30 Outrageous Choosing Beggars Who Were Ridiculed By This Online Community (New Pics)

The fact that we love free stuff and would prefer lower-quality things if they don't cost anything over higher-quality items has been proven by an experiment. In his bestseller Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely conducted an experiment where he let people choose from a luxury Lindt chocolate truffle and a Hershey's chocolate kiss.

The Lindt truffle cost 26 cents and the Hershey's Kiss cost one cent. Interestingly, people split pretty evenly between their choices: 40% chose the kiss, and 40% went for the truffle. However, when the prices for both chocolates were lowered by one cent, the majority of people grabbed the Hershey's Kiss. It became free, after all!

What Ariely and his team discovered was that the relative price doesn't really matter to people. As soon as we see that something is free, we're compelled to grab it even if another, higher-quality item isn't that much more expensive. They carried out many more versions of that same experiment.

They tried decreasing the price of the Hershey's Kiss from two cents to one cent and see if the demand would rise as it did when it cost nothing. It didn't. Consumers didn't even change their behavior when Hershey's Kisses cost a negative one cent. "We concluded that FREE! is indeed a very powerful force," Ariely later wrote in a blog post.

Freelancers can often fall victim to clients who are choosing beggars. Journalism non-profit, The Open Notebook, surveyed 267 freelance science writers and 49 editors to see how often they negotiate rates with clients. Interestingly, 86% of the respondents said they ask for a higher rate either always, often, or occasionally, and only 14% percent always accept the rate as it is.

Interestingly, clients also view freelancers who are not afraid to negotiate pay more positively. In that same survey, 90% of the editors claimed they think it's reasonable for a freelancer to ask for higher pay rates. Only 8% said they would start thinking about the worker somewhat negatively if they were to ask for more pay.

In the end, expecting free favors, making low-ball real estate offers, and expecting free stuff has to do with our sense of entitlement. Some people just might think that they're entitled to special treatment; that they're owed goods and services. Interestingly, entitlement at an early age is completely normal, psychotherapist F. Diane Barth, L.C.S.W., writes for her blog on Psychology Today. Problems begin when we think that we're the center of the world once we grow up.

Adults with a traumatic past are more likely to expect preferential treatment. "Often individuals who have been mistreated or disrespected exhibit a sense of entitlement when they start to feel that they deserve better than they have been getting," Barth writes. A certain amount of entitlement is actually okay for adults. We all have the right to be respected, and to take care of ourselves, and our families. The line is crossed, however, when we expect special treatment.