Self-serving bias is the tendency for people to attribute their successes to their own internal qualities, such as ability or effort, while attributing their failures to external circumstances outside their control. The pattern serves to protect and enhance self-esteem, and it appears across academic, athletic and workplace settings and in how groups explain their own outcomes as well as individuals. Its conceptual roots trace to Fritz Heider's work on attribution in the 1950s, with a systematic review by Dale Miller and Michael Ross in 1975 providing one of the first assessments of the evidence for the bias.
Facts
Core ClaimPeople credit their own successes to themselves and blame their failures on outside factors, in a way that consistently favors their own self-image. 1 First Described Year Classification
Type of Phenomenon Connections
Associated With
Heider's attribution theory is the conceptual root of the self-serving bias.
In Branch
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Self-Serving Bias
Wikimedia FoundationLead section
A self-serving bias is any cognitive or perceptual process that is distorted by the need to maintain and enhance self-esteem, or the tendency to perceive oneself in an overly favorable manner.
History section
The theory of self-serving biases first came to attention in the late 1960s to early 1970s.
lead section, phenomenon-kind classification
A self-serving bias is any cognitive or perceptual process that is distorted by the need to maintain and enhance self-esteem, or the tendency to perceive oneself in an overly favorable manner.
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