Self-worthy bias

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Self-serving bias (Engl. Self-serving bias in) denotes social psychology tends own successes in doubt rather internal causes (such as your own abilities and skills) and own failures rather external causes (the situation to chance, etc.) attributed .

causes

Defense of a stable, positive self-image

Usually, the actions of others are based on their personality traits , and their own behavior on the specific situation, the so-called actor-observer divergence . However, if the result of one's own behavior is rated as failure, the self-esteem-supporting distortion serves to maintain a stable, positive self-image . This cognitive distortion is used in particular to avoid cognitive dissonance , namely when the insight threatens that a renewed failure cannot be prevented even with increased efforts. Otherwise, the internal cause of the poor performance is recognized and motivated to increase efforts.

Self-presentation

The second reason to attribute self-worth to causes is the desire to appear in a good light for yourself and others. Anyone who is supposed to justify a bad result likes to fall back on excuses. If this is done deliberately and systematically, one also speaks of impression management .

Knowledge of previous achievements

The experience of being able to cope with a task normally suggests that success is due to internal factors, failure to external factors. (see Kelley's principle of covariation ).

Avoiding helplessness

Experiences or reports of disasters, illnesses or crimes that are reminiscent of one's own mortality can be mitigated with the help of defensive attributions. Those who persuade themselves that such tragedies only happen to people who contribute to them themselves, for example because they are bad, careless or stupid (Melvin Lerner's “ Just World Hypothesis ”), creates the illusion that they can influence the occurrence of such events. Victims blame themselves for complicity because they could then take care to prevent something like this in the future. Outsiders give victims complicity because they can then believe that they are immune to it themselves (see victim devaluation ).

Examples

  • The following attribution patterns can be found in professional athletes:
    • Success is more likely to be attributed to one's own achievements, defeats to uncontrollable causes.
    • Experienced athletes are more likely to admit their own failures than less experienced ones; Individual athletes tend to use self-worthy attributions more than team athletes.
  • Pupils and students rate it as an “appropriate measure of performance” after passing an exam well. After bad grades, however, they tend to assess the exam as “unfair” or “does not represent the material”.
  • Divorced partners tend to blame the other partner for the failure of the marriage (Gray & Silver, 1990).
  • When their company fails, managers are more likely to blame employees or external companies. Employees, on the other hand, tend to blame corporate management or external influences. In general, managers tend to attribute successes as internal and controllable, failures as external and uncontrollable.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ DT Miller, M. Ross (1975). Self-serving biases in the attribution of causality: fact or fiction? , Psychological Bulletin, 82, pp. 213-225
  2. ^ E. Aronson , TD Wilson, RM Akert: Social Psychology . Pearson study. 6th edition 2008. ISBN 978-3-8273-7359-5 , p. 116
  3. ↑ J. Greenberg et al. (1982). The self-serving attributional bias: Beyond self-presentation . Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 18, pp. 56-67
  4. ^ TS Duval, PJ Silvia (2002). Self-awareness, probability of improvement, and the self-serving bias . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, pp. 49-61
  5. ^ E. Goffman (1959). Presentation of self in everyday life . Garden City, NY: Anchor / Doubleday
  6. ↑ Philip E. Tetlock (1981). The influence of self-presentational goals on attributional reports . Social Psychology Quarterly, 44, pp. 300-311
  7. ^ RE Nisbett, L. Ross (1980). Human inference: Strategies and shortcomings of human judgment . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall
  8. ^ MJ Lerner: The belief in a just world: A fundamental decision . Plenary, New York 1980
  9. ^ RR Lau, D. Russell (1980). Attributions in the sports pages: A field test of some current hypotheses about attribution research . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, pp. 29-38
  10. ^ SC Roesch, JH Amirkhan (1997). Boundary conditions for self-serving attributions: Another look at the sports pages . Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 27, pp. 245-261
  11. ^ HA McAllister (1996). Self-serving bias in the classroom: Who shows it? Who knows it? , Journal of Educational Psychology, 88, pp. 123-131
  12. ^ Gray, Janice D., and Roxane C. Silver. "Opposite sides of the same coin: Former spouses' divergent perspectives in coping with their divorce." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 59.6 (1990): 1180.
  13. ↑ Knapp, Mark L., and John A. Daly, eds. The SAGE handbook of interpersonal communication. Sage Publications, 2011.
  14. ↑ Kury, Max. Delivering Accountability to Rebuild Trust: An Empirical Study of Bank Reporting. BoD – Books on Demand, 2014. p. 66.