Dean Bruner's Blog

“You owe it to me!” said the student.   His red face, loud voice, and body language showed that he meant it.   He argued that he had completed every requirement for the course, had years of work experience, could have written the textbook himself, had received a classy job offer, and was president of the relevant student club.   I explained that his torpid attendance, work ethic, insight, class participation and weak mastery warranted the grade I gave him, a ‘B-’.  The grade he thought I owed him: an ‘A’.  Consumed by a sense of entitlement, he stormed out of my office.[1]  

Last year, the Pew Center for Research published a report that labels people 15 to 25 years old as the “Look At Me” generation (think Facebook, MySpace, and myYearbook)—they highly value fame; two-thirds see their generation as “unique and distinct”; and they reveal a set of behaviors that are quite self-indulgent.  A book by Professor Jean Twenge offers survey results that people born in the 1980s are more narcissistic than those born earlier.  But there is some contrary evidence as well.[2] I’m not totally persuaded that entitlement is on the rise--parents probably said the same thing about baby boomers.  But from where I’ve been sitting, I notice entitlement more.

A general manager will hear the echoes of entitlement in statements such as, “what have they done for me lately?”  “You got yours, now where is mine?”  “I put in my time each week and deserve more than this lousy raise.”  On the national scene, populist politics are founded on entitlement.  Governments have intervened in the subprime mortgage loan crisis to create “safety nets” for the financial system—the fear is that this expectation of entitlement will create a new problem, moral hazard.   Entitlement has risen to the ‘A’ list of topics in conversation.  Comments to this and other blogs mention the subject.  What’s going on?  Where does a sense of entitlement come from?  What is the consequence?  What should a general manager do about it?

“Entitlement” is an expectation that one should gain some benefit, without necessarily returning the favor.    Contracts, laws, and some regulations create legally-enforceable entitlements: Charlottesville deems that its citizens are entitled to a good night’s sleep and therefore enforces a curfew on loud late-night parties in my fraternity-rich neighborhood.  Virtually every reader of this blog benefits from entitlements.  Surely, the mere existence of entitlements is not the reason for the current interest.  No, I think it is all about how and why entitlements are claimed.  Here are the three most interesting possibilities:

**Injustice.  My student seemed to assume that I had broken a promise that even if he did minimal work he could still get the top grade.  Most claims of entitlement are based on some perceived injustice.  As Dean, I must consider such claims for the sake of the integrity of our community.  I look for some explicit commitment that would create an entitlement.  Barring that, I look for some well-defined process or general set of standards that would dictate how we should behave.  In the case of my student, the course syllabus clearly outlined the process of grading (the gradable elements, my general expectations about them, and the weights given to each); but reserved for my discretion the standards of quality.  I don’t think quality can be defined in some contractual way—like Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of pornography, I know quality when I see it.  Actually, the issue of quality is at the heart of the grave decision any student makes in choosing to attend a particular school: he or she is declaring trust in the quality standards of the faculty. 

**Narcissism.  Perhaps entitlement is all in the head.  A strong sense of entitlement is one indication of Narcissistic Personality Disorder[3].    Clinicians suggest that in part, narcissism is learned: too much adulation in childhood; a trophy for every soccer player; the absence of realistic feedback.   We should reserve psychiatry for the experts; but it is not hard to link a strong sense of entitlement to a lack of self-esteem, prompting one to need the external validation of one’s worth. 

**Envy.  Or perhaps entitlement starts with the heart, with envy.   By long tradition in Western Civilization, envy is called one of the seven deadly sins; envy kills all relationships it touches; it leads to malicious gossip, backbiting, and false accusation.  Envy is the great leveler: it denies the possibility that there may be some reason or purpose that you differ from an exemplar; it assumes that one should be able to do anything anyone else can do.  Someone else’s achievement diminishes one’s own.   Envy’s impulse is to pull down the exemplar.  Heroes, generals, CEOs, politicians, and leaders of all kinds must be shown to have feet of clay.  Schadenfreude(joy in others’ misfortunes) flows at the news of a scandal:  think of the reaction to Elliott Spitzer’s resignation as Governor of New York.   

These three possible causes suggest why the sense of entitlement is such an attractive stimulus for social critics.  Narcissism, envy, and false claims of injustice may be the dividend of affluence, meritocracy, democracy, and a host of government interventions.  Aristotle said that envy grows most naturally among equals.  This is the age of equality and merit in social systems.  In a cogent essay on envy, Henry Fairlie wrote:

“This is the curse of a system that is based on merit.  It produces an inequality of results, as it is forced to do, but it can justify itself only by appealing to the idea of equality, to the very impulse that it would like to allay.  There could  be no more certain prescription for inciting people to Envy, for it leaves the majority of them, who do not succeed, with no alternative but to see themselves as losers.”[4]

One can try to change the system, a task likely to be much harder than changing one’s thinking.   As the burgeoning self-help industry[5] tells us, one ought to get past the entitlement mindset.   This begins with fearless self-scrutiny: is one facing a genuine injustice, or merely a narcissism wound or a prick of envy? 

What is a leader to do?  He or she can’t ignore genuine injustices.  But at the same time, a leader should not unwittingly fuel a culture of entitlement for the simple reason that someone always pays for every entitlement.  Ultimately, this is a problem of the commons:  many entitlement claims are “me” issues, not necessarily claims that raise the common good.  Had I granted an ‘A’ to the undeserving student, I would have diminished the meaning and honor of top grades and trust in the judgment of the faculty.  This point is made in the Gondoliers, in which Gilbert and Sullivan lampoon a ruler who creates equality by granting everyone a fancy title (an entitlement).  The results are predictable:

There lived a King, as I've been told,
In the wonder-working days of old,
When hearts were twice as good as gold,
And twenty times as mellow.
Good-temper triumphed in his face,
And in his heart he found a place
For all the erring human race
And every wretched fellow.
When he had Rhenish wine to drink
It made him very sad to think
That some, at junket or at jink,
Must be content with toddy.
He wished all men as rich as he
(And he was rich as rich could be),
So to the top of every tree
Promoted everybody.

Lord Chancellors were cheap as sprats,
And Bishops in their shovel hats
Were plentiful as tabby cats-
In point of fact, too many.
Ambassadors cropped up like hay,
Prime Ministers and such as they
Grew like asparagus in May,
And Dukes were three a penny.
On every side Field-Marshals gleamed,
Small beer were Lords-Lieutenant deemed,
With Admirals the ocean teemed
All round his wide dominions.

And Party Leaders you might meet
In twos and threes in every street
Maintaining, with no little heat,
Their various opinions.
That King, although no one denies
His heart was of abnormal size,
Yet he'd have acted otherwise
If he had been acuter.
The end is easily foretold,
When every blessed thing you hold
Is made of silver, or of gold,
You long for simple pewter.
When you have nothing else to wear
But cloth of gold and satins rare,
For cloth of gold you cease to care-
Up goes the price of shoddy.

In short, whoever you may be,
To this conclusion you'll agree,
When every one is somebodee,
Then no one's anybody!