Theories of distributive justice highlight different approaches for how people ought to allocate scarce resources. End-result principles advocate strict equality of outcomes while historical principles allow for some inequality depending on how it came about. However, it remains unclear which principles ordinary people follow when making resource distribution decisions. Here, we investigated to what extent online participants followed historical principles in distributive decision-making, focusing on the roles of productivity and luck in resource allocation. We developed a new paradigm in which participants allocated money between two workers whose incomes were unequal due to both their productivity (how much work they initially produced) and luck (financial losses beyond their control). Across five studies, a strong majority of participants followed historical principles in distributive justice decisions. However, participants also varied substantially in how they applied those principles. Sensitivity to luck and productivity were negatively correlated with one another, and prioritizing productivity over luck was correlated with conservative and neoliberal ideology. We identified two groups of participants: a ‘meritocratic’ group who rewarded productivity and ignored the role of luck when distributing resources, and a ‘anti-meritocratic’ group who compensated for bad luck and low productivity in distributive decisions. Making luck more salient in the decision process increased sensitivity to luck in distributive decision-making and eliminated the negative correlation between productivity and luck. Overall, our findings demonstrate that historical principles in distributive decision-making manifest differently across diverse political ideologies, but also can be altered by highlighting hidden factors contributing to inequality.