Samuel Stouffer and Relative Deprivation

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, bo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social psychology quarterly 2015-03, Vol.78 (1), p.7-24
Main Author: Pettigrew, Thomas F.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Deprivation
History
Hostility
Meta-analysis
Personal profiles
Political protests
Prejudices
Probability
Protestantism
Psychology
Relative Deprivation
Resentment
Social comparison
Social movements
Social Psychology
Social research
Social Science Research
Social sciences
Social theories
Sociology
Soldiers
Statistical methods
Stouffer, Samuel
Stouffer, Samuel Andrew (1900-1960)
Systematic review
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Summary: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.
ISSN:0190-2725
1939-8999
DOI:10.1177/0190272514566793