Citation

Greitemeyer T, Sagioglou C. J. Soc. Psychol. 2017; 157(6): 766-776.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/00224545.2017.1288078

PMID

28139176

Abstract

In most Western societies, wealth inequality is increasing, which in turn could increase people's belief that one's standing is relatively disadvantaged. Based on relative deprivation theory, we argue that such an experience of personal relative deprivation should causally lead to greater interpersonal hostility. Indeed, three experiments show that participants in a personal relative deprivation condition reported higher levels of aggressive affect and behaved more aggressively than did participants in a personal relative gratification condition. Compared to a control condition, participants experiencing personal relative deprivation were more aggressive rather than participants experiencing personal relative gratification being less aggressive. However, personal relative deprivation increased aggressive behavior only toward targets that were the source for participants' experience of disadvantage but did not increase aggression toward neutral targets.

Language: en

Keywords

Aggression; personal relative deprivation; personal relative gratification