Pay Inequality and the Perception of Injustice: A Relative Deprivation Perspective

Fraternal deprivation research has attempted, and often failed, to find a strong positive association between system characteristics, such as economic or racial inequality, and behavior, such as riot participation. This research has relied on inferences about, rather than measures of, the psychological variables which are central to relative deprivation theory: freely selected comparative referents and feelings of deprivation. In the present study, the magnitude of inequality between and within an advantaged (management) and a disadvantaged (blue-collar) group was manipulated. Subjects in the disadvantaged group, exposed to a large, rather than a small, amount of pay inequality between the groups, freely selected upward, dissimilar comparisons to members of the advantaged group and found these comparisons to be dissatisfying and unjust—the indicators of fraternal deprivation. The implications of these results, for relative deprivation and social comparison theories, were discussed.