Feeling Left Behind Fuels Teen Aggression, and the Need to Matter Explains Why

Why do some adolescents respond to feeling worse off than their peers with hostility and aggression? A new study from Turkey offers a compelling psychological answer: the aggressive fallout of perceived disadvantage runs, in large part, through a deep and urgent motivation known as the quest for significance. The research, published in the journal Current Psychology, suggests that when teenagers feel relatively deprived, they do not simply lash out because of what they lack. They lash out because deprivation wounds their sense that they matter, and restoring that sense of mattering can become a powerful, sometimes destructive, driving force.

The study was conducted by Ekrem Sedat Şahin of Aksaray University and Makbule Duran Mucuk of Akdeniz University, who surveyed 544 Turkish adolescents, 348 of them female and 196 male. Participants were recruited through convenience sampling and completed their questionnaires in face-to-face sessions. The researchers measured three constructs: relative deprivation using the Relative Deprivation Scale-Adolescent Form, the significance quest using the Significance Quest Scale, and aggression using the short form of the Aggression Questionnaire. They then analyzed the relationships among these variables using structural equation modeling, a statistical technique that allows researchers to test whether a network of hypothesized pathways fits the observed data better than competing models.

Relative deprivation is one of the oldest and most influential concepts in social psychology. First articulated in the mid-twentieth century in studies of American soldiers, and later formalized by sociologist Robert Merton, the idea is deceptively simple: people do not evaluate their circumstances in absolute terms. They evaluate them against reference points, usually the people around them. A teenager with a perfectly adequate life may still feel deprived when comparing themselves to a wealthier classmate, a more popular peer, or the curated highlight reels of social media. Decades of research, including a major meta-analytic review by Heather Smith and Thomas Pettigrew, have shown that these subjective comparisons, rather than objective conditions, predict a wide range of outcomes, from reduced well-being to collective action and interpersonal hostility.

Adolescence is a particularly fertile ground for such comparisons. Developmental research has long emphasized that the teenage years are a period of heightened sensitivity to social evaluation, identity formation, and status concerns. Neuroimaging work by Laurel Somerville and colleagues has shown that the adolescent brain responds robustly to social feedback, and studies of school environments indicate that perceived rank among peers shapes behavior in ways that objective resources do not. Against this backdrop, the Turkish researchers asked a specific mechanistic question: if relative deprivation breeds aggression, what psychological process carries that effect?

Their answer draws on significance quest theory, developed by Arie Kruglanski and colleagues as a reformulation of the classic frustration-aggression hypothesis. In its original form, that hypothesis held that frustration, defined as the blocking of goal-directed behavior, produces aggression. Kruglanski’s team proposed a deeper mechanism: frustration matters because it threatens a person’s sense of significance, the feeling of being somebody, of mattering to others and to oneself. When significance is lost or threatened, individuals experience a pressing motivational state, the quest for significance, that drives them to restore it. Crucially, this restoration can be pursued through violent or extreme means, a dynamic studied extensively in the context of radicalization and violent extremism, but the same logic applies to everyday aggression.

The structural equation model in the new study supported this pathway. Relative deprivation was significantly associated both with aggression and with the significance quest, and the significance quest was in turn significantly associated with aggression. Most importantly, the analysis showed that the significance quest significantly mediated the relationship between relative deprivation and aggression, meaning that part of the reason deprived adolescents become aggressive is that deprivation activates a burning need to reassert their worth. The researchers describe the mediation as partial, indicating that significance quest explains a meaningful share of the effect but not all of it, leaving room for other mechanisms such as anger rumination, moral disengagement, or deviant peer affiliation, which other recent studies have also implicated.

The findings fit into a rapidly growing international literature. Experimental work by Tobias Greitemeyer and Christina Sagioglou in Austria found that inducing feelings of personal relative deprivation increased aggression toward others, and that rising wealth inequality may heighten interpersonal hostility. Studies in China have linked relative deprivation to online aggression, school disengagement, and deviant peer affiliation among students. A meta-analysis on significance quest and the so-called 3N model of violent extremism confirmed that significance loss is reliably associated with radicalization-related variables. What the Turkish study adds is developmental specificity: it demonstrates that this motivational chain operates in adolescents, a population whose identity is still under construction and whose sense of mattering is especially fragile.

The practical implications are significant. If the significance quest is the engine that converts perceived disadvantage into aggression, then interventions that target mattering directly may be more effective than those that focus on aggression alone. The authors suggest that strengthening adolescents’ sense of significance could help reduce both relative deprivation and aggressive behavior. This aligns with a broader movement in community psychology, championed by Isaac Prilleltensky, that treats mattering as a foundational psychological need with consequences for health, happiness, and social behavior. School-based programs that give students genuine opportunities to contribute, be recognized, and build competence may inoculate them against the significance vacuum that deprivation creates. Community-based aggression prevention programs have already shown measurable effectiveness in meta-analysis, and significance-focused components could sharpen their impact.

There are, of course, important caveats. The study used a cross-sectional design and convenience sampling, so it cannot establish causal direction with certainty; it is possible, for example, that aggressive adolescents perceive more deprivation or experience a stronger significance quest as a consequence of their behavior. The sample was drawn from a single cultural context, and aggression, status norms, and the meaning of mattering vary across cultures. Self-report measures are also vulnerable to shared-method bias. The authors themselves call for future research to test significance-focused interventions experimentally, which would provide stronger causal evidence and translate the correlational findings into actionable practice.

Even with those limitations, the study reframes a familiar problem in a fresh and hopeful light. Adolescent aggression has often been treated as a symptom of poor impulse control, bad parenting, or toxic peer cultures. This research suggests that at least part of the story is motivational: young people who feel left behind are not merely venting frustration, they are searching for a way to matter. If families, schools, and communities can offer legitimate routes to significance, through recognition, responsibility, and genuine belonging, the pressure that otherwise finds an outlet in hostility may be channeled into effort, achievement, and prosocial contribution. The quest for significance, the same force that can fuel violence, can also power growth. The difference lies in the paths a society makes available to its young people.

Subject of Research: The mediating role of significance quest in the relationship between relative deprivation and aggression among adolescents

Article Title: Why do they become aggressive? Significance quest explains the effect of relative deprivation on adolescent aggression

Article References: Şahin, E. S., & Duran Mucuk, M. (2026). Why do they become aggressive? Significance quest explains the effect of relative deprivation on adolescent aggression. Current Psychology, 45(18), Article 1549. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-026-10073-0

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s12144-026-10073-0

Keywords: relative deprivation, significance quest, adolescent aggression, structural equation modeling, frustration-aggression hypothesis, social comparison, mattering, Current Psychology, radicalization, school psychology, Turkey, mediation analysis