Frustrated by Deprivation or Privilege? Revealing Divergent Profiles of Perceived (Dis)advantage within Majority Groups

Members of ethnic majority groups vary in their perceptions of ingroup status; some see their group as disadvantaged, whereas others recognise its structural privilege. Consistent with this idea, using latent profile analysis to disentangle the cognitive and affective components of group-based relative deprivation in a probability sample of New Zealand Europeans (N = 38,415), we identified five distinct profiles in the ethnic-majority population. These were: Low Deprivation (45.1%), Moderate Deprivation (31.0%), High Deprivation (10.1%), High Cognitive Deprivation (3.1%), and a novel profile characterized by emotional discomfort about the ingroup’s privilege (i.e., high affective/low cognitive deprivation; 10.7%). Members of this Frustrated Gratification profile were the strongest supporters of liberal political attitudes, social equality, and Māori political mobilization, and had the lowest levels of modern racism. These profiles replicated in two samples from the UK. Thus, our results uncover a previously unknown profile of relative deprivation with important implications for social change.