Unemployment, Relative Deprivation, and Social Protest

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Abstract
A study of a sample of unemployed people is reported in which survey interview data were used to examine the differential effects of different forms of deprivation. Two outcome variables were operationalized: the number of stress symptoms reported by the respondents and the respondents' orientation to social protest. Two different measures of egoistic deprivation (the perceived gap between personal expectations and attainments) and two different measures of fraternalistic deprivation (the perceived gap between ingroup and outgroup attainment) were also obtained. It was hypothesized that the measures of egoistic relative deprivation would predict the number of stress symptoms reported better than would measures of fraternalistic relative deprivation. Conversely, fraternalistic relative deprivation measures were hypothesized to predict protest orientation better than would the egoistic relative deprivation measures. Multiple regression analyses bore out these hypotheses. The results underline the importance of the conceptual distinction between egoistic and fraternalistic relative deprivation for explaining the social behavior of the deprived.