Entitlement as a form of learned helplessness

There is a phenomenon that I’ve been thinking about both in personal and professional contexts.

It’s when entitlement leads to a certain kind of helplessness, ignorance, incompetence or even misconduct.

For example, it’s when someone, usually a man, “doesn’t know how to cook” even though they would have been quite capable of learning if they’d ever had to, rather than lived their entire lives expecting and having others (women) to cook for them.

It’s when someone, usually a man, asks for the exact information they were just given (usually by a woman) in the group chat, which they would know if they had bothered to click on the link you just posted, but they didn’t because they have every expectation that others (women) will spell it out for them.

It’s when someone, usually a white man although often a white woman, lacks the ability to regulate their own emotions and instead has anger outbursts, tantrums or tears in the workplace because they have always been not only allowed or expected to, but it has contributed to their success.

It’s when someone, usually a white man, opts out of coaching or therapy because “they’re not good with people” or “not good with feelings” or “not a therapy person” and therefore end up emotionally stunted and incompetent even as they rise up the ranks to senior leadership, C-Suite, CEO or even, say, President of the United States, just to use a random example.

There are various terms that kind of but don’t quite cover this behavior.

Learned helplessness occurs when an individual continuously faces a negative, uncontrollable situation and stops trying to change their circumstances, even when they have the ability to do so. (See Psychology Today.)

We definitely see this happening, usually by people who have been more impacted by systems of oppression and truly have been traumatized. We work with these folks to connect with their agency and take some control over their own safety so as to move out of victimhood. What I’m talking about above though comes more from a place of entitlement rather than the result of negative treatment.

Feigned ignorance is a manipulation tactic that can be used to avoid accountability, confuse the other party, or gain the upper hand in a negotiation. By acting uninformed or confused, a person can deflect criticism, evade responsibilities, or manipulate others into revealing more information than they intended. (See Bryant & O’Connor Law Firm - they came up top of my google search for “feigned ignorance” as well as having the best explanation as part of a great series on identifying and responding to manipulation techniques that might be used against you, including gaslighting, playing the victim, fearmongering, guilt-tripping, and divide and conquer, all techniques we see frequently in workplaces to varying degrees of intention and harm.)

This is also a thing, but what I’m talking about is more about when someone truly is uninformed because they’ve never had to or bothered to take the time to become informed. They feel entitled to and have gotten away with a lack of accountability.

Weaponized incompetence involves strategically avoiding responsibility—by pretending to be incapable or inept at a task so that someone else helps, takes over, or stops delegating tasks to them. In this way, the imbalance becomes entrenched over time. (See Psychology Today.)

This seems fairly similar to feigned ignorance and again doesn’t quite capture the entitlement or the socialization and systems that support and exacerbate the avoiding of responsibility eg schools only calling or emailing the female caregiver to handle logistics or paperwork for a child.

Entitlement as a form of learned helplessness

The patterns of behavior that I’m talking about results in a kind of learned helplessness but, as I said, it comes from a place of entitlement.

And yes, it is often men, or white people, and white men especially who learn a sense of entitlement in cultures that don’t hold them accountable for more. I don’t believe white male mediocrity is because white men are inherently more mediocre, but I do think they have often been socialized to be.

For what we have in this country is a centuries old default affirmative action program for white men. They are the ones who are not held to as high a standard.

And yes, women do it too, when we’ve been socialized not to learn to do more “manly” responsibilities like change a tire, squash bugs, or fix the porch, or when we’ve learned to “dumb ourselves down” so as not to trigger male fragility or white fragility or both… but the power dynamics are different.

Instead, women, especially women of color, are often instead the over-functioners, especially when it comes to what has become and remains often invisible and unpaid emotional labor in both the home and the workplace. It’s hard to avoid when our systems and culture are set up this way.

It’s hard to avoid when patriarchy, white supremacy and capitalism set up not just an expectation but a REALITY founded quite literally on the entitlement to and exploitation of other people’s labor, but which has evolved to where that labor is invisible by default and there is the expectation from some that their needs will get met without even considering the cost to others.

It’s also why equity often feels like oppression to those who have privilege - when people don’t get what they feel entitled to, they feel deprived, angry, mistreated, “oppressed.” There is a difference between just and unjust entitlement and without making that difference clear, without bringing a power analysis, DEI can easily get weaponized.

What can we do?

There are no easy answers but as is often the case, awareness is the first step.

Where are we over-functioning because of the entitlement of others? Where are we under-functioning out of our own entitlement? What are the power differentials at play? Where are we justly entitled and where are we unjustly entitled?

Are we balancing both individual and systemic factors as we craft solutions? Are we driving change and providing both accountability and support at both levels?

A good metric to follow is - are we treating people or letting ourselves be treated as “the help?”

I’m not saying never hire someone to do the tasks you don’t want to do, I’m saying don’t expect them to do that work unpaid and unrecognized.

Self-coaching for DEI Advocates and Leaders

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