Belief in a diversity–meritocracy trade-off.

Organizations and academic institutions often pursue two goals in their selection processes: They seek to uphold a meritocracy wherein the "best" candidates are selected and to increase the diversity of their workforces and student bodies. Across four large, preregistered experiments (N = 5,805) in laboratory and field settings, we theorize a belief in a diversity-meritocracy trade-off-that efforts to promote diversity in selection processes undermine a meritocracy. Using nationall