35 Nerve-Wracking Times When People Complained About Free Gifts

The sense of entitlement is strong with these folks. They clearly believe that the world owes them without giving anything in return.

Entitled people have a tendency to adopt goals based around their own self-image, often leading them into conflict with others.

While they may be able to put up an exterior of being nice and well-mannered on the outside, research shows that it's all just for show; deep down inside this is usually not how they truly feel about themselves or other individuals around them.

One study even suggests that entitlement can be dangerous. In 2018, researchers from Case Western Reserve University found that entitled people are more likely to experience chronic disappointment, unmet expectations, and a self-reinforcing cycle of behavior which puts them at risk for harm psychologically or socially.

Think of it like this: when someone thinks of themselves as superior, anything that challenges their worldview is met with defensiveness and anger. This creates a vicious cycle: the more they are challenged by society's limitations, the angrier they become at these "injustices."

However, social psychologist Jane Adams highlighted that every now and then we mistake entitlement for a sense of self-confidence projected by competent, assured, often charismatic others.

And sometimes, a bit of a fleeting, situational rush of entitlement might even be a good thing. "It can increase creativity and lead to novel, unusual solutions to problems, the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that organizations and employers encourage," Adams pointed out in Psychology Today.

"Pejoratively labeling an individual or a generation as entitled sometimes reveals more about us than it does about them," Adams continued. "Our unwillingness to recognize another's meritorious worth or hard-earned success, which indicates how often we think with our beliefs rather than about them."

The social psychologist said that a good example of this is how Hillary Clinton was viewed as entitled when she ran for political office, but not when she was actually in it.

Researchers at Harvard and Cornell who studied 99 undergraduates and 98 MBA candidates found that entitled people don't follow instructions, because they see them as unfair.

"They would rather take a loss themselves than agree to something unfair," said the authors, who correlated high scores on entitlement measurements with difficulty complying with the 'rules' of the experimental task. Attempting to understand why students ignored them (selfishness, control, or punishment), they found that fairness was the primary reason.

Entitled people want to be different from others. But just as frequently they come across as indifferent to others. That's why they often provoke such negative responses in those they encounter, especially those they don't personally know.

If you suspect that you might also be acting like a spoiled brat sometimes, there are things you can do to overcome it:

• Recognize the feeling of entitlement. Refuse to let it impact your life. If you have a hard time recognizing the feeling, think about other times when you felt entitled and then notice how much that feeling resembles what you're feeling now.
• Understand that you are not entitled to anything. Unfortunately, the world does not owe you anything. Life is unfair and it's your job to make the best of what you get in life, not to complain about what you deserve but don't have.