Time crawls when you're not having fun: feeling entitled makes dull tasks drag on

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Social Psychology

Background:

• Individuals often encounter mundane tasks in daily life.
• Entitlement, a belief in one's own superiority and deservingness, may influence subjective experiences.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between entitlement and the perception of time, particularly for dull tasks.
• To explore whether entitlement influences the subjective experience of time dragging.

Main Methods:

• Three studies were conducted, involving trait entitlement measures and experimental manipulations of entitlement.
• Participants completed dull and fun tasks, and their perceptions of time, task interest, and waste were assessed.

Main Results:

• Higher trait entitlement correlated with the perception that dull tasks took longer.
• Experimental exposure to entitlement cues increased the perception of dull tasks as a waste of time and prolonged their perceived duration.
• Subliminal exposure to entitled words decreased interest in dull tasks and accelerated departure from the lab.

Conclusions:

• Entitlement is linked to a greater subjective valuation of time, especially when engaging in undesirable activities.
• This time-entitlement link offers insights into self-focus and interpersonal dynamics.