Self-Serving Bias

Definition

The self-serving bias refers to the tendency to take credit for successful outcomes in life, but to blame the [Page 846]situation or other people for failing outcomes. For example, when an individual gets a promotion at work, he or she will explain this by citing an internal cause, such as his or her ability or diligence. In contrast, when the same individual is fired from a job, he or she will explain this by pointing to an external cause, such as an unfair boss or bad luck. In general, the self-serving bias allows individuals to feel positively about themselves and to protect themselves from the negative psychological consequences of failure.

Background and History

The self-serving bias is part of a larger area in social psychology known as causal attributions, or the way individuals explain events in the social world. Fritz Heider, a social psychologist, argued in his classic work on attribution theory that four basic types of attributions can be made regarding an individual's behavior. These include two internal attributions, ability and effort, and two external attributions, difficulty and luck. Internal attributions apply to something about the person and external attributions apply to something about the situation. For example, if a person successfully rows a boat across a lake, his or her success could be attributed to internal factors: the person's ability (e.g., strength or rowing skill) or effort (e.g., the person was motivated because he or she had a good friend on the other side or was being chased). The person's success could also be attributed to external factors: the difficulty of the task (e.g., it was a small lake) or luck (e.g., an unexpected breeze blew him or her across). Bernard Weiner, who played a central role in creating modern attribution theory, later expanded on these ideas.

The self-serving bias occurs when individuals make attributions for their own (rather than others') behavior. When the outcome is positive, individuals make more internal attributions; when the outcome is negative, individuals make more external attributions. This difference in attributions for positive and for negative outcomes is why the self-serving bias is considered a bias. This bias is readily apparent when you think about a group situation. Imagine a classroom of students who have just gotten grades back on a test. The students who get A's are likely to explain their success by ascribing it to their intelligence and work ethic; the students who failed are likely to explain their failure by ascribing it to the fact that the test was too hard or unfair, or only asked questions about the one area they didn't study. Both groups of students cannot be correct in their attributions. Either the test was fair and the students who failed were not smart enough or did not study sufficiently, or the test was truly unfair and the students who received A's really just got lucky. Importantly, although the self-serving bias in this example leads to a distortion of reality by many students, it also leads to all students feeling as good about themselves as possible. The students with A's think they are smart, and the students with F's think it was not a reflection of their ability or effort.

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