The Self-Serving Bias is one that most individuals experience as a defensive reaction to negative situations or failures, and one that I have certainly experienced many times. In Social Psychology, a Self-Serving Bias is a Motivational Bias that describes when individuals attribute positive successes to personal factors, and attribute failures to situational factors (Mezulis, 2004). Although I have probably used the Self-Serving Bias in many instances, I distinctly remember using it in high school sports. I have loved volleyball since I was a toddler and was obsessed with watching famous California doubles teams battling on the sand. I became such a fan, and bothered my parents enough, that finally one day my dad came home with a volleyball net to set up in our backyard. I always looked forward to my parents coming home from work and playing with me, even though they were pretty horrible at the game. By the time I reached high school, I had been on middle school teams and wanted to try out for Varsity. My freshman year, I attended the two week pre-season of intense conditioning, and felt confident that I was on the level of the Varsity players. However, when tryouts came, I felt sluggish and unprepared in comparison with the older girls. During the two day tryouts, I convinced myself that I was tired, and was dealing with too much friend drama to be focused enough to make Varsity. When I found out that I made the Junior Varsity team, I was able to justify my failure with these situational factors. I was not, however, prepared to completely give up on my dream of being a Varsity volleyball player. I spent the entire off-season training in my backyard, and honing my serves, vertical jumps and difficult passes. My sophomore year of high school quickly rolled around, and I was able to show up and impress my coaches. I was not surprised that I made Varsity that year because I felt that situational factors were not negatively influencing my skill, and I was confident that I was a dedicated volleyball player. I perceived that my success in finally joining the Varsity team was due to my own ability and skill, and that my previous failure had been due to situational factors, rather than inability on my part. But I now realize that I was being influenced by the Self-Serving Bias. In reality, I was probably not conditioned or trained well enough to become a Varsity player my freshman year, but it was a self-esteem building reaction that caused me to rationalize my thoughts with the Self-Serving Bias.
References
Mezulis, A. H., Abramson, L. Y., Hyde, J. S., & Hankin, B. L. (2004). Is there a universal positivity bias in attributions? A meta-analytic review of individual, developmental, and cultural differences in the self-serving attributional bias. Psychological Bulletin, 130, 771-747.
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Self-serving bias is so influential in our everyday lives that I forgot I was reading a social psychology blog for a second and believed that you were just tired your freshman year. That sort of thing happened to be all the time in auditions for band. I did badly because I played my instrument too much yesterday and am tired today, because the temperature in the room wasn't just right, because I just had my wisdom teeth out (though that one is actually a good excuse). I never came out of a good audition thinking that the temperature was just right for me to succeed. But if I didn't say my failures weren't totally my fault, I would've been mopey for at least a week instead of practicing for the next audition. When our self-esteem doesn't depend on one result like making Varsity is when we can realize that we are the reason we failed and take steps toward success.
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