Academic entitlement: relations to perceptions of parental warmth and psychological control

Abstract

Academic entitlement characterises students who expect positive academic outcomes without personal effort. The current study examined the relations of perceived parental warmth and parental psychological control with two dimensions of academic entitlement (i.e. entitled expectations and externalised responsibility) among college students. Psychology students participated by completing measures of perceived parenting and academic entitlement through an online survey system. Results demonstrated that perceived parental warmth was a negative predictor of externalised responsibility and parental psychological control was a positive predictor of externalised responsibility. Additionally, there was a warmth by control interaction such that parental psychological control was related to greater externalised responsibility only when combined with moderate to high parental warmth. For entitled expectations, both perceived parental warmth and psychological control were positive predictors. The findings suggest that parenting practices may play an important role in academic entitlement and highlight the need for further research to elucidate potential developmental pathways of academic entitlement.

Keywords:

• Academic entitlement
• entitled expectations
• externalised responsibility
• parental warmth
• parental psychological control