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Psychology
In prepping for this series on social justice, I came across a great meta-analysis on the research and theory of "relative deprivation", which the authors define as "the judgment that one is worse off compared to some standard accompanied by feelings of anger and resentment" (Smith, Pettigrew et al, 2011, p 203)
So how does this all connect with the psychology of social justice? Mainly to show that there is no "natural" response to status differences and inequality. Whether we respond with resentment, depression, fear, stress, envy, anger, indignation, admiration, aesthetic pleasure, or even happiness at another's good fortune...all depends.
Mastery is that feeling of riding the wave, of knowing what adjustments to make as it tries to throw you off. You may still lose your balance. The wave may win. But you're not overwhelmed; you’re focused and you keep trying.
The inspiration for this post was reading John Jost”s Précis for A Theory of System Justification. According to Jost, system justification is a general tendency to defend, bolster, and justify aspects of the societal status quo, leading some people to deny or excuse societal problems that need to be fixed.
1. A coded message communicated through words or phrases commonly understood by a particular group of people, but not by others. Merriam-Webster.com … 10. An ”intriguing tool of hermeneutics in which you can accuse anyone of saying anything even if they didn't say it because you can always hear the dogwhistle if you yourself are a canine with hypersonic hearing.” Steven Pinker, quoted in “Steven Pinker Beats Cancel Culture Attack”
Which got me thinking…How do we know what someone means when they say something? How do we know what they’re thinking of when they say things? Or, even harder, what unconscious cognitions are behind their words?… Can words be true, valid, useful, insightful, demeaning and hurtful all at the same time? If so, how do we deal with it? What counts as evidence that certain expressions are dog whistles? What counts as definitive evidence?
Confident and optimistic? The machinery will tilt towards images of success and triumph, but not dwell on them because no preparation is required for what may come. We already know we can handle whatever is thrown our way, and it will be good.
High perceived control tends to soften the blows of outrageous fortune by activating action plans to make things better. Low perceived control sharpens the sting of adversity because it makes us feel helpless and hopeless. Individuals who chronically lack a sense of control tend to become angry and disengaged: there's nothing I can do to make a difference, so why bother?
In prepping for a previous post on social justice, I came across a great meta-analysis on the research and theory of "relative deprivation", which the authors define as "the judgment that one is worse off compared to some standard accompanied by feelings of anger and resentment" (Smith, Pettigrew et al, 2011, p 203). According to this meta-analysis, the experience of relative deprivation can be applied to the self or ingroup and requires…
Grievance involves feelings of deprivation, shame, humiliation, impotent anger, and being the victim of injustice. Grievance demands payback. Deep grievance demands big payback and may not be satisfied until the payback is proportionate to the harm done. Which may take forever.
Note the governments of Britain, Finland, France, Norway and Sweden had previously supported gender-affirming care for children. But they reconsidered in light of new evidence that such care could sometimes be harmful. American activists know about this evidence as well but many have chosen to dig in, not yielding an inch. However, this post is not about the merits of gender-affirming care for children. It’s about why people and policymakers persist in old ways of thinking and doing despite evidence that the old ways are suboptimal or worse.
Those alarmed at these poll results had three main concerns. First, endorsement of key values was less whole-hearted than they had been in the 1998 poll. Specifically, there were fewer “Very Important” responses to values such as hard work and community involvement, even though most respondents still considered these values at least somewhat important (94% and 80% in the case of hard work and community involvement). Second was the overall decline in valuing religion, having children, and patriotism, with 40%, 33%, and 27% of respondents considering these values as “not that important” or “not important at all” in the 2023 poll. And third, a whopping 90% of the 2023 respondents considered money an important value. What’s up with that?
Intuitions about right and wrong clash in moral dilemmas. These dilemmas activate a moral trade-off system designed for resolving conflicts among moral values. Examples of moral values include fairness, reciprocity, responsibility, care, entitlement, merit, loyalty, and honesty. When asked to resolve moral dilemmas, many people made compromise judgments, which strike a balance between conflicting moral values by partially satisfying at least some of them. The moral tradeoff system delivers that solution as an intuitive moral judgment. (paraphrasing Guzman et al, 2022)
Why do some people seem more deserving of government assistance than others?
Social scientists have been exploring this question for decades. Much of the research has focused on the criteria people use to judge the “deservingness” of the vulnerable and poor.
In other words, if carrots and sticks change the behavior, then the person has at least some control over the behavior, which is another way of saying: if one is able to engage in goal-directed behavior (e.g. approach carrot, avoid stick), one is responsible to some degree for one’s actions and the outcomes of those actions…That’s where “stigma” comes in. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “stigma in the context of health is the negative association between a person or group of people who share certain characteristics and a specific disease, including mental illness”. And per the voluminous literature on stigma, a common stigmatizing stereotype associated with mental health disorders such as drug addiction is that people are responsible for their condition.
Moral hazard is a situation where individuals have an incentive to increase their exposure to risk because they do not bear the full costs of that risk. I’m guessing a possible moral hazard associated with needle exchange programs is that these programs would lead to greater drug abuse by reducing the perceived risks of needles. And with opioids, more drug abuse would mean a higher likelihood of death by overdose.
According to John Kelly of Mashed Radish , the word “hassle” may have originated from a blend of words that represent small, intense repeated actions, such as haggle and tussle or harass and hustle. To call something a hassle is to say it requires an annoying amount of time and energy while engaged in a series of small, intense actions. For example…
Perceived control also influences how people feel when exposed to others who are "higher" than them on some metric. Studies on social comparison have found that "upward comparison" (comparing oneself to "higher" others) was "debilitating only when accompanied by low perceived control".
“When inequality loses its association with hope and instead becomes interpreted as a signal of a rigged society, higher inequality relates to lower well-being.” - Buttrick, N. R., S. J. Heintzelman, et al. (2017). Inequality and well-being.
The clearance rate for violent and property crimes has been stagnant in the US for the past 50 years, hovering around 46% and 17%, respectively, during 1971–2019. As follows: …