Relative Deprivation Theory

Brief History of Relative Deprivation
The “Relative Deprivation Theory” dates back nearly 65 years ago. Samuel Stouffer invented the notion of relative deprivation.(Pettigrew , walker kitabı) Samuel Stouffer made a survey with American soldier in World War II. Survey’s results was improbable. According to the survey’s results military police more pleased than U.S. Army Air corpsman even though military police’s promotions were slower than U.S. Army Air corpsman’s promotions. Stouffer indicated that the military police did not compare with U.S. Army corpsman, they compared with similar group which included other military polices. Stouffer hypothesized that relative deprivation was devised in consequence of this comparisons within the same groups. Davis stated that (19..); Stouffer did not defined and measured relative deprivation directly in The American Soldier. However, it can be said that the relative deprivation theory occured first time in this article. (Davis, 19..).
After Stouffer’s ideas, Merton and Kitt studied in the RD theory and they extended the RD idea within referance group basis.(merton&kitt 1950) Merton and Kitt’s main contribution’s was social comparisons. Furthermore, Davis (1959) was the first formal theorist who was study about relative deprivation. According to Davis (1959), relative deprivation is occured when a
Runciman defined relative deprivation as: “a person is relatively deprived of X when (i) he does not have X, (ii) he sees some other person or persons, which may include himself at some previous or expected time, as having X (whether or not this is or will be in fact the case), (iii) he wants X, and (iv) he sees it as feasible that he should have X (op.cit..p.10). Besides that Runciman (1966) divided the RD into invidual RD which is the person compare himself/herself to other people and group RD which is the person compare his/her group to other