[contextly_auto_sidebar id="yXIfxYJEZJtsw7iEt0gkSWO8XkAsMeLb"]Most people would consider entitlement a negative trait, but there's a surprising benefit: creativity.
Joint research from Vanderbilt and Cornell University published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology found that small yet temporary entitlement -- or "state entitlement" -- improved participants' creativity test results.
"Our results suggest that people who feel more entitled value being different from others, and the greater their need for uniqueness, the more they break convention, think divergently and give creative responses," say Lynne C. Vincent and Emily Zitek, the study's authors.
The researchers had participants complete two simple tasks. First, they wrote about why they deserved a series of positive outcomes. They were then asked to do a variety of creative tasks, which Science Daily reports included "imagining uses for a paper clip, drawing a space alien, and word association."
One note: not all entitlement is created equal. Trait entitlement, which describes long-term feelings of entitlement, wasn't examined in this particular study, and actually has a negative effect on creativity.
