title: Increasing wealth inequality may increase interpersonal hostility: The relationship between personal relative deprivation and aggression.
abstract: In most Western societies, wealth inequality is increasing, which in turn could increase people's belief that one's standing is relatively disadvantaged. Based on relative deprivation theory, we argue that such an experience of personal relative deprivation should causally lead to greater interpersonal hostility. Indeed, three experiments show that participants in a personal relative deprivation condition reported higher levels of aggressive affect and behaved more aggressively than participants in a personal relative gratification condition. Compared to a control condition, participants experiencing personal relative deprivation were more aggressive rather than participants experiencing personal relative gratification being less aggressive. However, personal relative deprivation increased aggressive behavior only toward targets that were the source for participants' experience of disadvantage, but it did not increase aggression toward neutral targets.
authors.affiliation: a University of Innsbruck.
authors.forename: Tobias
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Greitemeyer
authors.affiliation: a University of Innsbruck.
authors.forename: Christina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Sagioglou
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000374:Aggression / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006791:Hostility; D006801:Humans; D007182:Income; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Aggression; personal relative deprivation; personal relative gratification