Relative Deprivation, Powerlessness, and Militancy: The Psychology of Social Protest †.

Psychiatry Interpersonal and Biological Processes

ISSN: 0033-2747 (Print) 1943-281X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/upsy20

Relative Deprivation, Powerlessness, and Militancy: The Psychology of Social Protest Thomas J. Crawford & Murray Naditch To cite this article: Thomas J. Crawford & Murray Naditch (1970) Relative Deprivation, Powerlessness, and Militancy: The Psychology of Social Protest, Psychiatry, 33:2, 208-223, DOI: 10.1080/00332747.1970.11023625 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00332747.1970.11023625

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Thomas

J.

Crawford and Murray Naditch*

T

HE most widely accepted social psychological explanation of recent . increases in Negro American discontent and violent protest is that of frustration stemming from feelings of rellative deprivation. The main purpose of the present paper is to attempt to systematically extend relative deprivation theory in a way that will take into account not only the perceived discrepancy from important goals, but also the perceived means, if lany, for reducing the goal discrepancy.

UNATTAINED GOALS AND CIVIL DISORDER: RELATIVE DEPRIVATION THEORY

First systematically formulated by Stouffer and his colleagues, the major principle of deprivation theory suggests that the important determinant of satisfaction or discontent is not the absolute or "objective" level of achievement or deprivation but is rather the level of achievement or deprivation relative to some standard employed by the individual as a basis of comparison or self-evaluation. Thus Aberle points out that a hunting and gathering tribe may go hungry one day out of four but experience little relative deprivation if the members of the tribe have no expectations for a more adequate diet. On the other hand a multimillionaire who loses all but his last few millions on the stock market may experience a great deal of relative deprivation. Relative deprivation is assigned a major role

among forces seen as fomenting riots in urban black ghettos in the writings of Berkowitz, Conant, Hauser, and Kerner et al. According to the interpretation presented by these writers, urbanization and exposure to the mass media and other "modernizing" experiences, coupled with the early gains of the civil rights movement, produced a high level of aspiration among Negro Americans. The new expectations serve as a standard of comparison against which existing conditions in their lives are evaluated. When the raised aspirations are not fulfilled, or are fulfilled too slowly, relative deprivation and frustration result. Familiar psychological theories of frustration and aggression suggest that the frustration may find an outlet in aggressive antisocial outbursts. A considerable amount of evidence can be marshalled in support of the general hypothesis that relative depri-

• Dr. Crawford (PhD Harvard 69) is a social psychologist in the Department of Psychology of the University of California at Berkeley. Mr. Naditch is completing his doctoral studies in social psychology at the University of Chicago. t An earlier version of this paper was presented to the American Psychological Association meetings in September, 1968. The authors wish to thank M. Brewster Smith and Robert Richard for their comments on earlier drafts of the paper.

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RELATIVE DEPRIVATION, POWERLESSNESS AND MILITANCY

vation increases the propensity for violent, destructive behavior. In a historical review of trends in social and economic conditions immediately prior to a number of revolutions and rebellions, Davies demonstrates that a long period of social and economic growth followed by a sudden sharp setback is a characteristic prerevolutionary pattern. Feirabend and Feirabend attempt to account for intranational violence and instability in terms of frustrationaggression theory. In accord with their hypotheses, a high ratio of aspirationincreasing factors (such as literacy and urbanization) to achievement experiences (represented by GNP, caloric intake per capita, and physicians, telephones, newspapers, and radios per unit of population) was found to be closely associated with internal political and social upheaval. The specific relevance of the relative deprivation hypothesis for understanding Negro American protest has been convincingly argued by Pettigrew (1963) and Geschwender. In their analyses these authors review data from the U.S. Census Bureau and other sources on the changing social and economic conditions of nonwhite Americans. What appear at first glance to be "real gains" for Negro Americans fade into "psychological losses" when they are compared with the standards of the more affluent white majority (Pettigrew, 1964). Pettigrew's "real gainspsychological losses" analysis of five years ago is equally applicable now, despite som.e recent progress in lessening the disparity between white and nonwhite life styles. A 1968 publication of the Bureau of Labor Statistics entitled Recent Trends in Social and Economic Conditions of Negroes in the United States provides figures demonstrating that Negro Americans have made many gains in income, education, occupational status, and other areas in recent years. But these figures can be read from either a black or a white

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perspective. To many white Americans such figures apparently suggest that Negroes should be happy with the progress that is being made. After all, the statistics show, for example, that for the first time the number of Negroes moving into good-paying jobs has been substantial: since 1960 there has been a net increase of 300,000 nonwhite professional and managerial workers. To a black American, however, the more import.ant statistics may be those demonstrating that a nonwhite man is still almQst three times as likely as a white man to be in a low-paying job as a laborer or service worker. A white defender of the status quo may point out that 27 percent of nonwhite families in 1967 had a total income above $8,000double the 1960 proportion. For black people it may be more relevant that in 1967 the median annual family income of Negroes was still only 59 percent of the median annual family income of whites. The "Profile of a Rioter" that emerges from the Kerner Commission review of riot studies adds further support to this line of· argument. The Commission reports that the typical rioter was not a southern migrant but a lifelong resident of the city where. the riot occurred. Although he was somewhat better educated than the average innercity Negro, he was likely to be working in a menial or low-status job as an unskilled worker. It is hardly surprising then that: He feels strongly that he deserves a better job and that he is bM"red from achieving it, not becaus,e of lack of training, ability, or ambition, but because of discrimination by employers. [Kerner et al., p. 129]

The inference that the discontent which stems from an aspirationachievement mismatch predisposes the individual to participate in riots and other aggressive behaviors seems therefore to be plausible and in accord with psychological theories of frustration and aggression. Most of the evidence,


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THOMAS J. eRA WFORD AND MURRAY NADITCH

however, is indirect and inferential. The theory of relative deprivation refers to a subjective feeling, an internal psychological state. According to the theory the individual's subjective feeling of relative deprivation mediates the observed relationship between: (1) a high ratio of aspiration-increasing experiences to objective achievement; and (2) the resultant discontent and violent outbursts. One's confidence in this line of thinking would be strengthened if a more direct relationship between the individual's subjective feeling of relative deprivation and his proviolence beliefs and behavioral dispositions could be demonstrated. A simple, easily administered instrument developed by Cantril, the SelfAnchoring Striving Scale, provides a quantitative measure of relative deprivation in the form of the subjective distance or number of ladder steps separating the individual's perception of his present life style from his conception of the ideal life for himself. Using a device similar to the Cantril ladder scale, Parker and Kleiner found that mental illness in an urban Negro community was related to "goal-striving stress score," a composite measure that includes the discrepancy between perception of actual achievement and level of aspiration. By generalization from the Parker and Kleiner results one might argue that the stress accompanying a large "want-get" gap would also manifest itself in other forms of frustration-produced "deviance," such as participation in and support for riots. Indeed, this is what Bowen et al. found in a survey conducted in predominantly Negro sections of Cleveland in the spring of 1967, six months after the Hough riot. Using both the Cantril scale and a number of political protest questions that were later grouped through factor analysis into a single index of protest attitudes, they found that: TndividllalR who pflrcflivfl the greateRt gap

between the position they currently occupy and the top rung on the ladder, representing the!ir best possible life, are those who are most likely to view unconventional forms of political activity with the greatest favor. They are, in short, likely to rank higher on the protest index than those for whom the gap is not as great. [Bowen et aJ.,p.21]

The study reported below, conceived independently of the Bowen et al. proj ect, is similar in general design, and provides another test of the hypothesis that feelings of relative deprivation on the part of northern urban Negro Americans are associated with a propensity for racial militancy and violent protest. The Detroit Survey!

An interview schedule containing the Self-Anchoring Striving Scale and a number of attitudinal militancy questions was administered to a sample of Detroit riot area residents in August, 1967, several weeks after the July, 1967, riot in that city. The data were collected from an approximately representative sample of 18- to 45-year-old male Negro residents of the predominantly Negro Census tracts that encompass the scene of the major riot on 12th Street. In all, 107 interviews were collected by six paid interviewers. The interviewers were adult male Negroes, recruited by the Center for Urban Studies of Wayne State University in Detroit. The militancy measures in the interview schedule, which are listed in Table 1, include questions about the relative efficacy of force or persuasion for changing white attitudes, approval or disapproval of riots and "Black Power," and evaluation of the civil rights stands of various public figures and groups. After asking the respondent to describe the best and worst possible future lives 1 This survey was financed by a grant from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI). The authors wish to thank Miss Elaine Stocker, who served as field supervisor 011 the Detroit int.erview survey.

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Table 1 ATTITUDINAL MILITANCY AMONG MALE DETROIT NE'GROES AS A FUNCTION OF PERCEIVED DISCREPANCY BETWEEN REAL LIFE AND IDEAL LIFE

Responses, by Ideal-Real Discrepancy Groups

Militancy Questionnaire Items

Low Discrepancy

Do you think that riots help or hurt the Negro cause?


Do you think most Negro Americans approve or disapprove of riots? Do you approve or disapprove of Black Power? Will force or persuasion be necessary to change white attitudes? Group or person closest to own opinion ·on civil ri~hts. Group or person furthest from own opinion on civil rights.

High Discrepancy

(14) 54% (30) 38% (6) 8% Approve 54% 32% (16) Disapprove 44% (22) 22% Don't know 24% (12) 24% Approve 64% 38% (19) Disapprove 36% (18) 22% (13) Don't know 26% 1licitly introduce a means dimension. Though it is possible to infer a great deal about perceived means from the individual's description of his positive and negative goals, it would be helpful to obtain a more direct and explicit measure of the means seen as appropriate to goal-striving, a measure that would correspond in explicitness to the self-anchoring scale operationalization of obtained and desired goals. In spite of differences in approach and terminology most contemporary theories of motivation employ the same two central concepts that Cantril has used to account for the direction, persistence, and vigor of behavior. In a gen~ric sense, "ends" and "means" are the principal components of both Drive x Habit (Hull) and Value x Expectancy (Rotter, 1956) theories. The expectancy-value theorist assumes that the strength of the tendency to act in a certain way depends upon the expectancy that the act will be followed by a given consequence (or goal) and the value of that consequence (or goal) to the individual (Atkinson, p. 274). This assumption is shared by certain versions of the cybernetic or feedback-loop theories of behavior. The two basic constructs in such models are: "images" of desirable end states and of existing conditions, and "plans" for sequential operations designed to reduce any mismatch or discrepancy between the image of the ideal and the image or the real (Miller, Galanter, and Pribram). A more sociological theory



of ends and means, which takes account of the unpleasant fact that individuals often see no appropriate means for reducing the ideal-real gap, has been proposed by Robert Merton in his analysis of the relationship between cultural goals and institutional means as a source of deviant behavior. Most of the expectancy-value theorists have dealt with means and operations in reference to the attainment of a particular goal or value. One expectancy-value theorist, Julian Rotter, has addressed himself to individual differences in the pervasive expectancy that there are no means available for achieving any important long-range goals-the pervasive expectancy, in other words, that rewards and punishments do not occur because of one's own actions, but are due instead to forces outside one's control such as fate, chance, luck, or powerful others. In Rotter's (1966) terminology the individual who feels powerless to influence his fate is said to have an external perceived locus of reinforcement, as opposed to the person with the internal perceived locus of reinforcement, who believes that outcomes are determined by his own behavior and his own characteristics. In an extensive program of research by Rotter and others,2 the orientation toward external control or subjective powerlessness versus the orientation toward internal control or subjective mastery has been shown to be a generalized expectancy which operates to influence behavior and learning across a large number of situations. For example, it has been demonstrated that subjective powerlessness is related to age, socioeconomic status, and intelligence (Easton and Dennis). Several investigators have found that compared to U. S. whites, Negro Americans tend to perceive themselves as less able to influence their own fate • See Rllttlp and Rotter; Gore and RoUer; Phares; and Seeman and Evans.

213

(Lefcourt and Ladwig). This last difference may simply reflect a realistic appraisal of the opportunity; structure in a racist society (Kerner et al.) . DISCONTENT AND EFFICACY: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MODERNIZATION AND PROTEST

The foregoing discussion highlights the importance of both goals and means for theories of motivation. This suggests that there is a serious defidency in most analyses of the consequences of relative deprivation. Such analyses tend to focus exclusively upon goals, while neglecting the equally important question of perceived means for obtaining goals. It is our hypothesis that, while knowing the individual's level of relative deprivation will be of some use for predicting his feelings of discontent and political disaffection, precise behavioral predictions can only be made when the individual's level of relative deprivation is considered in conjunction with the behavioral means for reducing relative deprivation which he perceives as available to him. The conceptual scheme depicted in Table 2 arises from a crossclassification of two variables, relative deprivation and locus of reinforcement or control, and a consideration of the interaction between them. Although the four ends-means orientations resulting from this cross-classification will be treated as ideal types in the subsequent theoretical discussion, each dimension should be conceptualized as a continuum. The number of steps separating the ideal and real life rating on the Self-Anchoring Striving Scale provides one possible operational definition of the relative-deprivation dimension of the typology. Rotter's (1966) Internal-External Locus of Control Scale and related measures of subjective efficacy can be used as a measure of the general expectancy of powerlessness or fate control. Each of the four combinations of low

214

THOMAS J. CRA WFORD AND MURRAY NADITCH

Table 2 AN ENDS-MEANS SEQUENTIAL STAGES TYPOLOGY OF THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SOCIAL CHANGE

Ideal-Real Goal Discreparwy

Perceived Locus of Means Control External Control


Low

High

Internal Control

(1)

(4)

Psychological stage:


CONTENT FATALISM Society: TRADITIONAL Behavior: PASSIVE

Society: STABLE Behavior: REACTIVE

CONTENT ACTIVISM

(2)

(3)



DISCONTENT FATALISM

Society: UNSTABLE Behavior: EXPRESSIVE

or high level of relative deprivation and external or internal control has been labeled at each of three levels: psychological, societal, and behavioral. The relatively content and gratified, whose locus of control is perceived by them as external to themselves, are characterized as being in a stage of content fatalism, and the pattern of behavior predicted to result from this psychological orientation is described as passive. This stage corresponds to Cantril's "acquiescence to circumstances," the first and premodernization phase of the psychological concomitants of economic development. We assume that content fatalism is most prevalent in traditional societies. The next condition or state, which is defined by a feeling of relative deprivation coupled with an external locus of reinforcement, is probably the most unpleasant for the individual and the most dangerous and disruptive for the social system. In simple terms, the individual at this stage perceives a large gap between his desires and his accomplishments but feels powerless to do anything to reduce this gap. We have labeled this orientation discontent fatalism, and have suggested that the prevalence of this psychological state

DISCONTENT ACTIVISM

Society: TRANSITIONAL Behavior: INSTRUMENTAL

characterizes unstable societies. To denote the noninstrumental nature of responses to a feeling of discontent fatalism, the term expressive is used to describe the expected behavior patterns, though "explosive" might have been a more appropriate term. A man with strong and salient goals but no perceived means for achieving his goals might respond with despair and apathy, or he might respond with violent, destructive, and "unpredictable" outbursts, triggered by seemingly trivial incidents. The characteristic behavior pattern might alternate between these two modes of responding to frustration. More precise predictions regarding the behavior resulting from discontent fatalism could perhaps be obtained by considering several variables that fall outside the scope of the formulation presented in Table 2. For example, powerful and coercive negative sanctions for violent behavior might reduce the outward manifestations of aggression (Feirabend and Feirabend). Apart from external coercion, individual differences in intrapunitiveness/ extrapunitiveness might help predict whether the individual will respond to frustration by externalizing aggression or by some introverted resolution which may exhibit itself in



the symptoms of mental illness (Parker _and Kleiner) . In the third stage, which we call discontent activism, there is also a large gap between desires and accomplishments. However, even though individuals in this state feel relatively deprived, they expect that they can perform some action that will help them obtain their goals. Consequently the predicted behavior pattern for the discontent activists is labeled instrum~ ta-l, and, based upon the findings of Cantril and others, it is suggested that this disposition characterizes the citizens of societies usually referred to as transitional. Here again a more precise prediction of behavior might be obtained by considering extrapsychological factors such as the societal opportunity structure. Where legitimate means for goal-attainment are perceived as available within the existing social and political system, they will be employed and a nondisruptive societal transition may occur. If such means are not perceived as available, revolutionary rather than reformist behavior patterns may result. But however indistinguishable violent threats to the existing order may appear to those who wish to maintain it, the revolutions of the discontent activists differ sharply from the riots of the discontent fatalists in that the former are planned, purposeful implementations of means to achieve desired goals. Paralleling the "satisfaction and gratification" phase which Cantril suggests is. the prevalent attitude in affluent industrial societies, our fourth stage, in which low relative deprivation (gratification) is coupled with an internal locus of fate control, is called content activism. A society composed of content activists should be stable, and the characteristic behavior patterns reactive in the sense of being erroractivated responses aimed at maintaining existing conditions.

215

The fact that participants in recent oppositional youth movements (political activism as well as alienation or withdrawal) have been drawn disproportionately from the most materially and educationally advantaged sectors of Western industrial societies (Flacks; Keniston) suggests that content gratification based on material achievements is not a final state but merely a transitional stage in which a new order of less egoistic, more fraternal, and perhaps less material goals begins to emerge. This interpretation is in" keeping with Maslow's theory of a hierarchy of motives, which suggests that new and "higher" wants emerge as more prepotent and basic needs are satisfied. On the other hand, compared to the citizens of less affluent societies, white Americans in Cantril's crossnational survey rate their present life style as close to their ideal. Perhaps radical intellectuals and members of oppositional subcultures overestimate the importance, for citizens of industrial societies, of needs for autonomy, meaning, and self-realization, vis-a.-vis material wants. The four sets of ends-means orientations which we have used to describe individuals and to characterize groups and societies are numbered ·sequentially in Table 2 in the following order: (1) content fatalism; (2) discontent fatalism; (3) discontent activism; and (4) content activism. The numerically indicated sequence constitutes a hypothesized typical developmental progression characteristic of the psychological consequences, correlates, and causes of the social and political changes that accompany urbanization, industrialization, increases in literacy, and growth of the mass media. If a theory of the psychology of social change is to be more than a mere typology for classifying the modal attitudes of populations in societies at varying positions along the spectrum of

r


216

THOMAS J. CRAWFORD AND MURRAY NADITCH

economic development, some account must be given of the mechanisms which "move" individuals and societies through the sequential stages. Though the relationship between the type of society, the characteristic psychological ends-means orientation, and the behavior patterns is undoubtedly one of mutual reinforcement, we assume, along with other students of personality and politics (Allport; Greenstein), that the causal sequence typically begins with the social system or background factors, which then lead to the psychological states of relative deprivation/gratification and external/internal perceived locus of reinforcement, and that these psychological states in turn cause the indicated behavior patterns. It is apparent that the transition from content to discontent can be produced by any set of events that increases the discrepancy between aspirations and achievements. This may occur either through actual setbacks (Davies; Hagen) or through increases in the level of aspiration (Pettigrew, 1963). In this age of the l"evolution of rising expectations, an increase in the "want" numerator of the want/get ratio is probably more often the source of an increase in relative deprivation than a decrease in the "get" denominator. Certainly in the case of rising levels of Negro American discontent, raised aspirations rather than lowered achievements seem to be the underlying cause. Cantril, the Feirabends, Lerner, and many other observers of the "modernization" process have pointed to the inflationary effect that education, the mass media, and the city often have upon aspirations and desires. The removal of a ceiling on aspirations may be related to the often observed decline in authoritarianism and dogmatism that accompanies modernization-a change that appears to be due to an increasing empat:\1y with other peopl~ and other life styles (Lerner). Education, the media, and the city seem to

produce their effects through a shift in social comparison processes. Contact with new groups and with different and more affluent life styles leads to a change in the choice of referents which serve as standards for comparison and self-evaluation. This "contact" may be direct,as in urbanization, or vicarious, as in media transmission or the process of education. In his review of social comparison theories Pettigrew (1967) discusses the difficult theoretical problem of determining the bases for selection of comparison referents. Pettigrew suggests that contact with members of a group perceived as similar to oneself, particularly in terms of the group's "cost" or investment in a situation, may lead the individual to pick that group as an appropriate comparison referent. The transition from an external to an internal perceived locus of reinforcement is difficult to explain theoretically, and it is probably even more difficult to deliberately bring about this change in an individual or group. An improvement in living con.ditions would not, by itself, be sufficient to produce the change, since the improved conditions might be attributed to fate, chance, luck, or powerful others by individuals who perceive an external locus of control. Clear and unambiguous impact experiences in which feedback from the consequences of one's own behavior cannot reasonably be attributed to external sources would seem to be a necessary condition for shifting from a belief in external control to a belief in internal control. Impact and mastery experiences are probably most effective when the individual actively participates in them, but here again vicarious experiences may suffice. A case in point is the rapid spread of sit-ins and other forms of student protest in the 1960s. For many young people the mastery experiences of the demonstrations seemed to indicate that



the "system" was not as impossible to change as they had hitherto imagined. The fatalistic orientation imbedded in the cultural and religious values of traditional societies is often cited as a stubborn obstacle to economic development. If so, one of the findings of the large-scale "Six Nations" study directed by Inkeles and his colleagues is especially encouraging to those who seek to advance economically underdeveloped groups or societies. Their examination of the effects of institutional modernization upon personal values indicates that exposure to industrial society is itself sufficient to shift beliefs away from a view of nature as master over man and toward a man-over-nature orientation. Within industrial societies more direct attempts to produce immediate changes in the subjective efficacy of economically deprived sectors of the population have been tried by some of the proponents of participatory democracy and black power. The extent and nature of the impact of these movements upon personal feelings of powerlessness remains unknown, but the apparently innate human desire to have an effect or impact upon the environment (White) should make the task of the advocates of self-determination somewhat easier. Even so, there is some evidence that prolonged periods of objective powerlessness can stultify effectance and mastery motivation (Coleman, 1964). Obviously a transition from relative deprivation to relative gratification can be achieved by a reduction in the idealreal gap. As it applies to the shift from discontent activism to content activism, it is assumed that this reduction typically occurs when the goals are achieved, or are perceived as being achieved, through the individual's own efforts. This is best .illustrated perhaps by the Horatio Alger stories and other versions of the "American Dream,"

217

though even in the Alger stories an element of luck and help from powerful others is usually involved. A truly adequate test of the suppositions, inductive generalizations, and hypotheses presented in the foregoing discussion of the societal antecedents and behavioral consequences of the four successive ends-means orientations we have isolated would probably require data from long-range crossnational panel studies of the background, attitudes, and actions of widely diverse peoples as they respond to the influences subsumed by the term "modernization." In the next two sections of this paper we will discuss data which purport to test only one hypothesized link in the causal sequence we have been discussing: the predicted behavioral consequences of the four psychological states resulting from the relative de p ri vat ion-efficacy cross-classification. Although the sequential stages should be applicable to a wide range of individual political and economic activities, the focus in the following discussion will be upon Negro American social and political protest. There are several theoretical and practical reasons for this emphasis. Protest movements may provide a dramatic and extreme illustration of the relevant phenomena, and the participants in such movements often exhibit a rapid transition from one motivational stage to another. Also, when we combine the conclusions of studies demonstrating a high level of aspiration among Negro Americans (Elkhanialy; Pettigrew, 1964) with studies demonstrating lower levels of subjective efficacy and fate control among Negro Americans (Coleman, 1966; Lefcourt and Ladwig) we are led to the conclusion that a disproportionately large number of black people in the United States may be in the personally unpleasant and interpersonally volatile state of "discontent fatalism." We have suggested that this atti-

THOMAS J. CRAWFORD AND MURRAY NADITCH


218

tude will tend to produce aggressive noninstrumental outbursts, and perhaps this is part of the explanation of the urban riots of the 1960s. The findings from two studies will be reported as a partial test of the hypotheses we have presented regarding the influence of relative deprivation and feelings of powerlessness upon social and political protest behavior and attitudes. First we will discuss a study of the Watts riot in Los Angeles, and following this the findings of a 1966 survey of Northern adult Negroes will be presented. The Ransford Watts Study3

Based upon the results· of a survey of Los Angeles Negroes .interviewed shortly after the 1965 Watts riot, H. Edward Ransford has developed an interesting analysis of the determinants of proneness to urban violence. Ransford found that by combining three variables-isolation from whites, racial discontent, and feelings of powerlessness-he was able to obtain a stronger association with reported willingness to use violence than could be obtained eitherby considering the effect of each predictor variable alone or by considering the effect of any combination of two of the three explanatory variables. Here we will consider only powerlessness and dissatisfaction, the subjective components of Ransford's theoretical scheme, since they are related to the two key variables in our typology. Strictly speaking, racial discontent, as measured in the Watts survey, does not correspond exactly to relative deprivation as it is indexed by the Cantril ladder rating. However, we shall as~ sume that such discontent is, at least in part, a consequence of feelings of relative deprivation. In the Ransford study • The authors wish to thank Professor H. Edward Ransford of California State College at Fullerton for furnishing us with the data contained in Table 3, and for granting us permission to include his findings in this paper.

"racial dissatisfaction" was defined as the degree to which the individual feels that he is being treated badly because of his race, and a five-item scale was developed to measure the attitude. Powerlessness in Ransford's study corresponds exactly to the internal!external perceived locus of reinforcement dimension of our typology, and was measured by means of Rotter's (1966) "liE" scale. The dependent variable in Ransford's study was willingness to use violence as measured by a positive answer to the question "Would you be willing to use violence to get Negro rights ?" As he predicted, Ransford found that, considered separately, feelings of powerlessness or external control and feelings of racial dissatisfaction (and isolation from whites as well) were independently significantly associated with a greater willingness to use violence. More interestingly, he found an interaction among the predictive variables which suggested that powerlessness is even more likely to lead to violence proneness when it is accompanied by intense dissatisfaction. Ransford's ideal types, defined as the dissatisfied who feel powerless and who have little contact with whites versus those who score at the opposite end of the satisfaction, efficacy, and contact dimensions, differ sharply in the predicted direction in their reported willingness to use violence. In Table 3 it can be seen that when one considers only the psychological variables of discontent and efficacy a similar (though slightly less powerful-cf. Ransford, Table 3) combined effect is obtained. Only one in eight of the respondents who correspond to the "Ideal-type internal control and low discontent" reports a willingness to use violence. This group would be classified in our typology as content activists. This reluctance is not shared by the respondents who correspond to the "I deal-type external control and high discontent." Almost

219


Table 3 Los

ANGELES NEGROES REPORTING WILLINGNESS TO USE VIOLENCE BY THE COMBINED EFFECT OF RACIAL DISCONTENT AND PERCEIVED Locus OF REINFORCEMENT


Predictor Variables

Percent of Respondents Willing to Use Violence

Ideal-type external control and high d·iscontent External control and low discontent combined with internal control and high discontent I deal-type internal control ·and low discontent

three out of five of these respondents, whom we would classify as discontent fatalists, report a willingness to use violence. The residual category, which combines the content fatalists and the discontent activists, is intermediate in propensity for violence. Thus there is a clear demonstration that, as Ransford puts it: The feeling of powerlessness is a mOl"e relevant determiner -of violence for the highly dissatisfied or angry Negro. Similarly, racial dissatisfaction is far more important to Vliolence for those who feel powerless. [po 587]

In sum, the data from the Watts study are in accord with our assumptions about the frustrating and explosive behavioral consequences of a combination of feelings of relative deprivation with feelings of powerlessness. The Civil Rights Commission Survey4

In this section we will extend the test of the ends-means typology by considering the effects of relative deprivation and efficacy upon somewhat more conventional and "legitimate" forms of • Funds for the secondary analysis of the data reported in this section were provided by the Department of Sociology and the Division of the Social Sciences of the UniverSity of Chicago. The authors wish to express their appreciation to Professor Robert Crain of Johns Hopkins University and t.o Miss Judy Favia of NORC for assistance in data-processing and evaluation.

Not Willing

Willing

Total

42.9

57.1

100 (N=70)

74.5

25.5

100 (N=1(}2)

87.4

12.6

100 (N=134)

political behavior. During the summer of 1966, interviews with 1,624 Negro men and women, aged 21 to 45 and living in the metropolitan areas of the North and West, were conducted by the National Opinion Research Center. The survey was done for the United States Civil Rights Commission, and the primary purpose of the interview was to measure the impact of de facto segregation in education. A number of questions related to our hypotheses were contained in the interview schedule. These include the Self-Anchoring Striving Scale measure of relative deprivation and an internal/external locus of reinforcement scale based upon responses to the following five questionnaire items: Do you agree or disagree with the following statements? (1) "Good luck is just as important as hard work for success." (2) "Very often when I try to get ahead, something or somebody stops me." (3) "People like me don't have a very good chance to be really successful .in life." Which one of each pair do you agree with most? (4) a. "Being a success 18 mainly a matter of hard work, and luck has little or nothing to do Wlith it." ----{)r-

b. "Getting a good job depends mainly upon being in the right place at the right time."

220



(5) a. "When I make plans, I am almost certa:in that I can 'make them work." -orb. "It is not always wise to plan too far ahead because many things turn out to be a matter of good or bad fortune anyhow."

Table 4 "YES" RESPONSES TO: "HAVE You EVER GONE TO A CIVIL RIGHTS RALLY?," BY THE COMBINED EFFECT OF IDEAL-REAL GOAL DISCREPANCY AND PERCEIVED Locus OF MEANS CONTROL

Ideal-Real Goal Discrepancy

Perceived Locus of Means Control

External Internal What are for our purposes the "depenControl Control dent variables" were assessed by means Low 10.4% (77)* 41.5% (157) of questions about membership in poHigh 20.6% (180) 40.5% (202) litical organizations and participation • Figures in parentheses indicate totals, "Yes" in political activities. To obtain the and "No" responses. data presented in Tables 4, 5, and 6, male respondents were cross-classified according to their rating of their responses of each of the four extreme present life vis-a.-vis their ideal life ideal-types to the question "Have you (Self-Anchoring Striving Scale), and ever gone to a civil rights rally?" is according to their internal!external presented. Thus 10.4% (8 out of 77) of perceived locus of reinforcement as the respondents classified as content measured by the five-item efficacy scale fatalists (low relative deprivation external control) say that they have consisting of the items listed above. gone to a civil rights rally. Similarly, In interpreting this data it should be 20.6% (37 out of 180) of the disconemphasized that only the "ideal types" tent fatalists claim past attendance at are presented in the following tables. a rally, whereas 40.5% of the disconIn these tables a content fatalist is a tent activists, and 41.5% of the content male respondent who was in the top activists claim such participation. It is third of the present ladder-rating de- our view, admittedly after the fact, privation continuum and who was also that the failure of this question to among the one-third of the respondents differentiate between the high-particwho felt most powerless according ipating discontent activists and the to the responses to the internal/exter- equally active content activists is a nal locus of reinforcement scale. Simi- reflection of the multiple purposes and larly, the discontent fatalists are orientations of gatherings labeled "civdefined as respondents who were in the il rights rally." It seems to us that bottom third of the deprivation contin- "demonstration" connotes a consideruum and were also among the one-third ably more militant form of protest of the respondents who felt least able than "rally," and that demonstrations to control their destiny. The remaining are forms of political behavior that two ends-means orientations were simi- would be more likely to appeal to those larly defined by means of the relatively who combine a feeling of discontent strict "extreme thirds only" criteria. In with a feeling of personal efficacy than to our other types. The data in Table 5 other words, we are concerned here support this interpretation. Only 3.8 % only with the four extreme or corner of the content fatalists have particicells of the 9-cell table which results pated in a demonstration, as compared from a cross-classification of relative to 15.5 % of the discontent fatalists, deprivation at three levels, against 28.2% of the discontent activists, and powerlessness at three levels. 17.1 % of the content activists. In the In Table 4 the percentage of "Yes" final form of political behavior we con-

+


sidered, membership in the NAACP, again one would expect a certain level of fate control to be a necessary precondition for the behavior to occur; but NAACP membership, as compared to participating in demonstrations, should characterize a somewhat more content and, by our definition, less militant


Table 5 "YES" RESPONSES TO: "HAVE You EVER TAKEN PART IN A CIVIL RIGHTS DEMONSTRATION?," BY THE COMBINED EFFECT OF IDEAL-REAL GOAL DISCREPANCY AND PERCEIVED Locus OF MEANS CONTROL


Perceived Locus of Means Control Externa'l Control

Internal Control

Low 3.8% (77)* 17.1% (1;57) High 15.5% (180) ,28.2% (198) * Figures in parentheses indicate totals, "Yes" 1

and "No" responses.

group of respondents. Table 6 bears out this expectation. The pattern of reported NAACP membership is: content fatalists, 6.4 %; discontent fatalists, 10.1 %; discontent activists, 18.8 %; and content activists, 34.8%. In general then, the occurrence or nonoccurrence of political participation is influenced by feelings of personal efficacy, but a more precise prediction of the nature or direction of the participation can be obtained by considering level of discontent as well as feelings of fate control.

MEMBERSHIP IN THE NAACP, BY THE COMBINED EFFECT OF IDEAL-REAL GOAL DISCREPANCY AND PERCEIVED Locus OF MEANS 'CONTROL

Perceived Locus of Means Control External Control

Low High

We have previously suggested that our view of the causal relationship between the societal, psychological, and behavioral variables we have considered assumes that the usual sequence involves societal or background factors which lead to the psychological endsmeans orientations, 'and that these values and beliefs in turn lead to particular patterns of behavior. The challenge to such a perspective on personality and politics is to identify the psychological' motives and beliefs that are the true mediators in the hypothesized developmental sequence from society to personality to behavior, and to distinguish these true mediators from spurious psychological factors which are caused by background variables, but which are not associated with behavior patterns when background factors are controlled for. Since we would expect both relative deprivation and feelings of powerlessness to be influenced by socioeconomic status, some indication of the effect of these two psychological variables upon behavior with SES controlled for seems in order. Accordingly we examined the effect of our four endsmeans orientations upon our three behavioral indices, NAACP membership, particpation in a civil rights demonstration, and attendance at a civil rights rally, at several levels of education. With a few minor exceptions, the pattern of findings reported in Tables 4, 5, and 6 is preserved, even when education is held constant. CONCLUSION

Table 6


221

Internal Control

6.4% (77) * 34.8% (155) 10.1% (178) 18.8% (202)

* Figures in parentheses indicate totals, "Yes" and "No" responses.

In our view the foregoing discussion provides strong support for our contention that in order to provide an adequate account of the psychological consequences and causes of modernization and protest, the psychology of social change must consider perceived means as well as subjective goals, efficacy as well as relative deprivation. But for both theoretical and practical reasons the most interesting aspects of the

222



typology we have presented are the forces said to produce change from one orientation to another. Unfortunately, the factors which produce change in values and expectancies are the least well understood part of this theoretical scheme. Thus the important questions for future research involve the nature of the social comparison processes

which lead to the selection of comparison referents, and the dimensions of those impact and mastery experiences which modify feelings of efficacy and fate control. DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA 94720

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SO(;IAL FOB(;ES VOLUME 48 ARTICLES

JUNE 1970

NUMBER 4

Group Orientations and Strategies in Racial Change _______________________________________________ Glen H. Elder, Jr. Are Interracial Marrioages Really Less Stable? ___________________________________________________ Thomas P. MoTWhan Prejudice Versus Discrimination: An Empirical Example of Theoretical Extension ___________________________________________________________ Lyle G. IF'arner and Rutledge M. Dennis Authoritarianism, Anomia, and Prejudice ________________ Kenneth G. Lutterman and Russell MiddlelJOn Status Inconsistency and Wallace Supporters in a Midwestern City ______________________J>. Stanley Eitzen Economic and Noneconomic Liberalism, Upward Mobility Potential, and Catholic Working-,Class Youth ______________________________________________________-----James lIf. 0'Kane On the Estimation of Path Coefficients for Unmeasured Variables from Correlations Among Observed V·aria,bles _____________________________________________________________________.Kenneth C. Land

An Experimental Examination of a Stochastic Model of Dominance ---__________________________________________ Gaylor M. Bolton, Lo·uis N. Gray and Bruce H. Mayhew, Jr. An Empirical Note About Married Women and Their Friends ____________________.__________ Rita lames Simon, Gail Crotts and Linda Mahan COMMENTARY Robert A. Stebbins George Ritzer and HarrilNJn M. Trice BOOK REYIEWS , Review of the Social Sciences Encyclopedia ___________________________________.-----___________________.Neil I. Smelser

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SOCIAL FORCES The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27514

Organizational respect dampens the impact of group-based relative deprivation on willingness to protest pay cuts.

The politics of relative deprivation: A transdisciplinary social justice perspective.

The Relation of Psychology to Social Service.

[Smoking cessation and social deprivation].

Social psychology and gerontology: a discussion.

SOCIAL NEUROSCIENCE AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY.

Pain, anxiety and powerlessness.

Political Diversity in Social and Personality Psychology.

The psychology of change: self-affirmation and social psychological intervention.

Powerlessness and the patient under neuromuscular blockade.

The construction of mind, self, and society: the social process behind G. H. Mead'S social psychology.

Another Protest.

Militancy in ambulance service.

Materialistic Cues Boosts Personal Relative Deprivation.

Deprivation is a relative concept? Absolutely!

Pricing a Protest: Forecasting the Dynamics of Civil Unrest Activity in Social Media.

Protest rock and drugs.

A Protest.

The Practical Application of Psychology in Social Service Work.

Realizing the promise of social psychology in improving public health.

A Protest.

Determinants of Black Politics: Riots and the Growth of Militancy †.

Relative deprivation, poverty, and subjective health: JAGES cross-sectional study.

Social history of health psychology: context and textbooks.