Longitudinal effects of fraternal deprivation on life satisfaction and mental health

According to a widely accepted view in the social justice literature, fraternal deprivation causes protest, but does not impact the individuals’ well-being, whereas egoistic deprivation impairs the well-being of deprived persons, but does not cause protest. We consider this view incomplete, predict that fraternal deprivation can impair well-being under certain conditions, and suggest that negative emotion and negative social identity are mediating mechanisms for this effect. As part of a longitudinal study of the psychological consequences of German unification, measures for fraternal deprivation, individual life quality, life satisfaction, and mental health were obtained on three occasions of measurement (1996, 1998, 2000) from a de-mographically heterogeneous sample of 1276 East German citizens. Model test and parameter estimation were performed with LISREL. In line with our theoretical predictions, longitudinal effects of fraternal deprivation on life satisfaction and mental health were identified and these effects were independent of an individual’s life quality. The longitudinal effect of indi-vidual life quality on life satisfaction (beta = .10) was about twice as large as the longitudinal effect of fraternal deprivation (beta = -.06) on life satisfaction. The effects of individual life quality and fraternal deprivation on mental health were equal (beta =|.04|). Reasons for the small effect sizes are discussed. It is concluded that fraternal deprivation is no less problem-atic for individuals’ well being than is the quality of their personal living conditions.