In a series of studies, Emily Zitek from Cornell University and Alexander Jordan from Harvard Medical School looked at whether these emotional effects of entitlement extend to situations solely involving bad luck. First, the pair asked 162 participants to fill in the Psychological Entitlement Scale, which asks respondents to rate their agreement with statements like “I honestly feel I’m just more deserving than others”.  Participants were also asked how good they would expect their luck to normally be when rolling dice.

Participants were then told that they would be randomly allocated by dice roll to either a fun task (rating comic strips) or a boring task (counting the letters in a paragraph). In reality, all participants were told they had had “bad luck” and been assigned to the boring task. They then rated how unjust they felt this was, and indicated how angry they were.

The team found that those higher in entitlement had a stronger feeling of injustice and greater levels of anger. More entitled participants also generally expected to experience better luck when rolling dice, suggesting this is another instance where entitled people have (unrealistically) high expectations.

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