REACTIONS TO PERCEIVED DEPRIVATION IN INGROUP AND OUTGROUP - A CROSS-CULTURAL-COMPARISON

An experiment is reported in which the reactions of observers to the r elative and absolute deprivation of others are assessed. Eighty German and 80 Italian subjects made decisions about ingroup (own nationality ) or outgroup (foreign) protagonists suffering high or low relative an d absolute deprivation. Results showed that subjects were more likely to take social action that violated some rule when the protagonist was in high rather than low absolute deprivation. Racist subjects were so mewhat more likely to satisfy the request of a deprived ingroup protag onist whereas non-racist subjects favoured the deprived outgroup. No d ifferences emerged for non-deprived protagonists. Overall, Germans ten ded to take social action only when the protagonist suffered high abso lute deprivation whereas Italians took action regardless of degree of absolute deprivation. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.