Abstract
Political scientists and sociologists have frequently explained political revolution in terms of individual frustration. The frustration has been inferred from changes in overall indicators of societal conditions. This analytic approach may commit the ecological fallacy since individual responses are inferred from group measures. Data were collected from 445 registered voters in the city of Detroit. The mail survey examined the relationship between individual reports of payoffs in institutional settings, such as educational achievement and income and the individual’s perceived frustration. Greater payoffs were associated with less frustration at statistically significant levels. Two conclusions were considered important in terms of the previous research. First, relationships were consistent with the reasoning in previous work, although they did not eliminate the possibility of the ecological fallacy. Second, a large proportion of the variance in individual frustration was not accounted for by the objective measures of payoffs in institutional settings.
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Levy, S.G. An examination of the relationship between systemic punishment and systemic frustration. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 13, 330–332 (1979). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03336886
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03336886