Samuel Stouffer and Relative Deprivation

2015/02/06 by Thomas F. Pettigrew
Health Professions · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Community Health and Development #Law #Political science #Prosocial behavior #Psychology #Relative deprivation #Resentment #Social and Cultural Dynamics #Social and Intergroup Psychology #Social psychology #Sociology

paper · doi:10.1177/0190272514566793

crossref issued 2015/02/06 · crossref published 2015/02/06 · crossref published-online 2015/02/06 · openalex publication_date 2015/02/06 · crossref created 2015/02/07 · crossref published-print 2015/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref deposited 2026/05/01 · crossref indexed 2026/07/31 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

This paper first offers a tribute to Samuel Stouffer (1900–1960), a major contributor to social psychology. He helped to establish probability surveys as a useful method for social science, led three major studies at midcentury, and introduced important new concepts and statistical methods. Thus, both conceptually and methodologically, he shaped modern social psychology. Second, the paper revitalizes Stouffer’s most famous concept—relative deprivation. A new meta-analysis demonstrates that relative deprivation predicts a wide range of important outcomes, so long as it measures resentment with data from individuals and is paired with dependent variables of similar scope. Unfortunately, sociology largely abandoned the concept because it failed to meet the overstated early claims made for it in the collective protest domain. The history of this use and disuse of relative deprivation is summarized and critiqued.

Citations

• A model of egoistical relative deprivation.
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