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What is it?
You’re probably familiar with self-serving bias, even if you don’t know it by name.
A self-serving bias is the common habit of a person taking credit for positive events or outcomes,
but blaming outside factors for negative events. This can be affected by age, culture, clinical
diagnosis, and more. It tends to occur widely across populations.
Locus of control
The concept of locus of control (LOC) refers to a person’s belief system about the causes of
events, and the accompanying attributions. There are two categories of LOC: internal and
external.
If a person has an internal LOC, they’ll assign their success to their own hard work, effort, and
persistence. If they have an external LOC, they’ll credit any success to luck or something outside
of themselves.
Individuals with an internal LOC might be more likely to display a self-serving bias, especially
regarding achievements.
Self-enhancement
The concept of self-enhancement applies to the need to keep up one’s self-worth. If an individual
uses the self-serving bias, attributing positive things to themselves and negative things to outside
forces helps them maintain a positive self-image and self-worth.
For example, say you’re playing baseball and strike out. If you believe the umpire unfairly called
strikes when you actually received bad pitches, you can maintain the idea that you’re a good
hitter.
Self-presentation
Self-presentation is exactly what it sounds like — the self that one presents to other people. It’s
the desire to appear a particular way to other people. In this way, the self-serving bias helps us
maintain the image we present to others.
For example, if you want to appear as though you have good study habits, you might attribute a
bad test score to poorly written questions rather than your inability to prepare correctly.
“I stayed up all night studying,” you might say, “but the questions weren’t based on the material
we were given.” Note that self-presentation isn’t the same as lying. You may have indeed stayed
up all night studying, but the thought that you could have studied inefficiently doesn’t come to
mind.
Other factors that may determine self-serving bias
Male vs. female
A 2004 meta-analysis found that while many studies have examined gender differences in the
self-serving bias, this is hard to tease out.
This isn’t just because mixed results have been found with sex differences in attributions. It’s also
because researchers have found in these studies that self-serving bias depends on the age of the
individual and whether they’re looking at attributing successes or failures.
Culture
Western culture tends to prize rugged individualism, so the individual self-serving bias comes in
handy. In more collectivist cultures, successes and failures are seen as being influenced by the
collective nature of the community. People in these communities recognize that individual
behavior is interdependent with the larger whole.
The takeaway
Self-serving bias is normal and serves a purpose. However, if an individual consistently ignores
their responsibility in negative events, this can be detrimental to learning processes and
relationships. So it’s definitely something to be aware of.
The self-serving bias can vary among demographic groups, as well as over time in an individual.