Psychological Entitlement Predicts Failure to Follow Instructions

Abstract

Six studies examined the relationship between psychological entitlement and not following instructions. In Study 1, more entitled individuals were more likely to ignore instructions about how to format their responses. Studies 2–4 investigated possible boundaries on the association between entitlement and ignoring instructions; however, entitled people were more likely to ignore instructions even when following instructions was low cost for the self, instructions were given in a less controlling way, or punishment was highly likely to result from a failure to follow instructions. To explore another possible explanation for the relationship between entitlement and ignoring instructions, Study 5 examined whether entitled people were more sensitive to situations potentially unfair to them; indeed, they were more likely to reject offers in an ultimatum game. Building on this finding, in Study 6, more entitled individuals’ greater likelihood of ignoring instructions was predicted by their viewing instructions as an unfair demand on them.

Full text

Running head: ENITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 1
Psychological Entitlement Predicts Failure to Follow Instructions
Emily M. Zitek
Cornell University
Alexander H. Jordan
McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School
Word count: 4975

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 2
Abstract
Six studies examined the relationship between psychological entitlement and not following
instructions. In Study 1, more entitled individuals were more likely to ignore instructions about
how to format their responses. Studies 2–4 investigated possible boundaries on the association
between entitlement and ignoring instructions; however, entitled people were more likely to
ignore instructions even when following instructions was low-cost for the self, instructions were
given in a less controlling way, or punishment was highly likely to result from a failure to follow
instructions. To explore another possible explanation for the relationship between entitlement
and ignoring instructions, Study 5 examined whether entitled people were more sensitive to
situations potentially unfair to them; indeed, they were more likely to reject offers in an
ultimatum game. Building on this finding, in Study 6, more entitled individuals’ greater
likelihood of ignoring instructions was predicted by their viewing instructions as an unfair
demand on them.
Keywords: psychological entitlement, instructions, fairness, compliance

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 3
Psychological Entitlement Predicts Failure to Follow Instructions
Well-functioning groups, organizations, and societies depend on people’s willingness to
follow instructions. An efficient boarding process at the airport requires people to follow gate
agents’ directives. Many medical procedures hinge on staff’s willingness to follow exactly the
orders of an attending surgeon. When crossing streets, pedestrians must follow the rules provided
by traffic lights to prevent traffic jams and accidents. If people routinely ignored instructions,
chaos would ensue in a variety of domains. Thus, it is important to understand what makes
people more or less likely to comply with instructions. An abundance of social psychological
research has investigated the situational determinants of people’s willingness to comply with
requests (e.g., Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004). Complementing this tradition, in this paper, we argue
that an individual difference construct—psychological entitlement—is an important predictor of
whether a person will follow instructions.
Psychological entitlement is the feeling that one is more deserving of positive outcomes
than other people are (Campbell, Bonacci, Shelton, Exline, & Bushman, 2004). Individuals with
a higher sense of entitlement (hereafter entitled people for brevity; we do not intend a categorical
distinction with this phrase) are more likely to believe they are owed valuable resources or
benefits (e.g., a higher salary, a better grade, special treatment) regardless of their effort or
performance relative to others (Twenge & Campbell, 2009). Past research indicates that entitled
people are less likely to demonstrate concern for what is socially acceptable or beneficial for
others when deciding what they wish to do. For example, entitled people are more likely to
behave opportunistically, be dishonest, and make unethical decisions (Burt, Donnellan, &
Tackett, 2012; Greenberger, Lessard, Chen, & Farruggia, 2008; Malhotra & Gino, 2011; Poon,
Chen, & DeWall, 2013; Tamborski, Brown, & Chowning, 2012; Vincent & Kouchaki, 2016),

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 4
and one study showed that they were more likely to drop out of a parenting class even though
material learned in it could benefit their children (Snow, Kern, & Curlette, 2001). We predict
that they would also be more likely to ignore instructions from other people for several reasons.
First, entitled people are more selfish and lower in agreeableness and empathy, and they
are less likely to enjoy helping others and tend to have self-image goals but not compassionate
goals (Campbell et al., 2004; Moeller, Crocker, & Bushman, 2009; Watson & Morris, 1991;
Zitek, Jordan, Monin, & Leach, 2010). They also are more likely to think that dull tasks waste
their time (O’Brien, Anastasio, & Bushman, 2011). Thus, while other people might follow
instructions to help the person asking (e.g., Berkowitz, 1972; Burger & Caldwell, 2003), entitled
individuals might not want to expend time and energy doing things that others want them to.
Second, entitled people are more averse to being controlled by others (Rose & Anastasio, 2014).
Thus, because they resent being told what to do, they might refuse to follow instructions to
maintain a sense of autonomy (Brehm & Brehm, 1981). Third, entitled people might be more
likely to think they will escape punishment for failing to follow instructions. They have very
high expectations in general (Grubbs & Exline, 2016), and therefore they might think they will
be able to avoid sanctions for ignoring instructions (e.g., through good luck or the ability to talk
themselves out of it). Entitled people are more likely to demand special treatment (Fisk &
Neville, 2011); perhaps they have had success with getting what they want in the past and expect
this to continue. Fourth, entitled people might be more likely to think the instructions that they
have been given are unfair. Because entitled people are more easily offended and more likely to
believe that they are being mistreated by others (Exline, Baumeister, Bushman, Campbell, &
Finkel, 2004; Harvey, Harris, Gillis, & Martinko, 2014; McCullough, Emmons, Kilpatrick, &
Mooney, 2003), instructions that other people accept might be viewed as abusive and unfair by

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 5
an entitled person, and people are less likely to comply with rules and requests that they perceive
as unfair or illegitimate (e.g., Colquitt, 2001; Tyler, 1997; Tyler & Degoey, 1995).
In this paper, we examine whether more entitled people are more likely to ignore
instructions than less entitled people, and if so, possible explanations for this relationship. We
first report a pilot study in which we reanalyzed data from another project to test the predicted
relationship. Then, in Study 1, we examine whether entitled people are more likely to ignore
formatting instructions for a word search. In Studies 2–4, we explore whether entitled people are
less likely to follow instructions due to selfishness, not wanting to be controlled by others, or a
perceived unlikelihood of being punished. We manipulate features of the situation to remove
each potential barrier to entitled individuals’ following of instructions and examine whether they
then follow instructions. Finally, in Studies 5–6, we examine whether entitled people are less
likely to follow instructions because they perceive the instructions as unfair. We report all
manipulations and all measures of entitlement and instruction-following that we included in our
studies. Sample size decisions were made a priori with a goal of maximizing power for main
effects, and we did not exclude any data.
Pilot Study: Reanalysis of an Existing Data Set
As an initial test of our hypothesis, we reanalyzed a dataset from a project on entitlement
and hunger. In the original study, participants (N = 156) had been told to complete the study
before or after dinner, and they reported their entitlement on the Psychological Entitlement Scale
(PES; Campbell et al., 2004). We gave them specific instructions about how to complete the
survey and what counted as before or after dinner, but when analyzing the data, we noticed that
many participants ignored the instructions (34.6%). Thus, it was hard to test our original
hypothesis that hunger leads to higher entitlement. However, this problem inspired us to test the

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 6
present hypothesis that entitled people would be less likely to follow instructions. Given the
sample size, we would have power of .76 to detect the mean effect size in our field of r = .21
(Richard, Bond, & Stokes-Zoota, 2003). We observed a significant point-biserial correlation
between entitlement and having to be removed from the dataset for not following instructions, rpb
= .218, 95% CI [.063, .363], p = .006.
Study 1
In an attempted replication of our pilot study using a new method, in Study 1, we
instructed participants about how to format their survey responses. We predicted that individuals
with greater psychological entitlement would be more likely to ignore the instructions.
Method
Participants (N = 202; 105 men, 95 women, 2 other; Mage = 32.4, SDage = 10.0) were
recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk (mTurk) and were paid $0.35 (USD).
1
Participants first
completed the PES (α = .90; Campbell et al., 2004), the most commonly used measure of the
entitlement disposition. They rated items such as “I honestly feel I’m just more deserving than
others” and “Great things should come to me” (1 = strong disagreement, 7 = strong agreement).
Then they completed the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI; Gosling, Rentfrow, & Swann,
2003), indicating whether certain characteristics (“sympathetic and warm”) described them. The
TIPI was originally included as a filler, but it allowed us to examine whether any of the Big 5
personality traits accounted for the relationship between entitlement and ignoring instructions.
Finally, participants were asked to complete a word search according to a set of specific
instructions (find words in a certain orientation, list five total words, find words of at least three
1
We set an a priori sample size of 200 for our mTurk studies with one condition and either 300 or 400 for our
mTurk studies with two conditions. The final sample size for each study varied slightly from these numbers
depending on the number of completed survey responses we received. As mentioned in the General Discussion, our
studies were likely underpowered to detect interactions (see Mackinnon, 2013).

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 7
letters, find distinct words, type words in all capital letters, put a semicolon and space in between
the words, and put a period after the last word). We summed the total number of instructions (out
of seven) they ignored.
2
Results and Discussion
Entitlement (M = 3.21, SD = 1.20) was positively correlated with the number of word
search instructions participants ignored (M = 1.25, SD = 1.51), r = .145, 95% CI [.007, .277], p =
.040.
3
Thus, people higher in psychological entitlement were more likely to format their word
search responses incorrectly. Further analysis (reported in the online Supplemental Materials)
showed that the Big 5 personality characteristics could not account for this relationship between
entitlement and ignoring instructions.
4
Study 2
The goal of Study 2 was to explore whether entitled people are more likely to ignore
instructions because they do not want to inconvenience themselves (i.e., because they are
selfish). Thus, we presented various scenarios to participants and manipulated how personally
costly it was to follow instructions in each scenario. We predicted that if entitled people ignore
instructions because they want to avoid inconvenience, then the relationship between entitlement
and ignoring instructions should be attenuated when following instructions is not as personally
costly.
Method
2
When participants partially followed an instruction (e.g., they included a semicolon but no space in between
words), they received a .5.
3
See the Supplemental Materials for a reanalysis of the data from Studies 1 and 3 using a negative binomial
regression to account for the non-normal residuals.
4
See the Supplemental Materials for the TIPI results from all studies.

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 8
We offered this study for extra credit in an introductory undergraduate course, and 157
participants signed up (63 men, 94 women, Mage = 19.2, SDage = 2.16). Participants first
completed the PES and the TIPI. Then participants were presented with 13 brief hypothetical
scenarios in which they imagined being given instructions by another person. Participants were
randomly assigned to conditions in which it was either higher or lower cost for them to follow
instructions in each scenario. For example, participants imagined that a professor told them to
use a different citation style for a paper, and it would take them either a few hours or a few
minutes to make the changes. For each scenario, participants rated how likely they would be to
not follow instructions (1 = very unlikely, 7 = very likely), thereby doing what was more
convenient for them. We took the mean response across these 13 scenarios as a measure of
ignoring instructions.
Results and Discussion
As shown in Tables 1 and 2, ignoring instructions was predicted by both entitlement and
condition. Instructions were more likely to be ignored when the recipients of the instructions
were more entitled and when following instructions was personally costly. However, there was
not a significant interaction between entitlement and condition (more costly vs. less costly) in
our multiple regression (see Table 2). Thus, the relationship between entitlement and ignoring
instructions was not weakened when following instructions was described as less costly. In other
words, even when following instructions would be only a minor inconvenience, entitled people
were still more likely than less entitled people to ignore the instructions. Interestingly, the
interaction effect was opposite the predicted direction in this study. Thus, this study did not
provide evidence that entitled people’s failure to follow instructions is driven by their desire to
avoid doing anything that is costly for them.

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 9
Table 1. Descriptive statistics, zero-order correlations and their 95% confidence intervals, and
Cronbach’s alphas (shown in bold on the diagonal) for Study 2 (N = 157)
Measure
M (SD)
1
2
3
1. Entitlement
3.49 (1.02)
.86
2. Condition (1 = more costly,
-1 = less costly)
.006 (1.00)
-.05 [-.20, .11]
---
3. Ignoring instructions
2.95 (0.86)
.33* [.19, .46]
.14† [-.02, .29]
.77
Note. * = p < .05, † = p < .1
Table 2. Coefficients from an ordinary least squares (OLS) multiple regression model predicting
the likelihood of ignoring instructions from entitlement (centered), condition (1 = more costly, -1
= less costly), and their interaction (N = 157).
b (se)
t
p
Partial r [95% CI]
Intercept
2.95 (.064)
45.8
.000
Entitlement
.287 (.063)
4.54
.000
.344 [.197, .476]
Condition
.130 (.064)
2.02
.045
.162 [.004, .312]
Entitlement x condition
-.072 (.063)
-1.13
.259
-.091 [-.245, .068]
Note. R2 = .140
Study 3
In this study, we examined whether entitled people are less likely to follow instructions
because they are especially averse to being controlled by others. We manipulated whether
following instructions was framed as optional or mandatory, predicting that the relationship
between entitlement and ignoring instructions would be weaker when following instructions was
framed as optional.

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 10
Method
Participants (N = 300; 165 men, 134 women, 1 other, Mage = 34.3, SDage = 10.7) were
recruited from mTurk and were paid $0.35 (USD). They first completed the PES and TIPI, as in
previous studies. Then participants were told that they would be asked to complete a word search
on the next screen according to specific instructions. They were either told that following
instructions was mandatory (and that they would be punished by losing out on a 10-cent bonus
for failing to follow instructions) or optional (and that they would be rewarded with an additional
10-cent bonus for following instructions). Finally, they were given a word search similar to the
one used in Study 1, but about animals and with slightly different instructions (list words, find
only animal names, find words in a certain orientation and ignore others, list five total words,
type words in all capital letters, indicate the orientation of each word with a symbol, put a
semicolon and space between the words, and put a period after the last word). We summed the
total number of instructions (out of eight) they ignored.
Results and Discussion
As shown in Tables 3 and 4, ignoring instructions was predicted by both entitlement and
condition. Instructions were more likely to be ignored when the recipients of the instructions
were more entitled and when following instructions was framed as optional. However, there was
not a significant interaction between entitlement and condition (mandatory vs. optional) in our
multiple regression (see Table 4). Although there was a weaker relationship between entitlement
and ignoring instructions when following instructions was framed as optional, as we had
predicted, the interaction effect was small and non-significant in this study. Entitled individuals
were similarly more likely to ignore instructions regardless of whether the instructions were
optional or mandatory. Thus, this study did not provide evidence for the hypothesis that entitled

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 11
people ignore instructions because of their aversion to being controlled by others’ mandatory
rules.
Table 3. Descriptive statistics, zero-order correlations and their 95% confidence intervals, and
Cronbach’s alphas (shown in bold on the diagonal) for Study 3 (N = 300)
Measure
M (SD)
1
2
3
1. Entitlement
3.36 (1.38)
.93
2. Condition (1 = mandatory,
-1 = optional)
.007 (1.00)
-.05 [-.16, .06]
---
3. Instructions ignored
1.16 (1.98)
.18* [.07, .29]
-.16* [-.27, -.05]
---
Note. * = p < .05
Table 4. Coefficients from an OLS multiple regression model predicting the number of
instructions ignored from entitlement (centered), condition (1 = mandatory, -1 = optional), and
their interaction (N = 300).
b (se)
t
p
Partial r [95% CI]
Intercept
1.16 (.112)
10.4
.000
Entitlement
.249 (.081)
3.07
.002
.176 [.064, .284]
Condition
-.295 (.112)
-2.64
.009
-.152 [-.261, -.039]
Entitlement x condition
.049 (.081)
.598
.550
.035 [-.079, .148]
Note. R2 = .056
Study 4
In Study 4, we examined whether entitled people are more likely to ignore instructions
because they think they are unlikely to be punished for doing so. We manipulated the chance of

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 12
punishment and asked participants to report how likely they would be to ignore instructions
when punishment was either highly unlikely or highly likely. We predicted that the relationship
between entitlement and ignoring instructions would decrease when punishment was described
as highly likely, as entitled people would not want to do something that would have a clear and
unavoidable negative consequence for them (see Daddis & Brunell, 2015, on entitled
individuals’ prudential concerns).
Method
Participants (N = 401; 204 men, 196 women, 1 other, Mage = 35.3, SDage = 11.2) were
recruited from mTurk and were paid $0.45 (USD). As before, they first completed the PES and
TIPI. Participants then read five short scenarios that described situations in which they were
asked to follow instructions. In each scenario, the following information was mentioned: the
benefits to others of their following instructions, the costs to themselves of following
instructions, and the punishment for not following instructions (if caught). Participants read
scenarios in which punishment for ignoring instructions was either highly unlikely or highly
likely. For example, participants imagined that a requester on mTurk wanted them to write out an
answer of at least three sentences but that they did not want to generate a response that long.
They were told to imagine that they were sure, based on past experiences with the requester, that
he or she would or would not actually check to see if the workers followed instructions.
Participants rated for each scenario how likely they would be to ignore the instructions (1 = very
unlikely, 7 = very likely), and we took the mean of the five ratings as our dependent variable.
Participants also rated how bad it would be for them if they got punished after each scenario (1 =
not at all bad, 7 = very bad), and we took the mean of these ratings as well. After reading all
scenarios, participants rated how likely they thought the authority figures would be to enforce the

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 13
punishments (1 = very unlikely, 7 = very likely), as a manipulation check, and how happy they
would be if they got away with ignoring instructions across the scenarios (1 = not at all happy, 7
= very happy).
Results and Discussion
As shown in Tables 5 and 6, ignoring instructions was predicted by both entitlement and
condition. Instructions were more likely to be ignored when the recipients of the instructions
were more entitled and when punishment was unlikely. However, there was not a significant
interaction between entitlement and condition (highly unlikely vs. highly likely) in our multiple
regression (see Table 6). Although, as we had predicted, there was a weaker relationship between
entitlement and ignoring instructions when punishment for not following instructions was
described as highly likely, the interaction effect was small and non-significant in this study.
Entitled people were more likely to ignore instructions to the same degree regardless of the
likelihood of punishment. Thus, this study does not provide evidence for the hypothesis that
entitled people ignore instructions simply because they think they can avoid punishment.
5
Table 5. Descriptive statistics, zero-order correlations and their 95% confidence intervals, and
Cronbach’s alphas (shown in bold on the diagonal) for Study 4 (N = 401).
Measure
M (SD)
1
2
3
4
5
6
1. Entitlement
3.28 (1.25)
.91
2. Condition (1 =
unlikely, -1 = likely)
.012 (1.00)
-.02
[-.12, .08]
---
3. Ignore instructions
2.15 (1.18)
.25*
[.15, .34]
.30*
[.21, .39]
.70
5
See the Supplemental Materials for the results with exclusions based on incorrect responses to the manipulation
check.

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 14
4. Punishment
likelihood
4.88 (2.23)
.04
[-.06, .14]
-.65*
[-.70,-.59]
-.32*
[-.40,-.22]
---
5. Happiness about
escaping punishment
4.04 (1.74)
.21*
[.12, .31]
.04
[-.06, .14]
.28*
[.19, .37]
-.13*
[-.22,-.03]
---
6. How bad if punished
5.37 (1.13)
.04
[-.06, .13]
-.09
[-.18, .01]
-.32*
[-.40,-.23]
.20*
[.10, .29]
-.10*
[-.20,-.00]
.77
Note. * = p < .05
Table 6. Coefficients from an OLS multiple regression model predicting the likelihood of
ignoring instructions from entitlement (centered), condition (1 = punishment highly unlikely, -1
= punishment highly likely), and their interaction (N = 401).
b (se)
t
p
Partial r [95% CI]
Intercept
2.14 (.054)
39.4
.000
Entitlement
.238 (.044)
5.48
.000
.265 [.171, .354]
Condition
.362 (.054)
6.65
.000
.317 [.226, .403]
Entitlement x condition
.034 (.044)
.784
.434
.039 [-.059, .137]
Note. R2 = .155
We expected a very high rate of instruction following for all participants when they were
told that they “were sure” they would get punished; we were thus initially surprised by the lack
of an interaction. To understand why entitled individuals would risk punishment, we ran a
follow-up study. In one scenario, participants were asked how likely they would be to ignore a
landlord’s instructions to have a carpet cleaned. If participants said that they would not follow
the landlord’s instructions even when this would mean losing their security deposit, we asked
them to explain their answer. Instruction-ignoring individuals, especially those high in
entitlement, expressed anger at the landlord for asking them to have the carpet cleaned. For
example, they commented, “I feel this requirement is above and beyond what should be expected

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 15
and is part of the landlord’s responsibility” and “I feel it would be unfair to ask me to clean a
carpet that wasn't even dirty!” It seemed that people were willing to risk losing the security
deposit in order to spite the landlord for having an unfair rule. In the next studies, we test
whether this theme emerging from the open-ended responses might explain why entitled people
do not follow instructions.
We also examined the correlations across conditions between entitlement and the other
responses to the scenarios to try to understand better why entitled people failed to follow
instructions (see Table 5). Entitled people were not significantly more likely to believe they
would avoid punishment or to think it would be less bad if they were punished, providing
evidence against these explanations. Entitled people were, however, significantly more likely to
say they would be happy if they escaped punishment for not following instructions. Thus,
perhaps entitled people do not want to follow instructions because they know from past
experiences that they are likely to feel happy if they get away with ignoring unfair requests,
similar to the “cheater’s high” people feel when they get away with unethical behavior with no
obvious victim (Ruedy, Moore, Gino, & Schweitzer, 2013). We will explore this more in the
subsequent studies.
Study 5
In this study, we took a brief detour to learn whether entitled people are particularly
sensitive to potentially unfair situations and willing to protest the unfairness even in ways that
might hurt themselves. To do this, we asked participants to respond to ultimatum game offers. If
entitled people were more likely to reject offers in the ultimatum game, this would shed light on
the nature of psychological entitlement and might help us understand why entitled people do not
follow instructions.

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 16
Method
One hundred ninety-nine mTurk users (103 men, 96 women, Mage = 34.5, SDage = 10.2)
completed this study for $0.30 (USD). They first completed the PES (α = .92) and TIPI, as in
previous studies. Then participants were told to imagine that they were playing a game with
another mTurk worker and that the other person was the “proposer” and they were the
“responder.” Participants read: “The proposer has to come up with an offer to propose to you that
states how much of $10 to allocate to himself or herself and how much to give to you. You can
either accept the offer, which means that you and your partner will both get the proposed
amounts, or you can reject the offer, in which case neither of you gets paid anything.” Similar to
what has been done in other research (e.g., Koenigs & Tranel, 2007), participants then were
presented with a series of hypothetical offers, one at a time in random order, where the proposer
suggested the following allocations: $10/$0, $9/$1, $8/$2, $7/3, $6/4, and $5/5. Participants
indicated whether they would accept or reject each offer.
Results and Discussion
As shown in Table 6, entitlement (M = 3.33, SD = 1.37) was significantly or marginally
correlated with rejecting all offers. Entitled people, who believe they deserve more than others,
are more likely to reject potentially unfair offers in an ultimatum game. They seemingly would
rather take a loss themselves than agree to an offer that does not reflect their worth. Although we
did not expect a correlation between entitlement and rejecting the fair offer of a $5/$5 split,
perhaps entitled people think they are special and deserve more than half, such that even this
offer feels unfair to them. However, because only three people rejected this offer, we do not want
to make too much of this particular result.

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 17
The results of this study, which examined the relationship between entitlement and
behavior in the ultimatum game for the first time, are consistent with the idea that entitled people
do not follow instructions because they would rather take a loss themselves (i.e., get punished)
than agree to something unfair.
Table 7. The percentage of people who rejected each ultimatum game offer, the point-biserial
correlation between entitlement and rejecting the offer, and the associated 95% confidence
interval.
Offer to respondent
Percent rejecting the offer
Correlation with entitlement
$0
89.4%
.14† [-.00, .27]
$1
62.8%
.17* [.04, .31]
$2
55.8%
.16* [.02, .30]
$3
42.7%
.20* [.06, .33]
$4
14.6%
.14† [-.00, .27]
$5
1.5%
.15* [.01, .29]
Note. * = p < .05; † = p < .1
Study 6
In this study, we examined whether entitled people are less likely to follow instructions
because they are more likely to believe the instructions are unfair. We presented participants
with scenarios in which they imagined being given instructions. We asked them to rate the
instructions’ fairness and how likely they would be to ignore them.
Method

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 18
Two hundred three mTurk users (95 men, 108 women, Mage = 35.8, SDage = 11.1)
completed this study for $0.45 (USD). They first completed the PES and TIPI. Then they read
five scenarios similar to those in Study 4 but with no mention of the likelihood of punishment.
After each scenario, participants rated how fair it is that they were asked to follow the particular
set of instructions (e.g., a boss asking them to format a report in a certain way; 1 = very unfair, 7
= very fair) and how likely they would be to ignore the instructions (1 = very unlikely, 7 = very
likely). We calculated the mean fairness rating and the mean likelihood of ignoring instructions
across the five scenarios. Then, as in Study 4, after reading all the scenarios, participants were
asked to rate overall how likely the authority figures would be to enforce the punishments, how
happy they would be if they escaped punishment for not following instructions, and how bad it
would be for them if they were punished.
Results and Discussion
As shown in Table 8, entitlement was again correlated with ignoring instructions.
Furthermore, entitled people were less likely to think the instructions they were given were fair
and more likely to report that they would be happy if they got away with not following
instructions. In a multiple regression, entitlement and the rating of how bad punishment would be
were not significant predictors of ignoring instructions, but the fairness rating of the instructions,
the anticipated happiness about escaping punishment, and the perceived likelihood of
punishment were (see Table 8).
6
Moreover, as predicted, the indirect effect from entitlement to
ignoring instructions though fairness, as calculated using the PROCESS bootstrapping procedure
with 10,000 iterations (Hayes, 2013), was significant, 95% CI [.011, .116]. This provides some
6
One person in this study skipped the punishment likelihood question. The mean score on this question was inputted
for this participant to avoid having to exclude him from the regression analysis. The results were the same regardless
of whether this data point was included or excluded.

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 19
evidence that the relationship between entitlement and ignoring instructions may be explained by
fairness perceptions. And consistent with Study 4, the indirect effect through happiness about
escaping punishment was significant as well, 95% CI [.012, .107]. Thus, although this cross-
sectional study cannot establish causality, this pattern of results is consistent with the suggestion
that entitled people fail to follow instructions because they are more likely to think the
instructions are unfair and would be happier if they could get away with not following them.
Table 8. Descriptive statistics, zero-order correlations and their associated 95% confidence
intervals, and Cronbach’s alphas (shown in bold on the diagonal) for Study 6 (N = 203).
Measure
M (SD)
1
2
3
4
5
6
1. Entitlement
3.19 (1.18)
.91
2. Ignore instructions
2.41 (1.20)
.21*
[.07, .33]
.58
3. Fairness of instructions
4.20 (0.96)
-.23*
[-.35,-.09]
-.36*
[-.47,-.23]
.66
4. Punishment likelihood
5.41 (1.28)
-.04
[-.17, .10]
-.26*
[-.38,-.12]
.20*
[.07, .33]
---
5. Happiness about
escaping punishment
4.52 (1.72)
.22*
[.08, .34]
.32*
[.19, .44]
-.33*
[-.45,-.21]
-.06
[-.20, .08]
---
6. How bad if punished
5.03 (1.52)
-.03
[-.17, .11]
-.21*
[-.34,-.08]
.16*
[.03, .29]
.39*
[.27, .50]
-.08
[-.21, .06]
---
Note. * = p < .05
Table 9. Coefficients from an OLS multiple regression model predicting the likelihood of
ignoring instructions from ratings of entitlement, the fairness of the instructions, the likelihood of
punishment, anticipated happiness about escaping punishment, and how bad it would be if they
got punished (N = 203).

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 20
b (se)
t
p
Partial r [95% CI]
Intercept
3.74 (.596)
6.27
.000
Entitlement
.106 (.066)
1.60
.112
.113 [-.027, .248]
Fairness of instructions
-.270 (.087)
-3.12
.002
-.217 [-.346, -.080]
Punishment likelihood
-.148 (.065)
-2.30
.023
-.161 [-.294, -.022]
Happiness about escaping
punishment
.144 (.047)
3.06
.003
.213 [.076, .342]
How bad if punished
-.075 (.054)
-1.39
.167
-.098 [-.234, .042]
Note. R2 = .224
General Discussion
As shown in our studies, more entitled people are less likely to follow instructions. They
are more likely to ignore instructions from the researcher (Pilot Study, Study 1, and Study 3) and
to say they will ignore instructions from others in hypothetical scenarios (Studies 2, 4, and 6).
Our studies suggest that the relationship between entitlement and ignoring instructions may be
due to entitled individuals’ greater likelihood of regarding instructions as an unfair imposition on
them. It seems that entitled individuals would rather incur a personal cost than agree to
something unfair (Studies 5 and 6), and they would be happy to escape punishment for not
following instructions (Studies 4 and 6).
We did not find evidence that entitled people fail to follow instructions because they want
to avoid a personal cost, because they do not like being controlled, or because they think they
can avoid punishment. However, it is still possible that these factors contribute to entitled
individuals’ disinclination to follow instructions. Studies 2–4 were underpowered to detect an
average-sized interaction in our field (Aguinis, Beaty, Boik, & Pierce, 2005) and may not have

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 21
manipulated the constructs in the best way. Future research should further explore why entitled
people fail to follow instructions.
Entitlement, compared to other individual difference constructs, may be particularly
relevant to ignoring instructions because entitled people are unlikely to want to do something
that is worse than what they believe they deserve (such as follow instructions), and entitled
individuals are especially likely to believe they are being treated unfairly (Harvey et al., 2014;
McCullough et al., 2003). Nonetheless, future research should examine the specificity of our
results to entitlement. We did not find evidence that the Big 5 traits could account for the
relationship between entitlement and ignoring instructions, but it is possible that other individual
differences correlated with entitlement might do so. Another artefactual explanation might also
be considered—perhaps lower concerns about social desirability predict both more endorsement
of psychological entitlement and more ignoring of instructions—but the limited empirical
evidence indicates that any relationship between PES scores and social desirability is weak to
nonexistent (e.g., Campbell et al., 2004; Grubbs, Exline, & Twenge, 2014), and thus not likely a
full explanation for why entitled people ignore instructions.
We hoped to learn from this series of studies how entitled individuals might be made to
follow instructions to the same degree as less entitled people. Organizations and societies run
more smoothly when people are willing to follow instructions, and entitled people themselves
could also benefit from following instructions, as this would help them to avoid punishments.
Indeed, when entitled people’s failure to follow instructions results in their being punished, they
are likely to perceive the punishment as unjust suffering, which in turn may intensify their sense
of entitlement to behave selfishly and ignore inconvenient social demands in the future (Zitek et
al., 2010; see also Grubbs and Exline, 2016). Thus, it is plausible that increasing entitled

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 22
people’s compliance with instructions might actually help to stem a cycle that feeds their entitled
attitudes and behaviors.
Although we were not able to eliminate the relationship between entitlement and failure
to follow instructions in our studies, the results of Study 6 suggest that making instructions seem
fairer may encourage entitled individuals to follow them. Unfortunately, this may be difficult to
accomplish, insofar as all of the instructions/rules described in the scenarios were things that
people are regularly asked to do in everyday life (e.g., how to format a report, where to cross the
road, etc.), yet the entitled individuals still thought them unfair. Future research should identify
conditions under which entitled individuals might regard instructions as fair. One possibility is to
alter whom the instructions come from. Entitled people do not like outgroup members (Anastasio
& Rose, 2014); if the instructions come from an ingroup member such as a peer instead of from
an authority figure, perhaps entitled individuals would be more likely to view the instructions as
fair and therefore follow them. Identifying a way to increase entitled people’s instruction-
following could have important practical implications in schools, the workplace, and anywhere
else where we count on people to follow instructions.

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 23
References
Aguinis, H., Beaty, J. C., Boik, R. J., Pierce, C. A. (2005). Effect size and power in assessing
moderating effects of categorical variables using multiple regression: A 30-year review.
Journal of Applied Psychology, 90, 94–107.
Anastasio, P. A., & Rose, K. C. (2014). Beyond deserving more: Psychological entitlement also
predicts negative attitudes toward personally relevant out-groups. Social Psychological
and Personality Science, 5, 593–600.
Anderson, D., Halberstadt, J., & Aitken, R. (2013). Entitlement attitudes predict students’ poor
performance in challenging academic conditions. International Journal of Higher
Education, 2, 151–158.
Berkowitz, L. (1972). Social norms, feelings, and other factors affecting helping and altruism. In
L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 6, pp. 63–108).
San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Brehm, S. S., & Brehm, J. W. (1981). Psychological reactance: A theory of freedom and control.
London: Academic Press.
Burger, J. M., & Caldwell, D. F. (2003). The effects of monetary incentives and labeling on the
foot-in-the-door effect Evidence for a self-perception process. Basic and Applied Social
Psychology, 25, 235–241.
Campbell, W. K., Bonacci, A. M., Shelton, J., Exline, J. J., & Bushman, B. J. (2004).
Psychological entitlement: Interpersonal consequences and validation of a self-report
measure. Journal of Personality Assessment, 83, 29–45.
Cialdini, R. B, & Goldstein, N. J. (2004) Social influence: Compliance and conformity. Annual
Review of Psychology, 55, 591–621.

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 24
Ciani, K. D., Summers, J. J., & Easter, M. A. (2008). Gender differences in academic entitlement
among college students. Journal of Genetic Psychology: Research and Theory on Human
Development, 169, 332–344.
Colquitt, J. A. (2001). On the dimensionality of organizational justice: A construct validation of
a measure. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86, 386–400.
Daddis, C., & Brunell, A. B. (2015). Entitlement, exploitativeness, and reasoning about everyday
transgressions: A social domain analysis. Journal of Research in Personality, 58, 115–
126.
Exline, J. J., Baumeister, R. F., Bushman, B. J., Campbell, W. K., & Finkel, E. J. (2004). Too
proud to let go: Narcissistic entitlement as a barrier to forgiveness. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 87, 894–912.
Fisk, G. M., & Neville, L. B. (2011). Effects of customer entitlement on service workers’
physical and psychological well-being: A study of waitstaff employees. Journal of
Occupational Health Psychology, 16, 391–405.
Gosling, S. D., Rentfrow, P. J., & Swann, W. B. Jr. (2003). A very brief measure of the Big Five
Personality Domains. Journal of Research in Personality, 37, 504-528.
Greenberger, E., Lessard, J., Chen, C., & Farruggia, S. P. (2008). Self-entitled college students:
Contributions of personality, parenting, and motivational factors. Journal of Youth and
Adolescence, 37, 1193–1204.
Grubbs, J. B., & Exline, J. J. (2016). Trait entitlement: A cognitive-personality source of
vulnerability to psychological distress. Psychological Bulletin, 142, 1204–1226.

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 25
Grubbs, J. B., Exline, J. J., & Twenge, J. M. (2014). Psychological entitlement and ambivalent
sexism: Understanding the role of entitlement in predicting two forms of sexism. Sex
Roles, 70, 209–220.
Harvey, P., Harris, K. J., Gillis, W. E., & Martinko, M. J. (2014). Abusive supervision and the
entitled employee. The Leadership Quarterly, 25, 204–217.
Hayes, A. F. (2013). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and condition process analysis: A
regression based approach. New York: The Guilford Press.
Koenigs, M., & Tranel, D. (2007). Irrational economic decision-making after ventromedial
prefrontal damage: Evidence from the ultimatum game. Journal of Neuroscience, 27, 951–
956.
Mackinnon, S. (2013, November). Increasing statistical power in psychological research without
increasing sample size. Open Science Collaboration. Retrieved from
http://osc.centerforopenscience.org/2013/11/03/Increasing-statistical-power/
Malhotra, D., & Gino, F. (2011). The pursuit of power corrupts: How investing in outside
options motivates opportunism in relationships. Administrative Science Quarterly, 56,
559–592.
McCullough, M. E., Emmons, R. A., Kilpatrick, S. D., & Mooney, C. N. (2003) Narcissists as
“victims”: The role of narcissism in the perception of transgressions. Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 885–893.
Moeller, S. J., Crocker, J., & Bushman, B. J. (2009). Creating hostility and conflict: Effects of
entitlement and self-image goals. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 448–
452.

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 26
O’Brien, E. H., Anastasio, P. A., & Bushman, B. J. (2011). Time crawls when you’re not having
fun: Feeling entitled makes dull tasks drag on. Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin, 37, 1287–1296.
Poon, K., Chen, Z., & DeWall, C. N. (2013). Feeling entitled to more: Ostracism increases
dishonest behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39, 1227–1239.
Richard, F. D., Bond, C. F., Jr., & Stokes-Zoota, J. J. (2003). One hundred years of social
psychology quantitatively described. Review of General Psychology, 7, 331–363.
Rose, K. C., & Anastasio, P. A. (2014). Entitlement is about ‘others’, narcissism is not: Relations
to sociotropic and autonomous interpersonal styles. Personality and Individual
Differences, 59, 50–53.
Ruedy, N. E., Moore, C., Gino, F., & Schweitzer, M. E. (2013). The cheater’s high: The
unexpected affective benefits of unethical behavior. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 105, 531–548.
Snow, J. N., Kern, R. M., & Curlette, W. L. (2001). Identifying personality traits associated with
attrition in systematic training for effective parenting groups. The Family Journal, 9, 102-
108.
Tamborski, M., Brown, R. P., & Chowning, K. (2012). Self-serving bias or simply serving the
self? Evidence for a dimensional approach to narcissism. Personality and Individual
Differences, 52, 942–946.
Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2009). The narcissism epidemic: Living in the age of
entitlement. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Tyler, T. R. (1997). The psychology of legitimacy: A relational perspective on voluntary
deference to authorities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 1, 323–345.

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 27
Tyler, T. R., & Degoey, P. (1995). Collective restraint in social dilemmas: Procedural justice and
social identification effects of support for authorities. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 69, 482–497.
Vincent, L. C., & Kouchaki, M. (2016). Creative, rare, entitled, and dishonest: How
commonality of creativity in one’s group decreases an individual’s entitlement and
dishonesty. Academy of Management Journal, 59, 1451–1473.
Watson, P. J., & Morris, R. J. (1991). Narcissism, empathy and social desirability. Personality
and Individual Differences, 12, 575-579.
Zitek, E. M., Jordan, A. H., Monin, B., & Leach, F. R. (2010). Victim entitlement to behave
selfishly. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 245–255.

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 28
Psychological Entitlement Predicts Failure to Follow Instructions
Supplemental Materials
Study 1
Table S1 presents a correlation matrix including the results from the TIPI. People who
were more extraverted, less conscientious, and less open to experience were more likely to
ignore instructions. When a multiple regression was used to predict the number of instructions
followed from the Big 5 traits and entitlement, the results were similar to those of the zero-order
correlations (see Table S2), and the new model predicted ignoring instructions significantly
better than did the model with entitlement as the only predictor, ΔR2 = .146, F(5, 195) = 6.85, p
< .001. Entitlement was a marginally significant predictor in the multiple regression (c’ = .150, p
= .075), but its coefficient did not drop significantly as compared to what it was in a simple
regression (c = .181, p = .040), as demonstrated by the non-significant confidence interval
computed by the PROCESS macro, 95% CI for c − c’ [-.040, .117]. Thus, the Big 5 traits do not
appear to account for the relationship between entitlement and not following instructions.
Table S1. Descriptive statistics, intercorrelations, and Cronbach’s alphas (shown in bold on the
diagonal) for Study 1 (N = 202).
Measure
M (SD)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
1. Entitlement
3.21 (1.20)
.90
2. Extraversion
3.17 (1.61)
.09
.79
3. Agreeableness
5.29 (1.24)
-.12
.12
.47
4. Conscientiousness
5.29 (1.29)
.04
.15*
.46*
.64
5. Emotional stability
4.74 (1.61)
.04
.16*
.41*
.49*
.84

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 29
6. Openness to
experience
4.85 (1.33)
-.02
.34*
.34*
.17*
.25*
.50
7. Number of
instructions ignored
1.25 (1.51)
.15*
.18*
-.14
-.16*
-.07
-.23*
---
Note. * = p < .05
Table S2. Regression coefficients for a model predicting ignoring instructions from entitlement
and the Big 5 personality traits (N = 202).
b [95% CI]
Partial r
t
p
Intercept
2.50 [1.29, 3.71]
4.06
.000
Entitlement
.150 [-.015, .314]
.127
1.79
.075
Extraversion
.273 [.144, .403]
.285
4.15
.000
Agreeableness
.022 [-.169, .213]
.016
.228
.820
Conscientiousness
-.218 [-.401, -.034]
-.165
-2.34
.020
Emotional stability
.036 [-.109, .182]
.035
.492
.623
Openness
-.358 [-.523, -.192]
-.291
-4.25
.000
Note. R2 = .167
Our dependent variable was the number of instructions ignored, and it was positively
skewed (with the modal response being 0). This caused the residuals from our ordinary least
squares (OLS) regression to not be normally distributed. To check the robustness of the
relationship between entitlement and ignoring instructions, we reanalyzed our data using a
negative binomial regression model in R. Because negative binomial models require integer
outcome variables, we examined the total number of instructions ignored without giving “half
credit” for instructions that were partially followed. As shown in Table S3, in this model,
entitlement was still a significant predictor of ignoring instructions.

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 30
Table S3. Results from a negative binomial model predicting ignoring instructions from
entitlement (N = 202).
Estimate
Std. error
Z
p
Intercept
-.252
.244
-1.03
.303
Entitlement
.152
.069
2.21
.027
Study 2
Table S4 presents a correlation matrix including the results from the TIPI. People who
were less agreeable, less conscientious, and less open to experience were more likely to ignore
instructions. When the Big 5 traits were added to the multiple regression model reported in Table
2 of the main paper, the new model was a significantly better predictor of ignoring instructions,
ΔR2 = .171, F(5, 148) = 7.32, p < .001. However, the Big 5 traits did not account for the effect of
entitlement on ignoring instructions. Entitlement was still a significant predictor of ignoring
instructions even when the Big 5 traits were added to the multiple regression (see Table S5).
Table S4. Descriptive statistics, intercorrelations, and Cronbach’s alphas (shown in bold on the
diagonal) for Study 2 (N = 157).
Measure
M (SD)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
1. Entitlement
3.49 (1.02)
.86
2. Extraversion
4.62 (1.44)
.07
.73
3. Agreeableness
4.96 (1.15)
-.17*
.10
.47
4. Conscientiousness
5.23 (1.26)
-.20
.01
.32*
.59

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 31
5. Emotional stability
4.61 (1.43)
-.05
.12
.36*
.24*
.74
6. Openness to
experience
5.07 (1.16)
-.15
.39*
.41*
.30*
.28*
.43
7. Likelihood of
ignoring instructions
2.95 (0.86)
.33*
.05
-.19*
-.45*
.04
-.20*
.77
Note. * = p < .05
Table S5. Regression coefficients for a model predicting ignoring instructions from entitlement
(centered), condition, their interaction, and the Big 5 personality traits (N = 157).
b [95% CI]
Partial r
t
p
Intercept
4.29 [3.56, 5.03]
11.5
.000
Entitlement
.205 [.086, .323]
.271
3.42
.001
Condition
.100 [-.018, .219]
.136
1.68
.096
Entitlement x condition
-.025 [-.143, .092]
-.035
-.426
.671
Extraversion
.032 [-.059, .122]
.056
.688
.492
Agreeableness
-.045 [-.165, .074]
-.062
-.752
.453
Conscientiousness
-.263 [-.366, -.161]
-.386
-5.09
.000
Emotional stability
.103 [.013, .192]
.184
2.27
.024
Openness
-.072 [-.196, .053]
-.093
-1.14
.258
Note. R2 = .311
The OLS regression provided a good fit to the data in this study, and there was no
problem with the normality of the residuals. There was one outlier, however (a residual over 4
SD from the mean). One participant in the less costly condition said he would ignore all
instructions (a rating of 7 for all items). When this participant’s responses were removed and the

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 32
regression was run again, the results were very similar. There were effects of entitlement and
costliness, but no interaction (see Table S6).
Table S6. Regression coefficients for a model predicting the likelihood of ignoring instructions
from entitlement (centered), condition (1 = more costly, -1 = less costly), and their interaction (N
= 156, outlier removed).
b [95% CI]
Partial r
t
p
Intercept
2.93 [2.81, 3.05]
48.0
.000
Entitlement
.225 [.103, .346]
.285
3.66
.000
Condition
.150 [.029, .270]
.195
2.46
.015
Entitlement x condition
-.009 [-.131, .112]
-.013
-.155
.877
Note. R2 = .111
Study 3
Table S7 presents a correlation matrix including the results from the TIPI. People who
were less agreeable and less emotionally stable were more likely to ignore instructions. When the
Big 5 traits were added to the multiple regression model reported in Table 4 of the main paper,
the new model was a marginally better predictor of ignoring instructions, ΔR2 = .033, F(5, 291) =
2.11, p = .064. However, the Big 5 traits did not account for the effect of entitlement on ignoring
instructions. Entitlement was still a significant predictor of ignoring instructions even when the
Big 5 traits were added to the multiple regression (see Table S8).
Table S7. Descriptive statistics, intercorrelations, and Cronbach’s alphas (shown in bold on the
diagonal) for Study 3 (N = 300).

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 33
Measure
M (SD)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
1. Entitlement
3.36 (1.38)
.93
2. Extraversion
3.22 (1.74)
.17*
.76
3. Agreeableness
5.35 (1.32)
-.03
.15*
.58
4. Conscientiousness
5.46 (1.27)
.08
.09
.36*
.66
5. Emotional stability
4.99 (1.58)
.02
.33*
.36*
.44*
.78
6. Openness to
experience
5.08 (1.30)
.04
.36*
.19*
.14*
.21*
.47
7. Number of
instructions ignored
1.16 (1.98)
.18*
.03
-.13*
-.06
-.14*
-.09
---
Note. * = p < .05
Table S8. Regression coefficients for a model predicting ignoring instructions from entitlement
(centered), condition, their interaction, and the Big 5 personality traits for Study 3 (N = 300).
b [95% CI]
Partial r
t
p
Intercept
2.78 [1.47, 4.09]
4.18
.000
Entitlement
.231 [.069, .393]
.162
2.81
.005
Condition
-.274 [-.494, -.054]
-.142
-2.45
.015
Entitlement x condition
.052 [-.107, .211]
.038
.645
.520
Extraversion
.103 [-.040, .246]
.083
1.42
.155
Agreeableness
-.109 [-.294, .077]
-.068
-1.15
.249
Conscientiousness
.029 [-.170, .228]
.017
.288
.774
Emotional stability
-.151 [-.318, .017]
-.103
-1.77
.078
Openness
-.154 [-.337, .029]
-.096
-1.65
.099
Note. R2 = .089

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 34
Our dependent variable was the number of instructions ignored, and it was positively
skewed (with the modal response being 0). This caused the residuals from our OLS regression to
not be normally distributed. As in Study 1, to check the robustness of the relationship between
entitlement and ignoring instructions, we reanalyzed our data using a negative binomial
regression model in R (again turning our dependent variable into all integers). As shown in Table
S9, in this model, entitlement was still a significant predictor of ignoring instructions.
Table S9. Results from a negative binomial model predicting ignoring instructions from
entitlement, condition, and their interaction for Study 3 (N = 300).
Estimate
Std. error
Z
p
Intercept
.150
.097
1.54
.124
Entitlement
.179
.070
2.55
.011
Condition
-.262
.097
-2.69
.007
Entitlement x condition
.058
.070
.821
.412
Study 4
Table S10 presents a correlation matrix including the results from the TIPI. People who
were less agreeable, less conscientious, and less open to experience were more likely to ignore
instructions. When the Big 5 traits were added to the multiple regression model reported in Table
6 of the main paper, the new model was a significantly better predictor of ignoring instructions,
ΔR2 = .085, F(5, 392) = 8.73, p < .001. However, the Big 5 traits did not account for the effect of
entitlement on ignoring instructions. Entitlement was still a significant predictor of ignoring
instructions even when the Big 5 traits were added to the multiple regression (see Table S11).

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 35
Table S10. Descriptive statistics, intercorrelations, and Cronbach’s alphas (shown in bold on the
diagonal) for Study 4 (N = 401).
Measure
M (SD)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
1. Entitlement
3.28 (1.25)
.91
2. Extraversion
3.40 (1.70)
.17*
.76
3. Agreeableness
5.38 (1.19)
-.11*
.15*
.44
4. Conscientiousness
5.38 (1.26)
.03
.15*
.37*
.62
5. Emotional stability
4.90 (1.56)
.08
.31*
.33*
.48*
.79
6. Openness to
experience
5.08 (1.21)
-.02
.30*
.28*
.21*
.32*
.37
7. Ignore instructions
2.15 (1.18)
.25*
.02
-.26*
-.19*
-.07
-.14*
.70
8. Punishment
likelihood
4.88 (2.23)
.04
.08
.07
.01
.03
.04
-.32*
---
9. Happiness about
escaping punishment
4.04 (1.74)
.21*
-.06
-.19*
-.12*
-.12*
-.04
.28*
-.13*
---
10. How bad if
punished
5.37 (1.13)
.04
.08
.14*
.08
-.07
.01
-.32*
.20*
-.10*
.77
Note. * = p < .05
Table S11. Regression coefficients for a model predicting ignoring instructions from entitlement
(centered), condition, their interaction, and the Big 5 personality traits for Study 4 (N = 401).
b [95% CI]
Partial r
t
p
Intercept
4.03 [3.41, 4.65]
12.8
.000
Entitlement
.209 [.125, .294]
.240
4.89
.000
Condition
.378 [.276, .481]
.344
7.26
.000
Entitlement x condition
.024 [-.058, .106]
.029
.568
.570

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 36
Extraversion
.035 [-.031, .101]
.053
1.05
.296
Agreeableness
-.172 [-.269, -.075]
-.174
-3.49
.001
Conscientiousness
-.168 [-.263, -.072]
-.171
-3.44
.001
Emotional stability
.059 [-.022, .139]
.072
1.43
.153
Openness
-.092 [-.185, .001]
-.098
-1.95
.052
Note. R2 = .240
The manipulation check confirmed that participants in the highly unlikely condition
thought the punishment was less likely to be enforced (M = 3.45, SD = 2.03) than did
participants in the highly likely condition (M = 6.35, SD = 1.26), t(399) = 17.1, p < .001, d =
1.71, but some ratings deviated from what we expected in each condition. We had originally
planned to exclude people who did not answer the manipulation check about the likelihood of
punishment in a way consistent with their condition (i.e., people who did not give a rating of 1–3
in the highly unlikely condition or 5–7 in the highly likely condition) or who did not correctly
answer an attention check question asking them to mark 7. We preregistered these exclusions
(https://aspredicted.org/hp6xi.pdf), but because many more people answered incorrectly than we
anticipated (30.2% of our sample), especially in the punishment highly unlikely condition, we
did not remove participants from the analyses in the main paper. In Table S12, we show the
regression results with these exclusions. We ended up including 107/203 in the punishment
highly unlikely condition and 173/198 in the highly likely condition. As shown below, the results
were similar when we did follow the preregistered exclusions. Entitlement and condition were
still significant predictors of ignoring instructions. The interaction effect became stronger, but it
was still not significant. Interestingly, people higher in entitlement were more likely to fall under

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 37
our original exclusion criteria, rpb = .121, p = .015, indicating that they did not follow the
instructions in our study. (We also preregistered that we would explore whether how bad it
would be if they were punished and how happy they would feel about escaping punishment were
alternative explanations for our results. Because we did not find an interaction between
entitlement and condition on ignoring instructions, we did not run the full multiple regression
model with these other variables as the outcome and instead examined the zero-order
correlations, as described in the main paper.)
Table S12. Regression coefficients for a model predicting the likelihood of ignoring instructions
from entitlement (centered), condition (1 = punishment highly unlikely, -1 = punishment highly
likely), and their interaction in Study 4 (N = 280, with pre-registered exclusions).
b [95% CI]
Partial r
t
p
Intercept
2.04 [1.92, 2.16]
34.6
.000
Entitlement
.195 [.102, .287]
.243
4.16
.000
Condition
.444 [.328, .560]
.413
7.54
.000
Entitlement x condition
.068 [-.024, .161]
.088
1.46
.146
Note. R2 = .203
The dependent variable was positively skewed in this study as well. This caused the
residuals from our OLS regression to not be normally distributed (although it was much less of a
violation in this study than in Studies 1 and 3). We performed a natural log transformation of the
dependent variable and then reran the multiple regression from the main paper to check the

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 38
robustness of the results. As shown in Table S13, in this model, entitlement was still a significant
predictor of the likelihood of ignoring instructions.
Table S13. Regression coefficients for a model predicting the natural log likelihood of ignoring
instructions from entitlement (centered), condition (1 = punishment highly unlikely, -1 =
punishment highly likely), and their interaction in Study 4 (N = 401).
b [95% CI]
Partial r
t
p
Intercept
.620 [.573, .667]
26.0
.000
Entitlement
.100 [.062, .137]
.254
5.22
.000
Condition
.190 [.143, .237]
.371
7.97
.000
Entitlement x condition
.014 [-.023, .052]
.027
.738
.461
Note. R2 = .184
Study 5
Table S14 presents a correlation matrix including the results from the TIPI. Entitlement
was more consistently correlated with rejecting offers in the ultimatum game than any Big 5 trait
was.
Table S14. Descriptive statistics, intercorrelations, and Cronbach’s alphas (shown in bold on the
diagonal) for Study 5 (N = 199).
Measure
M (SD)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
1. Entitlement
3.33 (1.37)
.92
2. Extraversion
3.25 (1.70)
.26*
.77

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 39
3. Agreeable-
ness
5.21 (1.29)
.05
.15*
.45
4. Conscien-
tiousness
5.47 (1.31)
.10
.10
.32*
.64
5. Emotional
stability
4.71 (1.67)
.21*
.30*
.30*
.43*
.80
6. Openness to
experience
4.85 (1.38)
.12
.37*
.38*
.27*
.20*
.55
7. Reject $0
0.89 (0.31)
.14
.01
.11*
.09
.05
.03
---
8. Reject $1
0.63 (0.48)
.17*
.12
.09
.03
.00
-.02
.38*
---
9. Reject $2
0.56 (0.50)
.16*
.09
.09
.06
.01
.02
.35*
.84*
---
10. Reject $3
0.43 (0.50)
.20*
.21*
.13
.06
.07
.09
.23*
.60*
.71*
---
11. Reject $4
0.15 (0.35)
.14
.02
-.04
-.06
-.06
-.11
.00
.29*
.31*
.39*
---
12. Reject $5
0.02 (0.12)
.15*
.15*
-.04
-.16*
-.08
-.06
-.23*
.01
-.06
-.02
.30*
Note. The reject variables were coded 1 = reject, 0 = accept.
* = p < .05
As seen in the correlation matrix and mentioned in the main paper, entitlement was
significantly correlated with rejecting the even $5/$5 split. One other predictor of rejecting the
$5/$5 split was the order in which the offers were presented, with the $5/$5 split being presented
anywhere from first to sixth. When the $5/$5 offer was presented later in the sequence, it was
more likely to be rejected, rpb = .148, p = .037. This could be due to the fact that after rejecting
so many other unfair offers, participants viewed the proposers or game in general as unfair. Of
course, because only three people rejected the $5/$5 offer, we do not want to make too much of
this result. Furthermore, as shown in Table S15, controlling for order did not diminish the effect
of entitlement in a logistic regression predicting a rejection of the $5/$5 split.
Table S15. Results from a binary logistic regression predicting rejecting the $5 offer in the
ultimatum game from entitlement and the position of the $5 offer in the sequence (N = 198).

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 40
Coefficient
Std. error
Wald (1 df)
p
Odds ratio
Intercept
-15.5
6.11
6.39
.011
.000
Entitlement
1.19
.570
4.33
.038
3.27
Position of offer
1.34
.795
2.84
.092
3.81
Study 6
Table S16 presents a correlation matrix including the results from the TIPI. People who
were less agreeable, less conscientious, and less open to experience were more likely to say they
would ignore instructions. When ignoring instructions was predicted from entitlement and the
Big 5 traits, the new model predicted ignoring instructions significantly better than did the model
with entitlement as the only predictor, ΔR2 = .110, F(5, 196) = 5.10, p < .001. However, the Big
5 traits did not fully account for the effect of entitlement on ignoring instructions. Entitlement
was still a significant predictor of ignoring instructions even when the Big 5 traits were added to
the multiple regression (see Table S17).
Table S16. Descriptive statistics, intercorrelations, and Cronbach’s alphas (shown in bold on the
diagonal) for Study 6 (N = 203).
Measure
M (SD)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
1. Entitlement
3.19 (1.18)
.91
2. Extraversion
3.19 (1.73)
.14
.85
3. Agreeableness
5.25 (1.25)
-.28*
.08
.54
4. Conscientiousness
5.39 (1.23)
-.01
.10
.32*
.57
5. Emotional stability
4.73 (1.57)
-.02
.23*
.36*
.47*
.79

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 41
6. Openness to
experience
4.93 (1.30)
-.01
.27*
.18*
.32*
.22*
.63
7. Ignore instructions
2.41 (1.20)
.21*
-.01
-.21*
-.27*
-.02
-.18*
.58
8. Fairness of
instructions
4.20 (0.96)
-.23*
-.10
.04
.16*
.01
-.01
-.36*
.66
9. Punishment
likelihood
5.41 (1.28)
-.04
-.13
.13
.18
-.05
.01
-.26*
.20*
---
10. Happiness about
escaping punishment
4.52 (1.72)
.22*
-.08
-.07
-.13
-.19*
.01
.32*
-.33*
-.06
---
11. How bad if
punished
5.03 (1.52)
-.03
-.13
.10
.02
-.14*
-.06
-.21*
.16*
.39*
-.08
Note. * = p < .05
Table S17. Regression coefficients for a model predicting ignoring instructions from entitlement
and the Big 5 personality traits for Study 6 (N = 203).
b [95% CI]
Partial r
t
p
Intercept
3.78 [2.70, 4.85]
6.92
.000
Entitlement
.174 [.035, .313]
.174
2.47
.014
Extraversion
-.003 [-.100, .093]
-.005
-.071
.943
Agreeableness
-.117 [-.259, .024]
-.116
-1.64
.104
Conscientiousness
-.272 [-.422, -.123]
-.248
-3.59
.000
Emotional stability
.138 [.020, .256]
.162
2.31
.022
Openness
-.097 [-.228, .033]
-.104
-1.47
.143
Note. R2 = .153
The dependent variable was somewhat positively skewed in this study as well, again
causing the residuals from our OLS regression to not be normally distributed. As in Study 4, we
performed a natural log transformation of the dependent variable and then reran the analyses
from the main paper to check the robustness of the results. Entitlement and the natural log of

ENITITLEMENT AND INSTRUCTIONS 42
ignoring instructions were still positively correlated, r = .23, p = .001. And as shown in Table
S18, the multiple regression results looked pretty similar to what was reported in the main paper,
except that most effects got stronger.
Table S18. Regression coefficients for a model predicting the natural log of the likelihood of
ignoring instructions from ratings of entitlement, the fairness of the instructions, the likelihood of
punishment, anticipated happiness about escaping punishment, and how bad it would be if they
got punished (N = 203).
b [95% CI]
Partial r
t
p
Intercept
1.47 [1.00, 1.94]
6.19
.000
Entitlement
.048 [-.003, .100]
.130
1.84
.067
Fairness of instructions
-.134 [-.203, -.066]
-.267
-3.90
.000
Punishment likelihood
-.068 [-.119, -.018]
-.186
-2.66
.009
Happiness about escaping
punishment
.059 [.022, .096]
.220
3.16
.002
How bad if punished
-.040 [-.082, .003]
-.130
-1.84
.067
Note. R2 = .283