Increased Help Breeds Ingrates: A Dynamic Perspective on Recipients’ Responses Toward Receiving Help

Adopting a dyadic perceptive of help-recipients’ responses, we track the changing dynamics in recipients’ responses toward receiving help over time, delving into why continuous and increasing help over an extended period turns recipients into ingrates. Drawing on the integration of the theory of indebtedness and the principle of diminishing marginal utility, along with literature on individuals’ sense of entitlement, we propose that the decreased sense of indebtedness and the increased sense of entitlement serve as the underlying mechanisms in this transition. Results from a longitudinal field study support the predictions. An increase in received help over time elicits a decrease in recipients’ sense of indebtedness and a concomitant increase in recipients’ sense of entitlement, which ultimately results in a decrease in recipients’ engagement in reciprocal individual-targeted organizational citizenship behaviors.