Social Identity and Affect as Determinants of Collective Action

The goal of this paper is to compare and contrast relative deprivation and social identity theories in an attempt to form an integrative model of social comparison. The model posits that, depending on the determinants of salience, people come to categorize themselves as individuals or group members. When personal or group self-identities are salient, individuals engage in intragroup or intergroup comparisons respectively. Negative outcomes from these comparisons result in negative social identities. These personal or group self-identities, in combination with perceptions of the position as illegitimate, are hypothesized to result in feelings of personal and group relative deprivation (RD) respectively. Depending on their feelings of RD, individuals adopt individual or collective actions to change their status. When personal RD is experienced, individuals will first attempt normative individual actions to change their status. If these attempts fail, non-normative individual action strategies will be adopted. When group RD is experienced, individuals will initially attempt non-normative collective actions to change their status. If these type of actions fail, individuals will attempt normative collective actions.