Relative Deprivation

Watts suburb of Los Angeles in 1965

Perceived injustice of the arrest of 3 black family members

High casualties, fatalities and property damage

Military restoration of order

→ Notably high level of unemployment/deprivation in African-American communities 

South Central Los Angeles in 1992

Rioting directly in response to the jury acquittal of 4 white policemen for the beating of Rodney King

Rising unemployment and deep disadvantage in black communities

High casualties and fatalities, $1 billion in property damage

Berkowitz, 1972

Collective Violence Model

Relative deprivation → Frustration → Aversive environment → Further frustration → Individual acts of aggression → Exacerbation by aggressive stimuli → Widespread aggression → Dominant response → Collective violence 

Perhaps overly critical of group protests and exaggerates effects of hot weather 

Davies, 1969

J-Curve hypothesis

Sharp decline in a trend – relative deprivation may be experienced at times of rapid economic decline

Relative deprivation as a function of perceived discrepancies between personal and economic wealth 

Runciman, 1966

Difference between egoistic relative deprivation (I have less) vs fraternalistic or group relative deprivation (we have less) 

Crosby, 1982

Egoistic and Fraternalistic types of relative deprivation are orthogonal

Bianchi et al, 2018

During economic downturns, whites felt less warmly about blacks

Held more negative attitudes explicitly and implicitly about black people

More likely condoned the use of stereotypes

Were more willing to regard inequality between groups as natural and acceptable 

Macdougall, 2020

Those in greater states of deprivation more likely to vote to leave European Union 

Greater motivation by threat and British (ingroup) identification)

Obaidi, 2020

The experience of relative deprivation can explain contemporary forms of violent extremism

1. Low-power groups’ violent attempts to challenge unequal status quo

2. High-power groups’ violent defense of privileged position

3. People’s violent attempts to help out-groups in need. 

Obaidi et al, 2019

Western-born Muslims are vulnerable to relative deprivation perceptions 

Score higher on extremism predictors 

Mediation analysis shows relative deprivation accounts for these differences

Gurney & Tierney, 1982 

Critiques classic studies by arguing there are too many conceptual and theoretical limitations for the theory to be useful

Marjane Satrapi

The difference between us is not as big as the difference between me and my government and you and your government.