NCJ Number
225173
Journal
Journal of Youth and Adolescence Volume: 37 Issue: 10 Dated: November 2008 Pages: 1193-1204
Date Published
November 2008
Length
12 pages
Annotation
This study examined the personality, parenting, and motivational correlates of academic entitlement among college students.
Abstract
The study found that “academic entitlement” (AE) was most strongly related to exploitive attitudes towards others and moderately related to an overall sense of entitlement and to narcissism. Students who reported more academically entitled attitudes perceived their parents as exerting achievement pressure marked by social comparison with other youth and materially rewarding good grades, scored higher than their peers in achievement anxiety and extrinsic motivation, and engaged in more academic dishonesty. It was also noted that academic entitlement was not significantly associated with grade point averages (GPA). Anecdotal evidence cited by the work suggests an increase in entitled attitudes and behaviors of youth in school and college settings. Using a newly developed scale to assess academic entitlement, a construct that includes expectations of high grades for modest effort and demanding attitudes towards teachers, this research is noted to be the first to investigate the phenomenon systematically. This study examined the personality, parenting, and motivational correlates of AE. Data were derived from two separate samples of ethnically diverse college students comprised largely of East and Southeast Asian Americans, followed by Caucasians, Latinos, and other groups. The groups consisted of a total of 839 undergraduate students from a large public university, with an age range of 18 to 25 years. Tables, references