Feeling Of Entitlement Research Articles

Neoliberalism, healthism and moral judgements: a psychosocial approach to class

This article explores how a psychosocial approach to class can shed light on the ways in which neoliberal governmentality works through moral judgements and how different emotions within a ‘regime of judgements’ are rooted in class relations. First, I look at sociological arguments about health in terms of the risk logic of healthism and theories about the neoliberal imperative of moral value display in order to build a theoretical framework on a key feature of neoliberalism: the field of moral judgements. Second, I look at psychosocially oriented class theories, which specify morality and respectability as key features of class. I then illustrate the theoretical points through two empirical cases consisting of two very different mothers, involved in their six-year-old children’s start in the final preschool class. Two theoretical concepts unfold in dialogue with the cases and the psychosocial approach: habitus’ emotional implications and class consciousness understood as a sense of being judged. I show how, for the privileged middle-class mother, judging is associated with a feeling of entitlement and moral superiority, while the less privileged mother seems to feel a judgemental gaze, and is thus uncomfortable and nervous in relation to moral judgements of respectability. The article concludes that the psychosocial potential lies in exploring both how class morals currently shape subjectivity and how the emotional implications of this are drivers of the ways in which neoliberal governmentality relies on moral judgements related to healthism, risk and responsibilisation.

It Is Time for Plastic Surgeons to Start Picking Up the Tab.

It Is Time for Plastic Surgeons to Start Picking Up the Tab.

Irrational blame

I clarify some ambiguities in blame-talk and argue that blame's potential for irrationality and propensity to sting vitiates accounts of blame that identify it with consciously accessible, personal-level judgements or beliefs. Drawing on the cognitive psychology of emotion and appraisal theory, I develop an account of blame that accommodates these features. I suggest that blame consists in a range of hostile, negative first-order emotions, towards which the blamer has a specific, accompanying second-order attitude, namely, a feeling of entitlement - a feeling that these hostile, negative first-order emotions are what the blamed object deserves.

Managing the Difficult Penile Prosthesis Patient

Inflatable penile prostheses (IPPs) are associated with excellent long-term outcomes and patient/partner satisfaction. A small percentage of patients remain dissatisfied, despite acceptable surgical results. This study aims to evaluate factors associated with patient satisfaction and dissatisfaction, define patient characteristics, which may identify elevated risk of postoperative dissatisfaction, and describe management strategies to optimize functional and psychological patient outcomes. A review of urologic and non-urologic cosmetic surgery literature was performed to identify factors associated with patient satisfaction/dissatisfaction. Emphasis was placed on articles defining "high risk" or psychologically challenging patients. Preoperative factors associated with patient satisfaction/dissatisfaction and character traits, which may identify elevated risk of postoperative dissatisfaction or otherwise indicate a psychologically challenging patient. Contemporary patient and partner satisfaction rates following IPP are 92-100% and 91-95%, respectively. Factors associated with satisfaction include decreased preoperative expectations, favorable female partner sexual function, body mass index ≤30, and absence of Peyronie's disease or prior prostatectomy. Determinants of dissatisfaction include perceived/actual loss of penile length, decreased glanular engorgement, altered erectile/ejaculatory sensation, pain, diminished cosmetic outcome, difficulty with device function, partner dissatisfaction and perception of unnatural sensation, complications, and extent of alternative treatments offered. Personality characteristics which may indicate psychologically challenging IPP patients include obsessive/compulsive tendencies, unrealistic expectations, patients undergoing revision surgery, those seeking multiple surgical opinions, feeling of entitlement, patients in denial of their prior erectile/sexual function and current disease status, or those with other psychiatric disorders. The mnemonic CURSED Patient is presented: "Compulsive/obsessive, Unrealistic, Revision, Surgeon Shopping, Entitled, Denial, and Psychiatric." Although the majority of IPP patients experience excellent, durable satisfaction and outcomes, a challenging subset of patients may be at increased risk of postoperative dissatisfaction. Appropriate recognition/prevention and management of this cohort may help to establish and strengthen relationships, reduce physical, emotional, and legal risk, and ultimately enhance patient satisfaction.

Effects of Consumers’ Efforts on Price and Promotion Fairness Perceptions

This research examines how consumers’ efforts as a nonmonetary sacrifice influence their price and promotion fairness perceptions in the context of price promotions. Multiple studies using different price promotion tactics demonstrate that consumers’ perceived level of effort to obtain a reduced price negatively influences their fairness perceptions when they deny the promoted price. Exploring the underlying mechanisms of this effect, we show that the amount of effort consumers exert to obtain a promoted price leads to their feeling of deservingness and entitlement. When the promoted price is denied, this feeling of entitlement is violated, causing unfairness perceptions to occur. The research demonstrates that, in addition to retailers’ actions such as price changes, consumers’ actions, in the form of their effort input, are also an important determinant of fairness perceptions.

‘A massive university or a university for the masses?’ Continuity and change in higher education in Spain and England

This paper discusses whether the massification of higher education (HE) in the majority of developed countries over the last few decades has led to changes in the form of involvement in universities for the masses, or massive universities for the expanding middle classes. Situating our argument with the evidence of massive expansion of HE in England and Spain, and using Bourdieu's theoretical framework, we compare two studies that looked at whether these changes led to a revised structuring of educational opportunities by social class and to universities accessible to the masses or merely massive universities. The English study considered the choices, and the Spanish study, the experiences of students and how they felt about being students. Our conclusions stress the relation between the social construction of the category ‘youth’ or young people in relation to HE, and the different structures of economic rights and duties of different social classes. While upper and middle class male and female students live their university lives with a clear feeling of entitlement, lower middle class and working class students need to justify their economic dependence on the family and so their university status. Developing concepts used in the English study for ethnic minority students we distinguish an ‘embedded’ style, that is a taken for granted perspective, from a ‘contingent’ style or one where students need to justify their choices of being students. These lead to different degrees of legitimacy of higher educational investments corresponding to different ‘familial habituses’.