An illustration of the Operation of Social Legitimation for ‘Winners’ and ‘Losers’: A Comparison of Accounts of University and Community–College Students in Hong Kong

The theory of self-evaluation suggests that self-evaluation plays a part in social legitimation. This paper seeks to provide a contextualized illustration by comparing accounts of university and community–college students in Hong Kong on their self-evaluation, attribution, and perceived fairness. As the theory suggests, university and community–college students evaluate themselves according to their respective winner and loser positions. But, against what the theory predicts, instead of making a purely internal attribution for their educational success/failure, both university and community–college students seem equally analytical offering a structural analysis of their success/failure. This illustration suggests that social legitimation could actually be mediated through critical, albeit ambivalent, evaluations of the self and the social system and a pragmatic acceptance of the status quo. This leads us to view self-evaluation as a process of social legitimation that deprives individuals of power for imaging a fair system or bringing changes to the existing one.