Academic entitlement: its relationship with academic behaviors and attitudes

Abstract

The current study examined the relationship of academic entitlement with student attitudes (e.g., locus of control, motivation) and academic behavior. Participants were 272 (96 men, 176 women) undergraduate students enrolled in general psychology and recruited from a psychology research pool. In groups, participants individually completed a lengthy survey, which included an academic entitlement scale, a locus of control scale, an academic motivation scale, and items related to academic behaviors and attitudes. Academic entitlement was correlated with a more external locus of control and lower academic motivation. Significant correlations also emerged between academic entitlement and perceptions of factors that might help and hinder academic performance. For example, regarding factors perceived as helping academic performance, academic entitlement was positively correlated with endorsing luck as a helpful factor, but negatively correlated with endorsing class attendance as a helpful factor. Regarding factors perceived as hindering academic performance, academic entitlement was positively correlated with external factors such as bad luck and perceiving there to be too much work in the course. Results are discussed in terms of the need to consider academic entitlement as an academic risk factor.