The reliability of this finding is further supported by work by Johnson et al (1964) in a study where teachers were asked to explain the reasons behind their pupils success and failure; when pupils did badly teachers attributed this to the pupils’ lack of effort or ability and saw it as the pupils’ responsibility (self-protecting bias) however over time as the pupils began to improve, the teachers altered their attributions and explained their pupils’ successes as down to their own efforts as teachers; they saw themselves as responsible for the pupils improvement, (self enhancing bias). This study also has its strengths in that the longitudinal design meant that it was possible to compare the same people’s explanations over time. This study also has high ecological validity as the pupils’ attainment was varying naturally rather than being artificially manipulated. However, this means that there is a lack of control over confounding variables which could jeopardise the internal validity of the finding. This said, there are examples of self serving bias under laboratory conditions whereby participants have been given a lecture to listen to and a test to take based on the lecture. The Pps are then told that they have achieved either an A, B or a C but this is randomly assigned regardless of actual test performance. The participants are then asked to make attributions about their performance. Those pupils who thought that they had done well tended to attribute this to their own intelligence and effort applied while those who didn’t do so well attributed it to the poor quality of the lecturer and test difficulty, (Snyder and Clair 1976). Although, this study has higher internal validity due to the random allocation of pupils to groups, the ethics of the study are questionable as participants are deceived and led to believe that they have not done well and this may cause some psychological distress.
Despite the research quoted above, Campbell and Sedikides (1999) have provided evidence which questions the validity of the self-protecting bias although the self enhancing bias seems well supported. In a meta-analysis of many studies in this area failure was not attributed to situational factors as much as success was attributed to dispositional factors. This findings has been accounted for by Duval and de Silvia (2002) who highlight the role of expectations for the future in determining how attributions are made. If participants believe that failure may be temporary, (unstable) they are more likely to attribute dispositionally than if they believe that they will not be able to improve at a later date, in which case the self protecting bias, (attributing failure externally is more common).
There are two main explanations for the self serving bias; the motivational account suggests that we are motivated to maintain high self esteem and prevent the loss of self esteem, (Greenberg, 1982). This is part of ‘impression management’ theory and the argument here is that we should attempt to present ourselves to others in the best possible light. We might assume that this serves an evolutionary function with regard to sexual selection, (mate choice) and also natural selection, as this way of thinking encourages perseverance as even when we are failing we are encouraged to continue.
However, there is also an alternative explanation which has been presented by Miller and Ross, (1975) which is purely cognitive and suggests that we sometimes make erroneous dispositional attributions about o0ur success and this is because we generally intend to succeed at the thing s that we do, we therefore apply effort and when we succeed we assume that this is because we worked hard and intended to do so. When we fail this is not expected and therefore we are more likely to look for causes outside ourselves. However, this explanation is refuted by a the results of a study by Miller (1976) who gave Pps a test of social perceptiveness and then randomly told them that they had either passed or failed. Half were told it was a well standardised and valid assessment and half were told it was a poor assessment. This meant that for those who thought they had failed in the latter category they had no need to show self protecting bias as they already had a reason as to why they may have received a poor score, (the test was poor and actually they are very good at this social perception). The group who did badly but believed the test was a valid tool should be motivated to show self protecting bias and make external attributions about their failure. As the motivational account would suggest this group were more likely to use SPB than the other groups.
Having discussed the possible reasons for the use of self serving bias let us consider whether this is indeed a universal concept. Gross, (2006) says that “No-one wants to admit to being incompetent, so we’re more likely to blame out failures on something external to ourselves” while we are “Quite happy to take credit for our successes” however it would appear that this is not strictly the case. As argued above the drive to maintain self esteem is the most plausible explanation for self serving bias yet a wealth of research suggests that there are “major cultural differences in the importance attached to high-self esteem” (Eysenck, 2009). Heine et al (1999) note that in some collectivist cultures “To say that an individual is self confident gets in the way of interdependence or it reveals ones failure to recognise higher standards of excellence and thus to continue to self improve or both” and since esteem is derived from group accomplishments and not from individual achievements, participants in cultures including China and Japan and Nepal have a tendency to demonstrate what has been termed the ‘self-effacement’ or modesty bias, (Chandler et al 19999, Watkins and Regmi, 1990). Here, successes are attributed to external factors such as luck and failures to internal factors such as lack of effort, (Kitayama and Markus 1995).
This concept is supported by many well controlled studies in a range if cultures. For example Kashima and Trriandis (1986) asked American and Japanese students to remember details from slides of landscapes of unknown countries. Interestingly, a universal ‘actors observer bias’ was supported here as the majority of participants from both cultures tended to explain their success in terms of luck and failure in terms of task difficulty (situational factors) however American participants were more inclined to explain their success in terms of high ability than their failures in terms of low ability (self-enhancing bias) whilst Japanese participants were more likely to show the opposite pattern; i.e. failure was more likely to be put down to low ability than success was put down to high ability.
Furthermore, a study by Bon, Leung, Wan (1982) with Chinese students indicated that those who showed the modesty bias were more popular with their peers than those who showed the self serving bias and this study is useful as it shows how the modesty bias is reinforced by social interaction and the perception of others.
The research above demonstrates that self serving bias may not be a cultural universal and Nagayama Hall and Barongan (2002) argue that it may also be more common in males than females, as Western females are more allied to the values of collectivism (e.g. importance of relationships, the needs of others, connectedness) and therefore the modesty bias may be more likely to be used to gain acceptance and maintain esteem.
Finally it should also be noted, again against Gross’ (2006) quote, that not every-one is happy to take credit for their successes. Many cognitive researchers in the field of clinical psychology have demonstrated that depression may be under-pinned by the ‘depressive attributional style’ (e.g. Abramson et al 1978) whereby personal failures are attributed to internal, stable and global causes. Cognitive therapists teach people with depression to re-assess these distorted attributions and encourage the use of self serving bias as an alternative way of thinking. These theories do not explain however, why certain individuals are more or less predisposed to a certain type of attributional style, be it self-serving or otherwise.
In this essay, it has been argued that self serving bias may be more common in Westerners and may serve to increase or maintain self esteem. It also been argued that self enhancing bias is better supported by the literature than self protecting bias, i.e. attributing failure to external circumstances. Research suggests that when people are aware that their achievements may be open to further scrutiny in the future, they may be less likely to use the self serving bias and may in fact use a related concept known as self-handicapping whereby possible future failure is covered by lowering expectations of success by focusing on situational factors. This way success will seem even greater as it was achieved apparently against the odds, and failure is less likely to be seen as due to an enduring problem with the individual. This leads to an interesting final thought relating to whether attributions made are private or public; private attributions may still be shaped by over-riding social norms however, those attributions that are communicated to others publically are most likely to be determined by the values of the society in which we live and therefore research in this area is troublesome as we cannot be sure whether the attributions that we are accessing are indeed a full record of the inner rationalisations that the individuals makes to him or herself at an intra-personal level.