Victim entitlement to behave selfishly.
Three experiments demonstrated that feeling wronged leads to a sense of entitlement and to selfish behavior. In Experiment 1, participants instructed to recall a time when their lives were unfair were more likely to refuse to help the experimenter with a supplementary task than were participants who recalled a time when they were bored. In Experiment 2, the same manipulation increased intentions to engage in a number of selfish behaviors, and this effect was mediated by self-reported entitlement to obtain positive (and avoid negative) outcomes. In Experiment 3, participants who lost at a computer game for an unfair reason (a glitch in the program) requested a more selfish money allocation for a future task than did participants who lost the game for a fair reason, and this effect was again mediated by entitlement.
Zitek
Emily M
EM
Department of Psychology, Jordan Hall, Stanford University, Stanford,CA 94305, USA. emilyz@stanford.edu
Jordan
Alexander H
AH
Monin
Benoît
B
Leach
Frederick R
FR
D000339:Affect; D019548:Crime Victims / Q000523:psychology; D004532:Ego; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009014:Morals; D012919:Social Behavior; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires