Читать книгу Social Psychology - Daniel W. Barrett - Страница 167

When you do well on a psychology exam, what is the reason? Did you work hard? Or are you simply smart? What if you fail? Were the professor’s questions incomprehensible? Or were you deathly sick the night before? People often answer questions like these with judgments that enhance their self-esteem (Gilovich, 1991; Mezulis, Abramson, Hyde, & Hankin, 2004). If, like many of us, you take credit for your successes but blame outside factors for your failures, you are demonstrating one type of self-serving belief known as the self-serving attributional bias or, more simply, the self-serving bias (Shepperd, Malone, & Sweeny, 2008). Attributions are explanations that people give for their own or others’ behavior; when you attribute your high grade to hard work, you are claiming that your grade was a result of your personal effort. The self-serving bias helps us maintain our self-esteem by bolstering us when things go well and buffering us against negative events by blaming outside factors. Basically, you feel good when you succeed, and you feel good when you fail (because it wasn’t your fault).