Does a Sense of Entitlement Promote Student Achievement?

• In Event: New Approaches to Studying Cultural Capital

Abstract

Objective
In her seminal ethnographic study, the sociologist Annette Lareau (2003) argues that social class differences in parenting practices reproduce social class inequalities, with middle-class children developing a “sense of entitlement” that allows them to secure more learning opportunities and resources than their working-class peers. Although Lareau’s concept has been widely cited by sociologists and education scholars, it remains unclear whether empirical research supports her central proposed mechanism. In this paper, we conduct the first systematic review of quantitative studies of entitlement and academic achievement by innovatively drawing from psychological research.

Perspective
In their review of research on cultural capital, Lareau and Weininger (2003) propose a shift from measuring cultural capital as high-status cultural signals to focusing on “micro-interactional processes whereby individuals' strategic use of knowledge, skills, and competence comes into contact with institutional standards of evaluation" (p. 569). Along these lines, Lareau (2003), through her ethnographic study of 12 families, argues that social class differences in parenting styles play a key and hidden role in reproducing social class inequality by fostering in children different interactional capacities: an emerging sense of entitlement among middle-class children versus an emerging sense of constraint among working-class children.

Data/Method
To identify studies that examine how a sense of entitlement influences academic achievement, we conducted searches in ERIC, Sociological Abstract, and PsychINFO using the following keywords: sense of entitlement, academic entitlement, academic help-seeking, help-seeking and education, assertiveness and education, interpersonal control and education, and agentic engagement. Two researchers independently coded the following information for each study: publication characteristics (year, author, title, publication type); sample characteristics (sample size, grade-level, race, gender, poverty status); sampling and data collection methods; scales used to measure each variable of interest; analysis-level and design; and correlations between key variables. We then conducted a narrative review of these studies and provided a summary of quantitative trends where sufficient data were available.

Results
We identify and discuss five psychological constructs - academic entitlement, help-seeking, assertiveness, interpersonal locus of control, and agentic engagement - that align with Lareau’s concept. Based on our review of studies, we find support that a sense of entitlement has a positive, though small, association with academic achievement. Our review indicates that a sense of entitlement may be most beneficial in contexts requiring interpersonal interaction and communication, such as teachers’ evaluations of student ability.

Significance
Psychologists identify distinctions between instrumental (adaptive) versus executive (non-adaptive) help-seeking and between non-exploitative and exploitative academic entitlement that offer important contributions to sociological discussions of a sense of entitlement. At the same time, we urge educational psychologists to refine currently available scales to better measure constructs in earlier grades and lower-resource settings. Overall, we find that psychological measures serve as a useful source of quantitative data to validate and refine sociological concepts.

References
Lareau, A. (2003). Unequal childhoods: Class, race, and family life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Lareau, A. & Weininger, E. B. (2003). Cultural capital in educational research: A critical assessment. Theory and Society, 32(5-6): 567-606.

Author

• Jennifer Suzanne Darling-Aduana, Vanderbilt University