Theories in Social Psychology, 2nd Edition

8 Relative Deprivation and Cognate Theories: Making Sense of Irrational Behaviors

Beverly G. Conrique and Faye J. Crosby

“A house may be large or small; as long as the neighboring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirements for a residence. But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut.”

– Karl Marx, 1847/1935 , p. 33

Introduction

On November 8, 2016, the United States astonished the world and elected to its highest office a man who had never held elected position, who had openly disrespected women, people of color, people with disabilities, and immigrants (Neate, 2015; Trump, 2015), and who had put the interests of a small cadre of wealthy supporters ahead of national interests (Gold & Narayanswamy, 2016). Minute-to-minute reporting of the election that night carried with it undertones of astonishment and disbelief (Arkin & Siemaszko, 2016; Jensen, 2016; Sullivan, 2016). Although many attributed Donald Trump’s win to anti-female bias (Clinton, 2017; Crosby, 2017), subsequent analysis has shown that other factors must also have come into play.

Traditionally, in the United States and elsewhere, people align their votes with their financial and other interests. While the 2016 election did not totally deviate from the traditional pattern (Scott, 2017, 2018), some odd phenomena occurred. During the course of the campaign, a union of immigration and enforcement officers – working-class, blue-collar individuals ...