Laughing and Weeping,Cheerfulness and Depression: A Study of Moods Among College Students

Abstract

The relationship between relative deprivation and ethnic attitudes was investigated in a stratified random sample of 361 Blacks and 120 Afrikaans-speaking Whites. Apart from variables related to relative deprivation, a number of other variables such as biographical information, conservatism, and the experience of justice were also measured and included in multiple regression analyses to predict the ethnic attitudes of the subjects. The results indicate that the variables of academic qualification, the experience of justice, and the experience of economic deprivation significantly explained the ethnic attitudes of the black subjects. Among the white subjects a generalized attitude toward outgroups significantly explained some of the variance of the attitude scores.