近年來臺灣貧富差距的擴大與各類社會不平等的現象層出不窮，導致臺灣民眾的意識形態認同產生變化。過去學者曾嘗試找出其中的緣由，發現功績主義的弱化、相對剝奪感的增強以及主觀社會地位認知的變化正代表著此一趨勢的具體展現。為了釐清此趨勢真正的樣貌，本研究將使用臺灣社會變遷基本調查2015年七期一次綜合組問卷之資料，探討功績主義、相對剝奪感，以及主觀社會地位三者之間可能存在的關聯，以期能找出臺灣民眾在面對不平等的社會環境時，內在感受與自我認同變化之間存在的關聯性。而本研究發現臺灣民眾的功績主義認同確實正逐漸弱化，同時相對剝奪感也持續提高，這些現象背後的成因顯然與臺灣的社會不平等結構逐漸深化有強烈的因果關係。在三者的關係上，在控制客觀階級、社交網路規模以及個人背景因素的影響後，功績主義的認同能有效減緩相對剝奪感；相對剝奪感則會顯著降低個人的主觀社會地位認知，但對於非技術工人而言此效果是較小的；最後，功績主義的認同將有助於提高主觀社會地位的認知。總之，臺灣民眾確實因為日漸深刻的社會不平等而感到失望，這些感受與認同不僅受到客觀環境影響，亦是受到自身內在的價值觀與意識型態左右。 For the past few years, the social inequality in Taiwan has become been a serious social problem. Scholars claimed that the weakening belief in meritocracy, exacerbating relative deprivation, and changing subjective social status are associated with Taiwan’s social inequality. Using data from Taiwan Social Change Survey, we employ ANOVA and OLS to investigate Taiwan’s social inequality and estimate the effects of these key variables. According to our data analyses, the empirical results show that belief in meritocracy is diminishing and relative deprivation is worsening gradually and we believe that they are associated with the structure of social inequality in Taiwan. Further, after controlling the objective class, social network, and other personal background factors, belief in meritocracy will mitigate relative deprivation; relative deprivation will reduce subjective social status but this effect is not too significant for unskilled laborers; and belief in meritocracy will promote subjective social status. In sum, we argue that people feel upset for the worsening social inequality, not only affected by external objective factors, but also influenced by internal value judgments and ideologies.
