#self serving bias

[herbaliser]

Pretty good list of questions to ask about something being a "cult"...

[sumpix]

Self serving Bias.

The common human tendency to attribute one’s successes to personal characteristics, and one’s failures to factors beyond one’s control. The reason people tend to personalize success is because it helps their self-esteem levels. Most people demonstrate this behavior on a regular basis. It is human nature to take credit for things like an A on a test or a job well done at work. It is also human nature to avoid responsibility entirely for mistakes or problems.

This behavior can rob people of opportunities to learn and improve. If we address our weaknesses and listen to critique we can improve. If we avoid them and blame them on factors like the teacher, the car we took a driving test with etc, then we remain stagnant as far as skill levels.

Example: A star quarterback discusses the hard work and team-mindedness of his fellow players when asked to explain a big win. A few weeks later, after his team loses a game, the same quarterback explains that “it just wasn’t our night”.

[theblondeskeptic]

Notes to self

You still deserve love and you still have value when you fail to do something as well as someone else. You can work harder than everyone you know your entire life and still not get the recognition you deserve or achieve the goals you want. That doesn't mean that other people don't deserve recognition or that their achievements are invalid. You don't have to spend your energy resenting others for seeming more successful than you. Mind your own goddamn business. There is some middle ground between "I didn't get that job because I am a failure and don't deserve to exist" and "That person got that job because external forces favor them, and they didn't earn it." I don't know what that middle ground is. But it's there. You should probably try to find it.

[eressea-nyarwe]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa_wJAS2cnI)

[thisisnotpsychology-blog]

Self-serving bias

“We don’t see things as they are,” says a proverb. “We see things as we are.”

Dawes (1990) proposes that this false consensus may occur because we generalize from a limited sample, which prominently includes ourselves. Lacking other information, why not “project” ourselves; why not impute our own knowledge to others and use our responses as a clue to their likely responses?

Most people are in the majority; so when people assume they are in the majority they are usually right.

Also, we’re more likely to spend time with people who share our attitudes and behaviors and, consequently, to judge the world from the people we know.

On matters of ability or when we behave well or successfully, however, a false uniqueness effect more often occurs (Goethals & others, 1991). We serve our selfimage by seeing our talents and moral behaviors as relatively unusual. For example, those who use marijuana but use seat belts will overestimate (false consensus) the number of other marijuana users and underestimate (false uniqueness) the number of other seat belt users (Suls & others, 1988). Thus, we may see our failings as relatively normal and our virtues as relatively exceptional.

To sum up, self-serving bias appears as self-serving attributions, self-congratulatory comparisons, illusory optimism, and false consensus for one’s failings.

from: Social Psychology - David G. Myers

[whenyournotesfailyou]

Kashima and Triandis (1986) - SSB (Self-serving bias) + Modesty bias

They asked participants to remember details of slides of scenes from unfamiliar countries. When asked to explain their performances, Americans attributed it to their success to ability while Japanese tended to explain their failures in terms of lack of ability. Chandler et al. (1990) observed this bias in Japanese students and Watkins and Regmi (1990) found the same in Nepalese students.

[whenyournotesfailyou]

Lau and Russel (1980) - Self-serving bias

Found that American football coaches and players tend to credit their wins to internal factors (such as good shape, hard work etc...) and failures to external factors (such as injuries, weather etc...)