Relational entitlement and its associations with quality of romantic relationships

Abstract

Previous studies have found that sense of entitlement is harmful to many aspects of people's lives. This study explored the effect of a specific type of entitlement, namely entitlement in romantic relationship or relational entitlement, on the quality of close relationships as well as people's general well-being. This study incorporated multiple methodologies, including a behavioral task, interview, and questionnaires, to measure participants' relational entitlement, romantic competence, attachment orientation, couple satisfaction, and general well-being. The results showed that the newly designed behavioral task to measure relational entitlement managed to pinpoint participants with the best and the worst romantic competence and couple satisfaction, even though the task was questionable in terms of its validity. Findings also showed a strong association between relational entitlement and insecure attachment styles.