Investigating the Role of Obligation and Entitlement in the Prosocial Disposition and Citizenship Performance

This dissertation proposes that individual differences in beliefs about personal obligation and entitlement are important aspects of individual differences in other orientation. Obligation and entitlement are hypothesized as predictors of the prosocial disposition and citizenship performance. Obligation and entitlement are defined and an orthogonal relationship between the two constructs is proposed. Scales for the measurement of obligation and entitlement are developed and used to empirically test the relationships between obligation and entitlement and a variety of relevant individual differences and behavioral outcomes. These relationships are examined using four research samples. Results demonstrated that the relationship between Obligation and Entitlement was generally small. Other orientation constructs showed differing patterns of relationship with Obligation and Entitlement such that other orientation constructs were either positively or not related to Obligation and other orientation constructs were positively, negatively, or not related to Entitlement. Obligation and Entitlement predicted various measures of the prosocial disposition and citizenship performance. However, Entitlement did not always predict prosocial behaviors and citizenship performance. Obligation and Entitlement demonstrated incremental predictive validity of some aspects of the prosocial disposition and citizenship performance over similar constructs and other measures of other orientation. Mean differences of Obligation and Entitlement were found for gender, political ideology, religious affiliation, and educational attainment. The limitations of the self-reported, cross-sectional study designs are discussed and future research directions are proposed.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Brummel, Bradley J.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Drasgow, Fritz

• Psychology, Industrial

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI3337707

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/82158