Jarosław Piotrowski

Measurement of Psychological Entitlement in 28 Countries

This article presents the cross-cultural validation of the Entitlement Attitudes Questionnaire, a tool designed to measure three facets of psychological entitlement: active, passive, and revenge entitlement. Active entitlement was defined as the tendency to protect individual rights based on self-worthiness. Passive entitlement was defined as the belief in obligations to and expectations toward other people and institutions for the fulfillment of the individual’s needs. Revenge entitlement was defined as the tendency to protect one’s individual rights when violated by others and the tendency to reciprocate insults. The 15-item EAQ was validated in a series of three studies: the first one on a general Polish sample (N = 1,900), the second one on a sample of Polish students (N = 199), and the third one on student samples from 28 countries (N = 5,979). A three-factor solution was confirmed across all samples. Examination of measurement equivalence indicated partial metric invariance of EAQ for all national samples. Discriminant and convergent validity of the EAQ was also confirmed.

Agentic and communal narcissism and satisfaction with life: The mediating role of psychological entitlement and self-esteem.

This study examined the mediational role of self-esteem (as an enhancement) and psychological entitlement (as a cost) in the relationship between an agentic-communal model of grandiose narcissism and satisfaction with life. Two hundred and forty-eight university undergraduate students completed measures of agentic and communal narcissism, self-esteem, psychological entitlement and satisfaction with life. The findings suggest that there is support for the usefulness of the agentic-communal model of narcissism, and, consistent with predictions in the wider literature, self-esteem and psychological entitlement mediated the relationship between agentic-communal narcissism and life satisfaction.

Spiritual Transcendence, Mortality Salience and Consumer Behaviors: Is Spirituality Really Opposite to Materialism?

In the current study (N = 161) we examined the effect of activation of spiritual transcendence and death anxiety on spending on hedonistic and status goods as expressing materialism. Additionally, the difference between the effects of spiritual transcendence in religious and non-religious form on consumer behaviors was examined. Basing on TMT assumption we expected increased spending on materialistic goods in the mortality salience condition. Spiritual transcendence, as logically opposite to materialism, was assumed to decrease levels of spending on materialistic goods. Finally, we examined whether spiritual transcendence, as related to transcending self (including own mortality) could serve as a buffer against death anxiety. We have found partial support for the assumption, that spiritual transcendence (only in non-religious form) indeed inhibits effects of mortality salience on higher spending on status goods.

Agency, communion and entitlement

In this study, the relationship between agency, communion, and the active, passive, and revenge forms of entitlement is examined. Results indicate that active entitlement was positively related to agency, negatively to communion (Study 1), and unrelated to unmitigated agency and communion (Study 2). Passive entitlement was positively related to communion (in regular and unmitigated forms) and negatively related to agency (in both forms). Revenge entitlement was positively related to agency (unmitigated and regular), and negatively related to both regular and unmitigated communal orientations. Detected relationships were independent from self-esteem (Study 1). The findings are discussed in relation to distinctions between narcissistic and healthy entitlement, and within the context of the three-dimensional model of entitlement.

Cross-cultural invariance of NPI-13: Entitlement as culturally specific, leadership and grandiosity as culturally universal

The current study explores the problem with the lack of measurement invariance for the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) by addressing two issues: conceptual heterogeneity of narcissism and methodological issues related to the binary character of data. We examine the measurement invariance of the 13-item version of the NPI in three populations in Japan, Poland and the UK. Analyses revealed that leadership/authority and grandiose exhibitionism dimensions of the NPI were cross-culturally invariant, while entitlement/exploitativeness was culturally specific. Therefore, we proposed NPI-9 as indicating scalar invariance, and we examined the pattern of correlations between NPI-9 and other variables across three countries. The results suggest that NPI-9 is valid brief scale measuring general levels of narcissism in cross-cultural studies, while the NPI-13 remains suitable for research within specific countries.

Measurement invariance of the Belief in a Zero-Sum Game scale across 36 countries: BZSG across 36 countries

In this paper, we examined the psychometric properties of cross-cultural validation and replicability (i.e. measurement invariance) of the Belief in a Zero-Sum Game (BZSG) scale, measuring antagonistic belief about interpersonal relations over scarce resources. The factorial structure of the BZSG scale was investigated in student samples from 36 countries (N = 9907), using separate confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) for each country. The cross-cultural validation of the scale was based on multigroup confirmatory factor analyses (MGCFA). The results confirmed that the scale had a one-factor structure in all countries, in which configural and metric invariance between countries was confirmed. As a zero-sum belief about social relations perceived as antagonistic, BZSG is an important factor related to, for example, social and international relations, attitudes toward immigrants, or well-being. The paper proposes different uses of the BZSG scale for cross-cultural studies in different fields of psychology: social, political, or economic.