That Neuroscience Guy - The Neurosicence of Entitlement

Episode Date: January 30, 2022

We all feel entitled to certain things, but some people take it too far. Why do some of us have such a huge ego, and believe we're entitled to more than everyone else? In today's episode of That Neuroscience Guy, we dive into the neuroscience of ego and entitlement. 

Hi, my name is Olof Kregolsen, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to the podcast. Entitlement and ego are interesting things. We have all met the person who really annoys us because of their sense of entitlement. They exude this sense that they are superior and they deserve more from life than the rest of us. And we've also met the egotistical person as well, someone who clearly just thinks they are amazing and better than us. Of course, entitlement and ego are fairly closely related constructs.

On today's podcast, we're going to explore the neuroscience of entitlement and of ego. Entitlement by definition is a personality trait driven by exaggerated feelings of deservingness and superiority. I don't think I need to spend too much time defining it. But what is causing entitlement? The popular press has cast down the millennial generation as being more entitled than any other generation. But why? Well, it's clear that there's an increase in individualism.

The constant post to social media to get likes and have people view their pictures. This idea that it's all about us and not about the group. And to be fair, sadly, I'm as guilty of anyone else with social media posting. My apologies. But what is the neuroscience behind this behavior? Well, if you recall, it all comes down to dopamine. Each time someone likes our posts, it acts as a reinforcer. And that's what drives the addiction. Those little brief hits of dopamine are rewarding. And that's why people keep going back.

Indeed, I recently did a media interview where I was asked why people liked those kitten and puppy videos so much and kept watching them. Well, simply put, it's the same idea. why people liked those kitten and puppy videos so much and kept watching them. Well, simply put, it's the same idea. Each time you see that little video of a kitten or a puppy and it's all cute, well, you get a little shot of dopamine. And if you remember, dopamine is a reward neurotransmitter. All right. If you get those little hits of dopamine, they're going to reinforce that behavior. They're actually going to change your neural circuitry and it's going to want to make you do that over and over again. Now, in principle, if you watch too many kitten videos and too many puppy videos, this might just go away, but you might waste a lot of time doing that.

This is also true of social media posting in principle. And why millennials? Well, it will be future generations as well, and they'll probably be worse. It just happens that newer generations are more engaged with the use of social media and use it much more frequently than older generations. They've bought into it more. And because they're more engaged, they're more susceptible to these dopamine hits and the trouble it causes. Now, this also ties into changes in worldview. Younger generations see their success in different terms. The worldview developed by their prefrontal

cortex is a little bit different from those of us that might be a little bit older. And if you remember from our episode on this, the left side of the brain is sort of maintaining your worldview and the right side of the brain is questioning it maintaining your worldview and the right side of the brain is questioning it but the overall worldview is just a little bit different and if you want to test this on yourself it's easy to do let's do an at-home neuroscience experiment take a break from all forms of social media turn it all off instagram Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, whatever you're using. Indeed, take a break from your cell phone and texting. Put that down as well. Now when or if you start to feel distressed, that's your brain craving those little hits of dopamine. You can

see just how powerful they are. And if you can put down your phone and take a break from social media and not feel anything, good for you. It if you can put down your phone and take a break from social media and not feel anything, good for you. It means you're pretty well balanced. Now, while we might dislike people who exhibit too much entitlement, the research is pretty clear. It will end up causing them grief in the long run. In fact, entitlement typically leads to chronic disappointment, unmet expectations, and just this cycle of behavior that keeps continuing that has massive psychological consequences, according to research that's been done recently at Case Western University. At extreme levels, entitlement is a toxic narcissistic trait Repeatedly exposing people to the risk of feeling frustrated or unhappy And being disappointed with life And that's a quote from the primary author of the paper

Oftentimes, life, health, aging and the social world don't treat us as well as we'd like It's just that simple You know, life can be hard I think with the COVID pandemic, we all are getting a good shot of that. And you might have some limitations. You might not be able to deal with it as well. And confronting these limitations is especially threatening to an entitled person because it totally violates their worldview. If their worldview is, hey, I'm this amazing person, but the world is forcing them to face up to the fact that maybe they're not,

it creates a big problem. So the way it works in terms of the disappointment that comes from entitlement, it's a three-step process. Well, first of all, entitlement basically sets you up to being constantly vulnerable because the expectations you have of the world are never truly met. You know, you're expecting everything to be amazing because you believe you're amazing and it just isn't. And those unmet expectations lead to the second thing, which is dissatisfaction with life and some negative emotions. And basically what happens is the emotional system bounces back and it wants this thing fixed. So what happens is it actually reinforces this idea of superiority. But this is a hard cycle because you're constantly going back to having these unrealistic expectations of the world because you believe you're great. You're constantly being disappointed. And the remedy

that the entitled person has is to keep doing it. Now, let's break this down a bit. If you remember prediction errors, because we've talked about them before, the first step in this entitlement circle is you constantly have prediction errors that things are going to be great, but they're not. So you're constantly experiencing negative prediction errors when your expectations are unmet. Now, those prediction errors are conveyed in terms of a negative dopamine surge. That's how your brain says, hey, things are worse than expected. So it's not reinforcing the behavior at that level. But what happens is this also triggers our old friend, the amygdala, and that's the emotional

response to disappointment. Now we have to go back to worldview yet again. We have a choice to accept one of two worldviews, one in which we are not that great and we are constantly disappointed, and one in which we are amazing. And this is what entitled people do. They come up with a worldview that they are amazing to offset the disappointment of unmet expectations. Freud actually called this the defense of the ego. It's the stuff we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better. So the next time you see someone that's particularly entitled, you know, I almost feel sorry for them because they're just living in a world full of disappointment and they're telling themselves they're amazing to try to offset that. And it's literally their amygdala and their

prefrontal cortex trying to make the best of a bad situation. Now, speaking of Freud, what about ego? Because it does parallel the sense of entitlement. Now, a popular definition of ego might be a person's sense of self-esteem or self-importance. But a more neuroscientific statement would be something along the lines of the part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious and is responsible for reality testing in a sense of personal identity. You have to remember that we all have an ego. It's just that typically when we talk about ego, we talk about people being egotistical, but even the most modest, quiet person in the world still has an ego. Freud is perhaps most famous for his definition of ego, and it sort of parallels the neuroscientific definition I just gave you. Basically what Freud said was that you've

got this unconscious system that is dealing with the world and thinking about yourself, and you've also got a conscious system that's taking in information about the world. And these things together comprise your ego. Now, what is this in terms of neuroscience? Well, if you recall the default mode network, we've talked about it before. It's a network of brain regions that are more active when the brain is doing nothing. Daydreaming, mind wandering, and other things. But nothing. Anatomically, the default mode network is formed of the medial prefrontal cortex, the posterior cingulate gyrus, the medial temporal lobe structures, as well as the angular gyrus. And basically, neuroscientists have proposed that the default mode network corresponds to Freud's unconscious concept of ego.

default mode network corresponds to Freud's unconscious concept of ego. Basically, the default mode network has two major functions. The first is to control and suppress the activity of emotional parts of the brain that in turn receive information from subcortical areas mediating drives and motivation. The second function of the default mode network is to control and modulate information coming from the external world. So on that basis, researchers have concluded that the functions of the default mode network really parallel the unconscious definition of the ego proposed by Freud. However, there's also a conscious portion of ego, and that would be tied to sensory systems, in particular in the parietal cortex, where you're integrating a lot of information to build up your worldview, emotional systems like the amygdala,

memory systems like the hippocampus, and of course, the prefrontal cortex and its role in governing behavior. In other words, ego stems from a large number of brain systems, some conscious and some unconscious. And together together they work to give us what we believe is ego or our sense of self. But how does this relate to the popular definition of ego, as in when we say someone is being egotistical? Well, basically it takes energy to maintain the ego and it takes energy to pay attention to the actions of others. the ego and it takes energy to pay attention to the actions of others. So in other words, it takes energy to maintain the ego and that leads to your self-confidence. However, it also takes energy to process the actions of others. And if you're spending too much energy maintaining your

own ego, then you don't have enough energy to process others. And that leads to an imbalance where basically your worldview is weighted much greater than the worldview of others to the point that you might actually believe that you're better than others. This is where it sort of ties back to this notion of entitlement. And this clinically leads to narcissism

and things like this. So hopefully you see that the ego is this sort of balance between an unconscious system, which is the default mode network, and a whole bunch of other brain systems which maintain the processing of the world and the processing of others. And when this is imbalanced, you're spending too much time maintaining your own worldview or your ego, then that leads to narcissism and what we call being egotistical. And if we go back to the idea of entitlement, all right, if you remember, entitlement is tied partially to having a worldview that's a little bit biased towards yourself and also dopamine,

this idea that you're constantly looking for gratification and you become addicted and you start acting out in an entitled or egotistical manner. Well, I hope you learned something about the neuroscience of entitlement and ego. Thanks again for listening. We have one more episode to go after this one and then we'll be done season three. That'll be out next Sunday. Remember, you can follow me on Twitter, that Neurosci guy. And on YouTube, we're porting over content for Season 3, but there's already some stuff there, ThatNeuroscienceGuy. We have the website up, ThatNeuroscienceGuy.com, but it's just a redirect to me. It'll be a completely independent website for Season 3.

And please, one last thing, email us ideas. We want to know what you want to know about the neuroscience of daily life. That's thatneuroscienceguy at gmail.com. Thanks again for listening. Please subscribe to the podcast. It really helps us. And we'll see you next week for the last episode of season two.

Thanks again. My name's Olive Kregolson and I'm that neuroscience guy. Thanks so much for listening. See you next week on the podcast.