相对剥夺与相对满意:群体性事件的动因分析

Relative Deprivation and Relative Gratification:the Motivation of Chinese Mass Incidents

群体性事件——部分群众与行政当局或强势社会集团的对抗性冲突,是一种典型的集群行为。2004年发生的重庆万州事件,可看作群体性事件的里程碑:原本普通的民事或治安纠纷,行政执法人员一介入处理,冲突矛头立刻转向行政当局,众多与诱发事件无关的旁观者卷入冲突;提出宽泛而模糊的政治诉求。这些新特征表明,群众普遍积蓄着不满情绪。在整个社会生活水平提高的今天,这种社会不满情绪只能用相对剥夺来解释。相对剥夺指与参照群体相比,个体对自身所处的不利地位的一种感知;相对满意是其反面,即与参照群体相比,个体对自身所处的有利地位的一种感知。相对剥夺-满意则整合了上述两个概念。本研究通过模拟实验模拟群体性事件中的冲突矛头转向,考察相对剥夺与相对满意对集群行为的影响。实验为单因素被试间设计,招募大学在校男生60名。研究发现:相对剥夺的个体比相对满意的个体更有可能参与集群行为;群体相对剥夺-满意部分中介了个体相对剥夺-满意与集群行为的关系;集群认同对相对剥夺-满意与集群行为的关系具有调节作用。

Mass incidents refer to a kind of antagonistic conflicts between the public and administrative authority or powerful social groups. They are typical collective actions (CA)that individuals are acting as representatives of the group and the action is directed at improving the conditions of the entire group. The 'Wanzhou incident' happened in 2004 is considered as a milestone,which shows two new characters of mass incidentsone is that,after civil dissension occurred,the target of the conflict soon turns to local administrative authority;the other is that the appeal is carried to the authority for ambiguous political requests rather than economic ones. This social discontent could only be attributed to relative deprivation(RD)which refers to one's perception or feeling of disadvantage in comparison with a reference group. Relative gratification (RG)is the converse of relative deprivation-one's perception or feeling when the outcome of a comparison is positive. RD and RG are generalized in relative deprivation-gratification (RD-G). This study is conducted to simulate the mass incidents in laboratory and to examine the effects of RD-G on CA. This experiment is one-factor between subject design and the participants are 60 college male students. Results reveal that 1)Individuals in the RD condition are more likely to engage in collection action than individuals in the RG condition;2) group RD-G partly mediates the relation between individual RD-G and CA;3) collective identity moderates the relation between RD-G and CA.