Self-serving bias
Self-serving bias is a psychological concept that describes the tendency of individuals to attribute their successes to their own abilities and efforts while blaming external factors for their failures. This cognitive bias influences how people perceive situations, their memories, and even their behaviors. For instance, a student who performs well on a test may credit their intelligence or study habits, whereas if they do poorly, they might blame the teacher or the test format. Research shows that self-serving bias can enhance memory recall of personal successes while diminishing the recall of failures, impacting how individuals seek information about their performance. Moreover, this bias can shape people’s self-perceptions, as individuals tend to define desirable traits based on their own characteristics. Interestingly, self-serving bias can also manifest in broader contexts, such as politics, where individuals may believe that policies favorable to them are inherently just. While it is prevalent across many populations, those with low self-esteem, such as individuals experiencing depression, may exhibit a reverse self-serving bias. Understanding self-serving bias can be beneficial, as it may help individuals recognize its effects and improve their leadership skills.
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Subject Terms
Self-serving bias
Self-serving bias is a psychological theory stating that people are more likely to attribute their success to their own actions and character traits while attributing their problems to outside factors. Self-serving bias, which is a type of cognitive bias, affects people’s attitudes, memories, and actions and can be individualized or relate to an entire group (e.g., a certain nationality). Self-serving bias, like other psychological biases, can make people perceive situations in a biased way, even when they believe that they are being fair and impartial.
Background
Self-serving bias can happen in many different situations. For example, suppose that two students take a test. If Student A performs well on the test and has self-serving bias, the student will likely believe that the good performance on the test happened because they studied or because of intelligence. If Student B performs poorly on the test and has self-serving bias, they are more likely to blame the teacher for not teaching the material well enough. Self-serving bias can also happen over a span of time. A person who is wealthy and successful is more likely to attribute that financial success to personality traits than to external forces. Researchers have also shown that self-serving bias increases when a perceived threat increases. That means that people who feel threatened are more likely to think that their success is due to their own talents and characteristics and are more likely to blame problems they face on external factors and the environment.
Overview
Self-serving bias can affect people’s memories. Many studies have been completed showing that people remember incidents in which they succeeded or worked hard to succeed more often than they remember failing or not preparing for something. Furthermore, studies have shown that people’s memories can be altered because of self-serving bias. A study on children involved completing giving and taking tasks. Right after the experiment, the children were asked to recount the number of times other children gave or took something. Then, the children were asked the same questions one week and one month after the tasks. The children’s memories of their peers’ taking things increased both at the one-week and the one-month mark, on average. That means that children’s memories of events changed to indicate that their peers took more than they actually took.
Self-serving bias can also affect people’s behavior. Scientists have conducted studies to show how people’s information-seeking behavior changes because of self-serving biases. In these experiments, researchers tested individuals on completing certain tasks. They found that people who are good at the task are more likely to want information about the task and their performance. In other words, the people who did a good job wanted to be told that they had done a good job. In contrast, those who performed poorly on the task were more ambivalent about finding out information about their performance on the task. In other words, the people who did a bad job on the task did not necessarily want to be told that they had done a bad job. Similarly, scientists have found that the brain’s pleasure centers are engaged when people hear information that they agree with or that benefits them. So, people are more likely to seek out information that supports their beliefs. How people choose news outlets is an example of this. People are more likely to choose to read, watch, or listen to news outlets that confirm their beliefs because this makes them feel good.
Self-serving bias can also affect how people think about certain characteristics. Researchers have found that people define certain characteristics based on the way that they see themselves. For example, one experiment had participants use words such an ambitious and competitive or friendly and pleasant to describe themselves. Then the researchers had the same participants explain which characteristics made a good leader. Those who said they were ambitious and competitive were more likely to believe those traits were important for leaders. Those who said they were friendly and agreeable were more likely to identify those traits as being important for leaders to possess.
Another study indicated that self-serving bias can even affect international policies and politics. In this study, the authors proposed that self-serving bias can cause people to believe that what is good for them is also fair. The researchers showed that college students in the United States and China, both countries that emit large amounts of carbon, had self-serving ideas about whether their country should have an economic obligation to help mitigate carbon emissions.
Although many people have a self-serving bias, those with depression may experience self-serving bias in a reverse fashion. Often, people who are depressed have low self-esteem, which can cause them to attribute their failures to their own actions or personality. It can also make them attribute their successes to the environment or other random factors. Similarly, people who feel more powerful often have a strong self-serving bias. Some researchers believe that this may make people with jobs or roles (e.g., politician, law enforcement officer) that give them more power have stronger self-serving biases. Yet, researchers also believe that helping people understand self-serving bias could help them become better leaders.
Bibliography
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