Self-entitlement

Last night we touched on the issue of self-entitlement. I was initially a little surprised at the approach that Feinberg took on the matter and its contrast to what I have learned in the past. Last semester I took Human Development with Dr. Calahan who made an observation about self-entitlement from a sociological standpoint. First, he had us take a survey asking us questions like what we thought we deserved in life in general and what grades we deserved in the class, and how we rated ourselves as far as intelligence and performance. He said that studies have shown a high level of self-entitlement in our generation and he has been conducting surveys to test this over the past several semesters. The results always came back with a substantially higher proportion of students who considered themselves above average and who deserved A's in the class compared to the percentage who actually got A's at the end of the semester.

To me, this is not surprising. We have it drilled into our heads from birth that we are special and we deserve nothing but the best and idea usually encouraged by our parents and family members. I even read an article that admonished the Mr. Rogers children's program for teaching kids very early on "you are special just the way you are" implying that you don't have to do anything to be special. This might be a little extreme but it makes a very valid point. I've seen people get really pissed off when they don't get what they think they deserve and sometimes their behavior can be truly appalling.

In contrast, the other side of the self-entitlement says that we need more of it: people need to throw the old values of kindness and fairness out the window and start being more assertive. I was a little disturbed last night when Feinberg reiterated this viewpoint that I would typically expect from some merciless power-hungry hotshot in a suit who wouldn't hesitate to step on as many people as necessary in his climb to the top of the corporate ladder. I think about reality TV shows and the kind of over-confident, self-entitled people that are on them, and the clips that I've watched for this class such as the Southwest Airlines one. I think to myself, "there's no need to tell these people that they need to be more assertive and less polite."

But this message is a tricky one to deal with. You've got people in the class who could do with less and people who could do with more. The key is do you DESERVE it? And that's the hard part. Of course, the ones with low self-entitlement are going to say, "No, I could be doing better, I'm not working hard enough." They have no confidence, what do you expect them to say? On the other hand, the ones with an excess of it are going to say "Hell yeah I deserve it, I'm God's gift to mankind." Also the message is quite gender biased. I agree that a lot of women could do with being more assertive. Men would probably be fine without it.