Entitlement
An assumption that you deserve special treatment.
Entitlement is an assumption that you deserve special treatment. The chest carries a forward presumption and the face expects without asking. What others must earn is taken for granted. It reliably produces conflict and damages relationships.
The world does not owe you what you assumed
Entitlement is the assumption that certain things are owed to you. Sometimes entitlements are real. The promised salary. The rights of a citizen. The care owed to a child. Often entitlement is smaller and more personal. The parking space. The quiet. The attention of the server. The belief that someone should have texted back by now. Check your entitlements. Many of them are based on the assumption that your comfort is a priority to the universe. It is not. Drop the smaller entitlements. You will be happier. You will also be easier to be around. The world does not rearrange itself for your expectations. Neither should the people in it.
"Expect nothing, appreciate everything."
— Unknown
Entitlement has a distinctive body signature of presumptive expectation. The chest carries particular forward presumption. The face often shows the expectation that does not need to ask. The voice may have particular insistent or assumptive quality. The body holds itself in a way that suggests entitlement to space, attention, or service. There is often a particular kind of frustration when expected treatment does not arrive, which can shade into anger or resentment. The state can produce particular satisfaction when entitled expectations are met and particular distress when they are not. Sustained entitlement patterns often shape how others respond, sometimes producing the deference that maintains the entitlement.
Entitlement has been extensively studied within research on narcissism and personality. Twenge and Campbell's work on the broader increase in narcissistic traits, including entitlement, documented changes in measured entitlement across generations (Twenge & Campbell, 2009). Research on entitlement as a specific construct has shown that it predicts various outcomes including interpersonal problems, conflict in relationships, reduced empathy, and particular patterns of distress when entitled expectations are not met (Campbell et al., 2004). The trait has both stable and state components, with situational entitlement arising in conditions of privilege or sustained power, and trait entitlement persisting across contexts.
Entitlement arises through multiple conditions, with both developmental and situational contributions. Common patterns include:
Entitlement is one of the more difficult patterns to work with because it often does not feel like a problem from inside. The following help.
Notice the costs of entitlement to your relationships
Entitlement reliably damages relationships, often without the person recognising the connection. Noticing when your entitled expectations are producing conflict, distance, or others pulling away often provides motivation for change. The pattern that produces these effects is often invisible from inside but visible in its results.
Calibrate your expectations to what others actually owe
Entitlement involves expectations that exceed what others actually owe you. Examining specifically what you expect from various people and situations, and whether those expectations match what is reasonable, often reveals patterns of overexpectation. The recalibration can be substantial and uncomfortable but typically improves relationships.
Practise gratitude rather than expectation
Sustained gratitude practice, focused on what you have actually received rather than what you expected to receive, often reduces entitlement over time. The practice shifts attention from disappointment about not getting more to recognition of what is actually present. Research on gratitude has shown effects on multiple well-being measures including reduced entitlement.
Address what entitlement may be protecting
When entitlement covers underlying insecurity or shame, working with the underlying feelings often produces more change than working with entitlement directly. Therapy approaches that address these underlying patterns often produce reduction in entitled behaviour as a byproduct of addressing what it was protecting.
If entitlement is producing significant relationship problems
Sustained entitlement that has damaged multiple relationships, particularly when accompanied by other narcissistic features including grandiosity, reduced empathy, and need for admiration, may warrant professional support. Therapy approaches developed for narcissistic patterns can produce change, though the work is often longer than for other patterns. The capacity for more balanced relating can be developed, though motivation for the work often requires recognising the costs of current patterns to yourself, not just to others.
"Entitlement predicts interpersonal problems, conflict in relationships, reduced empathy, and particular patterns of distress when entitled expectations are not met. The pattern produces costs even when it temporarily produces benefits."
— A summary of research on entitlement
What is entitlement?
Entitlement is an assumption that you deserve special treatment. The body operates from the felt sense that you should receive more than others, that ordinary rules or considerations should not constrain you, that your wants warrant priority. The chest carries particular forward presumption. The face often shows expectation that does not need to ask. There is a quality of taking for granted what others have to earn. Entitlement specifically refers to the assumption that you deserve more than the actual situation warrants, often combined with the expectation that others should arrange themselves accordingly. The disproportion is essential. Entitlement always involves the gap between what you assume you deserve and what the situation actually supports.
Where do people feel entitlement in the body?
Entitlement has a distinctive signature of presumptive expectation. The chest carries particular forward presumption. The face often shows the expectation that does not need to ask. The voice may have particular insistent or assumptive quality. The body holds itself in a way that suggests entitlement to space, attention, or service. There is often a particular kind of frustration when expected treatment does not arrive, which can shade into anger or resentment. The state can produce particular satisfaction when entitled expectations are met and particular distress when they are not.
What's the difference between entitlement and self-worth?
Self-worth is accurate appreciation of your value as a person. Entitlement is assumption of deserving special treatment that exceeds what the situation actually warrants. A person can have strong self-worth without entitlement (knowing your value without assuming you should receive more than others). The distinction matters because self-worth supports healthy functioning and relationships; entitlement damages both. Some people with low self-worth express entitlement as compensation, which is a particularly complex pattern. The healthy form is accurate self-assessment combined with accurate assessment of what is fair; entitlement specifically involves overestimation of what is fair to you.
Is entitlement a sign of narcissism?
Entitlement is one feature of narcissism but is not equivalent to it. Narcissism is a broader personality pattern that often includes entitlement alongside grandiosity, need for admiration, reduced empathy, and other features. Entitlement can occur without full narcissistic patterns, often as a state-dependent response to privilege or as compensation for underlying insecurity. Narcissistic personality disorder is a specific clinical condition; entitlement as a trait or state can exist in many people without warranting the clinical diagnosis. When entitlement is accompanied by multiple other narcissistic features and is causing significant relationship problems, professional evaluation may be appropriate to clarify whether broader patterns are operating.
How do you change entitled patterns?
Several practices help with entitlement, though the work is often difficult because entitled patterns typically do not feel like problems from inside. Noticing the costs of entitlement to your relationships often provides motivation for change; the pattern produces effects that are visible in results even when invisible from inside. Calibrating expectations to what others actually owe, rather than what you assume they owe, often reveals patterns of overexpectation worth adjusting. Sustained gratitude practice has evidence for reducing entitlement over time by shifting attention from disappointment about not getting more to recognition of what is actually present. When entitlement covers underlying insecurity or shame, addressing those underlying patterns often produces more change than working with entitlement directly. Sustained entitlement that has damaged relationships often benefits from therapy, particularly when narcissistic features are involved.
- Campbell, W. K., 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(1), 29–45. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15327752jpa8301_04
- Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2009). The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement. Free Press.
Entitlement sits in the mixed family because of its complex relationship with both positive and negative outcomes. It overlaps with grandiosity when self-aggrandisement is prominent, with arrogance when contempt for others is involved, with self-importance as the broader category, with narcissism as the clinical pattern that often includes entitlement, and with what personality research has identified as one of the patterns most reliably associated with interpersonal difficulty.
See where entitlement sits among the other 402 emotions.
Open Entitlement on the wheel