Relative Deprivation

Relative deprivation (RD) is the judgment that one is worse off compared to some standard accompanied by feelings of anger and resentment. Social scientists use RD to predict a wide range of significant outcome variables: collective action, individual achievement and deviance, intergroup attitudes, and physical and mental health. But the results are often weak and inconsistent. The authors draw on a theoretical and meta-analytic review (210 studies composing 293 independent samples, 421 tests, and 186,073 respondents) to present a model that integrates group and individual RD. RD measures that (a) include justice-related affect, (b) match the outcome level of analysis, and (c) use higher quality measures yield…