Suchergebnisse

AbstractColleges and universities are a unique context in which students encounter similar aged peers from a wide range of economic backgrounds. As emerging adults coping with major life transitions, students may be especially sensitive to upward contrasts with other students who have advantages that they feel they deserve (personal relative deprivation or PRD). We surveyed a population of university students when they were second‐ and third‐year students (N = 309), and 2 years later, when they were fourth‐ and fifth‐year students (N = 400). Increased PRD predicted increased anxiety and depression—even after accounting for students' access to social support, the degree to which they identified with the university, and their gender, family income, ethnic background, and whether the student was a first‐generation college student. For a third separate sample of students who completed both surveys (N = 168), PRD predicted students' mental health two years later even after accounting for their earlier anxiety and depression. In all three samples, PRD mediated the relationship between self‐reported family income and mental health. These data indicate that universities and colleges should consider a broad range of interventions and policies that can mitigate the impact of upward social contrasts.

AbstractWhen organizational authorities or representatives discriminate, it not only impacts the discrimination target; it also affects those who witness it. In this article, we argue that discrimination within workplace and educational contexts implicates the larger organization in which it occurs in two ways. First, it communicates to targets the extent to which the representatives of an organization respect their group. Second, discrimination implicates the morality of the larger group or organization in which it occurs. This second threat to the organization's morality affects all observers, even those who do not share a social category with the target. We argue that both forms of threat can decrease organization identification, well‐being, and increase withdrawal. For all observers, whether one is a member of the targeted group or not, to witness an organizational authority clearly discriminate against another organizational member is distressing and leads to withdrawal. We offer recommendations for policy and decision‐making procedures aimed at (1) adopting organizational decision‐making structures that minimize the opportunity for personal acts of bias (to prevent discrimination before it occurs), and (2) offering those who witness (or experience) discrimination clear avenues for addressing it (to minimize its destructive consequences). If organization members, especially organizational authorities, confront discrimination, it offsets the negative consequences of a single organizational representative's biased behavior.

Relative deprivation (RD) is the judgment that one or one's ingroup is worse off compared with some relevant standard coupled with feelings of dissatisfaction, anger, and resentment. RD predicts a wide range of outcomes, but it is unclear whether this relationship is moderated by national cultural differences. Therefore, in the first study, we used national assessments of individual-collectivism and power distance to code 303 effect sizes from 31 different countries with 200,578 participants. RD predicted outcomes ranging from life satisfaction to collective action more strongly within individualistic nations. A second survey of 6,112 undergraduate university students from 28 different countries confirmed the predictive value of RD. Again, the relationship between individual RD and different outcomes was stronger for students who lived in more individualistic countries. Group-based RD also predicted political trust more strongly for students who lived in countries marked by lower power distance. RD effects, although consistent predictors, are culturally bounded. In particular, RD is more likely to motivate reactions within individualistic countries that emphasize individual agency and achievement as a source of self-worth.