Date of Award

9-25-2024

Publication Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Department

Psychology

Supervisor

Dennis Jackson

Abstract

There exists a large body of literature exploring employee entitlement as a factor of narcissism. The present research explores employee entitlement’s latent potential under a trait-activation framework. Providing information to guide the future conceptualizations of employee entitlement is one goal of the present research. A second goal is to assess whether virtual work environments, compared to in-person work environments, activate the expression of latent entitlement. The last goal is to investigate if the perception of a comparative and objective feedback system influences employee entitlement in either work environment. Amazon Mechanical Turk workers identified as holding one full-time employment position, 18 years or older, and a resident in Canada or the USA completed the study’s online survey (n = 93). Findings do not indicate that employee entitlement is activated differently across virtual and in-person work environments. Findings indicate that when employees perceive the performance appraisal system as objective and comparative, they report higher levels of entitlement as measured with perceptions of reward deservingness. The perception of an objective and comparative performance appraisal system as a positive predictor of reward deservingness indicates that entitlement may exist as the disparity between work performance and reward beliefs. The results indicate that after receiving objective and comparative feedback employees may improve work performance to justify initial high reward deservingness beliefs. Future research should seek to explore whether employees differently interpret behaviors as more or less entitled based on work performance.

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