Abstract
Previous research suggests there is a “paradox of meritocracy. I hypothesized that there will be a bias in favor of men over women when there is equitable performance within an organization. In addition, Gully et al. (2003) posits that if pay for performance is applied in an inconsistent manner due to individual and cultural differences, problems may arise regarding equity and perceptions of justice. Therefore, I hypothesized that students scoring high on the competition portion of the AICS will display greater effect on the paradox of meritocracy. Participants in the study completed tasks that evaluated employees in a fictional company and the AICS was used to identify high “compete” scores. Results indicated there were observed gender biases with hiring decisions, bonus allocations, promotional recommendations, and evaluations of termination. There were no observable effects of those who scored higher on the “competition” portion of the AICS and the paradox of meritocracy.