ABSTRACT
This chapter considers relative deprivation theory, one of the major contributions of the social science research on American soldiers conducted during World War II. The concept of relative deprivation is important within the social sciences because it offers social scientists an elegant way to explain apparent inconsistencies between the objective nature of people's experiences and the reactions to those experiences. Relative deprivation theory can explain the occurrence of collective protest and rebellion and is motivates to participate in them. The tradition of relative deprivation research that has dominated political science is focused almost exclusively on people's comparisons with their own circumstances at different points in time. The introduction of social identities as an antecedent for experiencing group relative deprivation raises some issues. The comparison literature suggests the importance of distinguishing between the antecedents of satisfaction and of judgments about fairness. The idea of habituation is distinct from the idea of comparison standards as defined in relative deprivation models.
