metrics that can help us rank candidates (job experience, education history, letters of recommendation etc) and that are most likely to signal highest productivity in the job. The best candidate for the job with high probability has the best objective metrics. The only way to pursue „diversity efforts“ is to include ethnicity/race into this set of evaluation metrics, but ethnicity/race is not predictive of future productivity. So, by pursuing diversity efforts we are going to exclude or underweight overrepresented populations. Let’s say in the set of those original 100 candidates, 70 are from the overrepresented majority. Those supporting diversity efforts will find the best candidate among the 30 eligible „diverse“ candidates. Those not supporting diversity efforts will look for best candidate among the full 100 candidate pool. It is a trivial mathematical fact that the maximum objective metric for the 100-candidate-pool will be at least as large as that for the constrained „diverse“ 30 person subpool. Beliefs are not important, but logic is.

I have two different experiences with „diversity hires“ and how a name can gate keep which honestly seems bizarre in tech and finance. My friend from college, born in the US, first gen and super American to the point he gets a little embarrassed going to Greenpoint, Brooklyn and hoping no one asks if he speaks Polish, was asked in an interview for a computer engineer and programmer position by a man who has one of those very landed gentry sort of English names if he ACTUALLY was a citizen (his name was essentially the John Smith of Poland at the time) and that they don’t want to handle someone’s visa.

Another time I was in an uber pool with a black woman, who was also first gen with an accent that could make her a reporter on American television, was complaining on the phone to her friend about not even getting that first interview/getting the same treatment that my white friend got even though she was qualified AF for her software engineering job because she had a very African name (there’s a lot more to get into with simply being a woman in this environment AND a woman of colour). She was lamenting about actually changing her name for applications just so she could get a job.

It was heart breaking and infuriating. I have a very unique „foreign“ last name but my first name is generic and one of the most popular names for girls since the 70s until about the 90s in the US and I’m a 4th/5th generation white American.

Folks, the study is asking about diversity *efforts*, not diversity itself. The racism prevalent among conservatives makes this easy to flatten, but the topic of disagreement is not so black and white. Efforts require methodology and if the methodology is bad, then it could negatively impact meritocracy. Do they? I don’t know. But there are plenty of people low in racism who likely think the method of increasing diversity reduces meritocracy, where they would be more supportive of a different method if they believed it improved meritocracy and diversity. Likewise, lots of people blindly assume any effort is good for meritocracy, when it’s not so simple.

That’s a lot of words to say: Conservatives are bigots.

„The only way we can win by merit is if everyone else is disqualified.“

I see..

Meanwhile, the most racist administration in modern history, who hired people entirely based on race, or occasionally based on overwhelming sycophancy (Patel), has objectively the least qualified people running every agency, and demonstrated repeatedly that 98 percent of everthing they do is sheer idiocy.

I guarantee there is a trans/gay/black/brown/POC person more qualified than everyone they’ve put in charge. Not saying in every case it would be the most qualified person, but definitely more qualified than what Trump has put in place.

Racism and bigotry are objectively stupid. Ignorance ignores/minimizes so much relevant information about a person’s capabilities.

The most powerful country in the world doce the past 100 years is probably the most, or one of the most diverse, with the significantly more rights given to women and racial/religious/ethnic minorities.