INEQUITY IN SOCIAL EXCHANGE

INEQUITY IN SOCIAL EXCHANGE

One. Introduction

Philosophers, political scientists, politicians, jurists, and economists traditionally have been the ones concerned with the just distribution of wealth, power, goods, and services in society. Social psychologists and their brethren, with the notable exceptions of Blau, Homans, and Thibaut and Kelley, have displayed remarkably little professional interest in this, despite the fact that the process of exchange is almost continual in human interactions. They have, of course, studied social behavior involving reciprocal, as distinguished from unilateral, transactions, but their sights have been focused on the amount and content of communications; attitudinal, affective, motivational, perceptual, and behavioral changes; changes in group structure, leadership, and so on, rather than on exchange proper. Yet, the process of exchange appears to have characteristics peculiar to itself and to generate affect, motivation, and behavior that cannot be predicted unless exchange processes are understood.

A distinguishing characteristic of exchange processes is that their resultants have the potentiality of being perceived as just or unjust. But what are the consequences of outcomes being perceived as meeting or not meeting the norms of justice? Nearly all the attention given to this question has been to establish a relationship between perceived injustice and dissatisfaction. Not surprisingly, this has been accomplished with success. Does a man treated unfairly simply express dissatisfaction? Are there not other consequences of unfair exchanges? What behavior is predictable? These questions and related ones are a principal concern of this paper.

Rather than simply present a theory from which the behavior of persons engaged in a social exchange may be deduced, the plan of this chapter is to present first in chronological order two major concepts relating to the perception of justice and injustice. First is the concept of relative deprivation and the complementary concept of relative gratification, developed by Stouffer and his associates. Homans' highly elaborated concept of distributive justice will be discussed next. These will then be integrated into a theory of inequity from which it will be possible to specify the antecedents and consequences of injustice in human exchanges.

Two. Relative Deprivation

Following World War Two, the publication of the first American Soldier volume by Stouffer and his colleagues excited interest among sociologists and social psychologists. The effect was at least in part due to the introduction of a new concept, relative deprivation, used by the authors to explain what were seemingly paradoxical findings. According to Merton and Kitt, the formal status of the concept was that of an intervening variable which explained the observed relationship between an independent variable, such as education level or rate of promotion, and a dependent variable, such as satisfaction with some aspect of Army life.

Relative deprivation was not formally defined by the authors, however, nor by Merton and Kitt, who analyzed in great detail the implication of the concept for sociological theory in general and for reference group theory in particular. The essential meaning of the concept may be inferred from two illustrations of its use by the authors of The American Soldier. Despite the objective fact that soldiers with a high school education had better opportunities for advancement in the Army, high school graduates were not as satisfied with their status and jobs as were less educated men. This apparent paradox is explained by assuming that the better-educated men had higher levels of aspiration, partly based on what would be realistic status expectations in civilian life, and that they were, therefore, relatively deprived of status and less satisfied with the status they achieved. It may be noted that the validity of this explanation depends upon showing that level of aspiration is greater than status achieved among high school graduates as contrasted to soldiers with less education. While this is not demonstrated by the authors, it appears to be a credible assumption. It is the relative deprivation, then, that accounts for less satisfaction among better-educated men.

A second illustrative use of relative deprivation is made by the authors of The American Soldier in accounting for the puzzling fact that Army Air Corps men were less satisfied with promotion opportunities than were men in the Military Police, even though objective opportunities for mobility were vastly greater in the Air Corps. Relative deprivation is invoked to explain the anomaly as follows: The high promotion rate in the Air Corps induces high expectations of mobility; lower-ranking and low-mobile men, compared to higher-ranking and high-mobile men, feel deprived in the face of their expectations and express dissatisfaction. Among military policemen, on the other hand, expectations of promotion are low, and the fate of most policemen is quite similar: namely, low rank. In sum, there is a discrepancy between expectation and achievement among Air Corps enlisted men and little or no discrepancy between expectation and achievement among men in the Military Police. The discrepancy results in dissatisfaction with mobility. Or more precisely, the assumed existence of a discrepancy between expectation and achievement is held to account for the empirical observation that men were less satisfied in one branch than in the other.

Spector, in an experiment directly related to these findings by Stouffer et al., varied perceived probability of promotion and fulfillment and tested the hypothesis that "on failing to achieve an attractive goal, an individual's morale will be higher if the probability of achieving the goal had been perceived to be low than if it had been perceived to be high." He found that the high expectations-nonpromotion group had lower morale and was less satisfied with the promotion system than was the low expectations-nonpromotion group, thus corroborating experimentally the military survey findings. Comparable findings have been made by Gebhard.

The effects of relative deprivation (the unfair violation of expectations) upon sociometric choices are clearly shown in an experiment designed by Thibaut to learn about the conditions that affect group cohesiveness. Underprivileged boys from camps and settlement houses in the Boston area participated in the experiment in groups of ten to twelve boys, all of whom had known, played, and lived with one another for some time. After filling out a questionnaire in which they were asked to rank the four boys they would most like to have on their team to play games if their groups were to be divided, the boys in each group were split into two teams of five or six. Thibaut formed each team so that each boy would have about an equal number of preferred and of nonpreferred partners and so that each team would be composed of approximately the same number of popular, or central, and less popular, or peripheral, boys in terms of sociometric choices received. Although there were several experimental conditions in his study, only one of them concerns us here. This is the condition in which each set of two teams played four games and one of the pairs was given consistently an inferior, menial, uninteresting, or unpleasant role during the series of games. These were the low-status teams (called "unsuccessful low-status" by Thibaut).

Following the last game, each boy answered a questionnaire in which he was again asked to order his preferences for teammates. A general finding was that a boy tended to shift his sociometric choices after the games to boys who had actually been teammates. Of greater interest here is the fact that low-status central boys were more likely to display such shifts than were low-status peripheral boys. The former were popular boys, presumably aware of their status among their fellows, who were forced to assume low-status roles in violation of the roles they would customarily play. The role of the low-status peripheral boys, on the other hand, were more or less a confirmation of their relatively low popularity among their friends. Compared to the peripheral boys, then, the central boys were relatively deprived, and they manifested their greater dissatisfaction with their fate by shifting to a greater extent their sociometric choices from central boys on the opposing team to boys on their own team. Thibaut also reports evidence that the low-status central boys displayed exceptional hostility to members of the opposing (high-status) teams and that all low-status boys keenly felt the injustice of their fate.

These findings are of especial interest because they cannot be accounted for simply on the hypothesis that abuse or minority group membership will result in withdrawal and increased cohesiveness. Such a hypothesis would have required that low-status peripheral and central boys show the same behavior. But, as noted, central boys were more likely to shift their sociometric choices and to display overt hostility to opponents. They were the ones who suffered the greater relative deprivation.

The studies that have been described form an interesting set. In the data from the surveys by Stouffer et al., there is no empirical evidence of relative deprivation. None of the soldiers or airmen were asked, for example, if specific expectations were violated or, more directly, if they felt relatively deprived with respect to status. Relative deprivation was used, ex post facto, to explain anomalous findings. The concept had no existential character; it was a hypothetical construct-rather than an intervening variable, as Merton and Kitt classified it. The Spector experiment, by manipulating expectations of promotions and achievement, created a condition of relative deprivation. Thus, operationally, relative deprivation took on the status of a variable, an independent variable, variations in which were related to variations in "morale." In another laboratory experiment, Thibaut created conditions of relative deprivation, which were not any the less real for having been created unintentionally by his manipulations of group status and group success. In this respect his experiment is analogous to Spector's. But the nature of his experimental task allowed a very broad range of behavior to be displayed spontaneously. As a result there was direct evidence of feelings of injustice in reaction to the manipulation of relative deprivation, as well as of dissatisfaction, hostility, withdrawal, and changes in sociometric choices. Thus, proceeding from the military surveys to the Thibaut experiment, a useful construct emerges, receives experimental support, and its meaning becomes elaborated.

Bearing this and the survey and experimental data described earlier in mind, there emerge certain conclusions. First, it seems that manifest dissatisfaction and other behavior are responses to acutely felt injustice, rather than directly to relative deprivation. Relative deprivation is a condition occurring naturalistically or an experimental manipulation which elicits feelings of injustice. In turn, feelings of injustice trigger expressions of dissatisfaction and, in addition, the kind of behavior exhibited by Thibaut's juvenile subjects. Injustice, then, may be said to mediate the effects of relative deprivation. A second conclusion is that what is just is based upon relatively strong expectations, such as that educational achievement will be correlated with job status achievement and that one will be promoted at about the same rate as one's fellows, or that the role one plays in one situation-in laboratory games-will be in line and with the role one usually assumes-in the settlement house or camp.

Thirdly, it is clear that a comparative process is inherent in the development of expectations and the perception of injustice, as implied by the term relative deprivation. Well-educated men felt unfairly treated in comparison to the treatment they would have received in civilian life or in comparison to the treatment civilians did receive. Injustice was suffered by unpromoted or less-mobile airmen in relation to the general mobility of men in the Air Corps, whereas there was no such felt injustice among low-mobile military policemen when they compared their rate of promotion to the low promotion rate prevalent in the Military Police.

A particularly felicitous additional example of the process of comparison and its importance is provided by Sayles. He notes that "foundries are often hot spots, highly aggressive in seeking fulfillment of their demands where they are part of larger manufacturing organizations. However, when the plant is entirely devoted to the foundry operation, they are relatively weak and inactive." Foundry workers are highly paid to compensate for the unpleasant work conditions and the high physical exertion required and because of a short labor supply in this skill area. Other workers, however, rank foundry operators quite low and look down on them, according to Sayles. Thus, when foundry employees are present for purposes of comparison, other workers feel relatively deprived as regards earnings, and the resulting dissatisfaction may take hostile forms. Conversely, the foundry workers, being the butt of the despisement of others, may react by being unusually assertive and demanding.

Finally, it may be noted, if it is not obvious, that felt injustice is a response to a discrepancy between what is perceived to be and what is perceived should be. In the illustrative cases taken from The American Soldier and from the Spector and Thibaut experiments, it is a response to a discrepancy between an achievement and an expectation of achievement.