Relative Deprivation

Historical Background

The term relative deprivation was coined by the U.S. sociologist Samuel Stouffer in the classic American Soldier volumes (1949). Stouffer and his colleagues conducted extensive studies of morale among U.S. troops fighting in Europe in World War II. Their research program was vast, but of primary interest here is a seeming paradox they [Page 695]observed in how satisfied different service units were with their promotion opportunities. Military police faced few prospects of promotion yet were more satisfied with those prospects than were air corpsmen, who had objectively much better prospects of more rapid promotion.

Stouffer and his colleagues suggested that these different levels of satisfaction could be understood as the disappointment of failed high expectations that had been formed though comparisons with others. Servicemen working in units with low rates of promotion were led to have low expectations of success when they themselves applied for promotion, and hence they were not terribly dissatisfied if they missed out on promotion. On the other hand, servicemen working in units with high rates of promotion were led to expect promotion when they applied, and hence they were dissatisfied if they missed out. Ostensibly the same objective outcomefailing to get promotedled to significantly different experiences depending on one's prior expectations, which had been formed by the surrounding social context. Dissatisfaction stemmed from feeling deprived relative to others.

The idea of relative deprivation was similar to several other constructs and minitheories being developed in the social sciences in the postwar years, most notably Robert Merton's concept of reference groups, Harold Kelley's theorizing about comparison level of alternatives, and Leon Festinger's social comparison theory. Theories (or minitheories) about relative deprivation were also being developed, more or less independently, by researchers in social psychology, sociology, and political science.

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