Reactions to Inequity

The theory of distributive justice is concerned with the way in which socially valued rewards, such as salaries, promotions, or special privileges, get allocated to members of a social system. The two basic notions are: (1) individuals have what they regard as legitimate expectations about how rewards shiould be allocated, and (2) if such expectations are violated there is both strain and pressures for social change. In considering injustice or inequity, the idea of relative deprivation has played a key role. That is, feelings of dissatisfaction and associated pressures for change depend not on the absolute level of reward received but on the relationship between rewards received and rewards expected. The idea of relative deprivation was already prominent in studies of military personnel in World War H. It was found, for instance, that the Air Force, despite objectively greater opportunities for promotion than the Military Police, showed more dissatisfaction with its promotion opportunities because of its greater expe tations for promotion.' In general, relative deprivation occurs where similar individuals are not given similar rewards. For example, whatever their absolute wage, airline mechanics will be upset if they are paid less than automobile mechanics if they believe that they are as skiUled as automobile mechanics. Thus, inequity in the reward-allocation process is found whenever similar actors are given dissimilar rewards, or dissimilar actors are given similar rewards. For example: Homans describes the billing office of a public utility in which one status, the ledger clerks, is rewarded as more skilled than a second status, the cash posters, but the two are paid the same wage. The wage policy is regarded by girls in both statuses as -unjust and they agitate in their union for a wage differential.2 Investigators have found numerous responses to injustice or inequity, ranging from status protest to some psychosomatic symptoms, but the response is always some form of socially or psychologically disruptive condition. There are basically two formulations of the theory of distributive justice: an exchange formulation most prominently represented by the works of Homans3 and Adams 4, and a status-value formulation developed recently by ourselves. Elsewhere we have stated in some detail why we prefer a status-value to the exchange formulation.5 We shall not repeat the arguments here. We are currently engaged in experimental work that contrasts predictions made using the status-value formulation with predictions from the exchange theory of distributive justice.