The 3 Faces of Emotional Entitlement

When you think about entitlement it most likely applies to narcissistic people who believe that they should be treated as special. When they aren’t, their reactions can be swift and harsh. Although an expectation of being treated with dignity and respect is part of the general human condition, the narcissistic type of entitlement becomes part of a total picture of pathology.

Perhaps you were recently with a relative who is not exactly your favorite person. You both were invited to a birthday celebration for someone who is not your family member but is related to this other person. Your sense of what’s appropriate led you to buy a fairly nice gift along with a card that expressed the friendship and admiration you have for the recipient. You also chipped in a side dish to contribute to the day’s festivities. Much to your surprise, the actual relative showed up with nothing. In fact, they asked if they could bring some of the leftovers home. In retrospect, you shouldn’t have been surprised because this was pretty typical behavior.

Emotional Entitlement vs. Sense of Entitlement

According to Peres Academic Center (Israel) psychologists Roni Laslo-Roth and Sivian George-Levi (2024), entitlement can have adaptive qualities when it leads to the expectation that you will be treated in a respectful manner. The pathological variety of sense of entitlement extends to that relative who thinks that just by showing up, they don’t need to do anything else. However, the Israeli psychologists believe that entitlement can take an emotional turn. It is, in their words, the “degree to which people believe they have the right to experience different emotions."

Just as entitlement beliefs can have an adaptive quality, so can emotional entitlement. It’s adaptive to accept your feelings and regard them as part of your rights. Indeed, psychotherapy derived from theories such as mindfulness emphasizes the value of noticing your emotions and allowing yourself to experience them in the moment. In the framework of the Laslo-Roth and George-Levi research team, these beliefs can take the form of entitlement to positive emotions (EEP) and entitlement to negative emotions (ENP).

It’s when emotional entitlement becomes the “uncompromised” form, or EEU, that the situation becomes less sanguine. Now you have a person who believes that they are not only entitled to their emotions, but that you are expected to make them as happy as they deserve to be. And if you fail to do so—for example, not being happy just because they are happy—then you become the target of their anger. In other words, as the song says, “Don’t rain on my parade.”

Returning to the case of the tight-fisted relative, there’s a good chance that you’re expected to allow them to revel in the fun despite not having lifted a finger. Should you do anything other than this, you’ll now become the guilty one.

The Three Forms of Emotional Entitlement

Because there are no measures of this unpleasant approach to emotional experiences, the Israeli team set out to develop one that would meet the statistical criteria for being a good scale of falling into factors that fit with theory, as well as relating to other measures that ought to be related on a conceptual basis. Across three online samples of adults (over 1300 individuals) in Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the authors first developed a Hebrew version, then an English one that they translated, and then another Israeli one from whom the English version was back-translated into Hebrew. They also administered scales of positive and negative emotions, life satisfaction, loneliness, and the ability to regulate emotions around other people. The three-factor scale developed in the first study retained its statistical composition, so then it became the final version. These are the three factors along with items from each, rated from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree):

Emotional Entitlement to Positive Emotions (EEP)

1. Everyone is entitled to feel happy.
2. I deserve to feel emotions that do me good.
3. I deserve to feel loved.
4. When things are going well for me, I deserve to be happy.
5. I deserve to enjoy life.

Emotional Entitlement to Negative Emotions (EEN)

1. Even if nothing bad has happened, every person is entitled to feel depressed.
2. When something bad happens to me, I have the right to feel sad.
3. I am allowed to feel frustrated when things do not go my way.
4. I am allowed to feel despair and sadness sometimes.
5. I am allowed to feel bad.

Uncompromised Emotional Entitlement (EEU)

1. I find it hard to forgive those who do not feel happy for me when I am happy.
2. I find it hard to forgive those who do not support me during difficult times.
3. I resent those who did not support me when I was feeling bad for a long time.
4. I cannot forget how wronged I felt when others did not rejoice in my joy.
5. When people do not share my joy, I feel that this is unfair.

To see where your score fits into the sample averages, it is likely that you were higher on positive (mean = 6.67 Hebrew, 6.34 English), and negative (6.18 and 6.11) than on uncompromised (3.80 and 3.22). All three sample differences were significant, suggesting that cultural context could affect scores on this measure; this is an important point to take into account for your own scoring purposes. Women were higher than men, another important consideration. Finally, older people had lower scores than their younger counterparts.

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In terms of relationships to other measures, people higher on EEP had higher life satisfaction, positive affect, and lower levels of loneliness. EEN was related to lower life satisfaction, supporting the cognitive theory of depression which regards a negative view of the self as one potential contributor.

EEU, as the authors expected, was related to higher levels of loneliness and negative affect, suggesting that their “unrealistic expectations can strain relationships …, as individuals who feel entitled to prioritize their emotional needs may become more demanding and resentful of others who do not meet their expectations” (p. 10). It’s no fun to be accused of raining on someone else’s parade, so to avoid this, people stay away from people whose emotional entitlement takes the uncompromised form.

How to Handle People With the Uncompromised Emotional Entitlement

The emotional entitlement scale, particularly the EEU, can help explain why you’d rather not be with certain people who regard you as needing to be their biggest cheerleaders. It’s fine to support people, but not if that need for support becomes all-encompassing. If you can never correct someone whose “joy” comes at the expense of others, for example, why would you stick around? The EEU scale provides some insights into the pathological form of narcissism in which complete and utter subjugation from others produces a steady stream of ugly demands.

Returning again to the empty-handed relative at the party, you probably already know that there’s no point in trying to comment on the situation. However, if you care about this person, or at least don’t want to feel so repelled by them, it might be worth taking time—not within the current situation, but before the next event—to encourage them to think about how unpopular their behavior can make them. If loneliness is the downside to the uncompromised form of emotional entitlement, perhaps you can help them feel a little less lonely and angry.

To sum up, recognizing and accepting your emotions, especially the positive ones, can help you achieve greater joy as you live each moment. Expecting others to do the work for you can keep that joy from flourishing.

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