European Journal of Social Psychology Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 31, 63±81 (2001) Exploring the multifaceted structure of sense of deprivation YECHEZKEL DAR* and NURA RESH The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Abstract Drawing from both social justice and deprivation research, we conceptualize expressions of sense of deprivation (equated with sense of injustice) as a three-faceted structure de®ned by mode of experience, social reward, and social sphere of allocation. To empirically verify the ®t between this conceptual structure and the actual con®guration of people's deprivation reactions, we use a research model of two modes of experience (cognition and emotion), three classes of rewards (instrumental, relational and symbolic), and two social spheres of allocation (school and society at large). A Similarity Space Analysis (SSA) of 17 measures (that represents this model with data collected among Israeli adolescents) reproduced the three-dimensional structure of sense of deprivation, although not all hypothesized af®nities and distances between measures were empirically reconstructed. Copyright # 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. INTRODUCTION The phrases `feeling of deprivation' and `sense of deprivation' are used widely in daily lives and political and educational discourses on distributive justice, usually in a generalized, indiscriminate manner. The suggestion ` ... to distinguish separate areas of relative deprivation, since the individual's sense of relative deprivation in one area may be uncorrelated with what he feels in another area' (Deutsch, 1985, p. 51), is commonly ignored. Drawing from both social justice and deprivation research, we aim to propose a conceptual framework for mapping sense of deprivation (hereafter SoD) in a multifaceted structure, and to empirically verify the ®t between this conceptual structure and the actual con®guration of people's deprivation reactions. We do not seek to provide a phenomenology of SoD, nor to explain how people develop the entitlements that underlie their SoD, or to explicate behavioral consequences of SoD. Rather, we focus on structures of SoD, namely (a) the interrelations between empirical expressions of deprivation of individuals, and (b) the arrangement of these expressions into domains according to a set of conceptual classi®cations (or facets). Speci®cally, we consider three essential dimensions or facets of the realm of SoD±class of the allocated reward (instrumental, relational, and symbolic), type of the social sphere of allocation (school, society), and mode of the deprivation experience (cognition, emotion). Regarding these dimensions, we ask two questions. First, how much are one's cognition and emotions of deprivation, articulated across Copyright # 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 5 January 2000 Accepted 1 August 2000 *Correspondence to: Yechezkel Dar, School of Education, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem 91905, Israel. E-mail: dar@vms.huji.ac.il