1. UNIVERSITY STUDENT SURVEY YOU DESERVE THE VERY BEST
Psychological Entitlement, Socioeconomic Status, and Equity:
When You Deserve Better Treatment than the Very Best
Randall A. Gordon
University of Minnesota, Duluth
Introduction
Entitlement Manipulation
Figure 2
UNIVERSITY STUDENT SURVEY
YOU DESERVE THE VERY BEST
Welcome and thank you for participating. We’ve been collecting data in an attempt to gain a better understanding of the opinions and preferences of the entire student body. We want to assess the opinions and preferences of ALL students. The information collected helps provide a better idea of how the university is meeting the needs of all students at UMD.
Welcome and thank you for your willingness to participate in this study. We feel that you can add valuable information by helping us gain a better understanding of your own personal opinions and preferences. After all, you’re entitled to the best possible experiences here on campus. The data that you provide will help us assess how we can best meet your needs as a UMD student.
Researchers claim that psychological entitlement (the belief that one is more deserving than others) has been on the rise among the most recent generations of young adults (Twenge & Campbell, 2009, 2010).
Recent research by Piff (2014) has revealed that entitlement and narcissism may not be evenly distributed across all levels of social class, with wealthier individuals displaying higher levels of these traits.
The present study examined the impact of increasing entitlement on social comparison processes and how socioeconomic status might moderate this effect.
A technique developed by O'Brien, Anastasio, & Bushman (2011, Study 2) was used to prime feelings of entitlement by focusing participants on reasons why they “deserved” the very best treatment before they responded to a student satisfaction survey.
The impact on social comparison processes was assessed by having participants compare themselves to others to determine the amount of pay cut they would deserve relative compared to low, average, and high performing coworkers (Campbell et al., 2004, Study 6).
Following the work of Piff (2014), we also examined how SES might moderate the effect of entitlement on both the equity task and student satisfaction responses.
H1: We expected the entitlement manipulation to produce greater
perceptions of deservingness on the equity task.
H2: We expected the entitlement manipulation to have a stronger effect
on the equity responses of lower SES participants.
H3: We expected the entitlement manipulation to produce more
negative responses on the student satisfaction survey.
Examples of descriptions validated as representing high, average, and low performing co-workers, respectively:
Sarah Anderson: Sarah is a great employee, punctual, conscientious, hard working, and a team player.  She is being considered for a promotion.
Keith Monroe: Keith is a hard worker, although he does come late to work on occasion. He is a great organizer, but has been known to cause conflict with other staff.
Laura Smith: Everyone likes Laura as a person but she is sometimes unreliable. She is competent at the basic tasks, but when given more complex work, she makes many errors that need correction.
Perceived equity was measured on two examples from each performance level on a seven–point scale that ranged from 1 = I deserve much more of a pay cut to 5 = I deserve much less of a pay cut.
Results
Discussion
Entitlement, Socioeconomic Status, and Equity
A 3-way ANOVA on equity responses failed to reveal the predicted entitlement main effect, however a marginally significant entitlement x co-worker performance interaction was found, F (2, 118) = 2.35, p < .099, h2 = .038.
The entitlement manipulation failed to have a significant impact on comparisons with either low performance or average performance coworkers, t (61) = .95, p > .34 and t (61) = .09, p > .92, respectively.
Comparisons with high performance workers revealed the predicted effect. Entitlement group participants believed they deserved less severe (M = 9.17, SD = 2.44) pay cuts than did control group participants (M = 7.88, SD = 3.12), one-tailed t (61) = 1.81, p < .038, d = A graphic representation of this relationship can be seen in Figure 1.
As predicted, priming a sense of entitlement lead to more self-serving evaluations in an equity task, but only when comparisons were made to the highest performing co-workers. Socioeconomic status did not moderate this relationship.
These outcomes provide a partial replication of findings from Campbell et al. (2004). In addition, they support other work that has shown a strong connection between entitlement and the process of social comparison (Anastasio & Rose, 2014; Rose & Anastasio, 2014).
The manner in which SES moderated the impact of entitlement on student satisfaction suggests that class/income level is an important consideration when appeals are made to vanity and personal worth.
This finding parallels those from the impression management literature that have shown positive relationships between target self-esteem and the effectiveness of flattery and compliments on judgments of liking (Gordon, 1996; Jones & Wortman, 1973).
Method
Figure 1
Participants and Design
Sixty-three (21 male, 42 female) undergraduates received experimental credit for their participation in a 2 (treatment: entitled vs. control) x 2 (SES: low vs. high) x 3 (co-worker performance level: low, average, and high) mixed factorial design.
Procedure, Manipulation, and Measures
Participants were informed that the goal of the study was to to examine relationships between personality characteristics and student satisfaction. Consent was obtained and participants were assigned to the entitlement or control survey instructions.
After being asked to read the instructions carefully, all participants completed:
The SSS: 26-item student satisfaction survey that examined a broad range of campus services, resources, quality of education (a = .85).
A set of demographic items including a four-item measure of SES (a = .89).
A 44-item Big Five measure as a filler task (John et al. 1991).
An equity task that asked participants to indicate how much of a pay cut they thought they would deserve relative to high, average, and low performing co-workers (Campbell et al., 2004).
A set of three manipulation check items (a = .72).
References
Anastasio, P. A., & Rose, K. C. (2014). Beyond deserving more: Psychological
entitlement also predicts negative attitudes toward personally relevant out- groups. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 5,
Campbell, K. W., Bonacci, A. M., Shelton, J., Exline, J. J., & Bushman, B. J. (2004). Psychological entitlement: Interpersonal consequences and validation of a self-report measure. Journal of Personality Assessment, 83,
Gordon, R. A. (1996). The impact of ingratiation on judgments and evaluations: A meta- analytic investigation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71,
John, O. P., Donahue,E. M., & Kentle, . L. (1991) The Big Five inventory-versions 4a and 54. Institute of Personality and Social Research, Berkeley, CA.
Jones, E. E., & Wortman, C. (1973). Ingratiation: An attributional approach. Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press.
O’Brien, E. H., Anastasio, P. A., & Bushman, B. J. (2011). Time crawls when you're not
having fun : Feeling entitled makes dull tasks drag on. Personality and Social
Psychology Bulletin, 37,
Piff, P. K. (2014). Wealth and the inflated self: Class, entitlement, and narcissism.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40,
Rose, K. C., & Anastasio, P. A. (2014). Entitlement is about ‘others’, narcissism is not: Relations to sociotropic and autonomous interpersonal styles. Personality and Individual Differences, 59, 50–53.
Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2009). The narcissism epidemic: Living in the age
of entitlement. Free Press, New York, NY.
Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2010). Birth cohort differences in the monitoring the future dataset and elsewhere: Further evidence for Generation Me— Commentary on Trzesniewski & Donnellan. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5,
Entitlement, Socioeconomic Status, and Student Satisfaction
SSS scores were regressed on treatment, SES, and the treatment x SES interaction.
Consistent with Piff (2014), SES was negatively related to student satisfaction, B = -4.98, t = -2.33, p < However, the interaction was also significant, B = 6.89, t = 2.19, p < .033.
Simple slope analyses (Figure 2), revealed that SES and SSS were negatively correlated among the control participants, t = , p < .0001, but positively correlated among entitled participants, t = 4.48, p < .001.
Poster accepted for presentation at the 16th annual SPSP Conference, January 28, 2016, San Diego, CA. Address all correspondence to: Randall A. Gordon, Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Duluth