Social Cognition

Mini Review

• Every explanation of a behavior points at the person or at the situation.
• The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to overestimate person-related factors and underestimate situational factors when explaining someone else’s behavior.
• The actor-observer difference is the tendency to explain other people’s behavior by their personality but one’s own behavior by the situation.

What the Actor-Observer Difference Missed

• Last time: People explain their own behavior by the situation.
• That claim covers every one of your own behaviors, good or bad. Test it on both.
• A failure.
  • Ex: You get a D. The situation explanation is “the test was unfair.” People say this.
• A success.
  • Ex: You get an A. The situation explanation is “the test was easy.” Almost no one says this. They say “I studied.”
• The situation explanation for your own behavior appears after failures and disappears after successes.
• Whether the outcome was good or bad decides which explanation you give.

The Self-Serving Bias

• Self-serving bias: The tendency to explain one’s own successes by personal factors and one’s own failures by situational factors.
  • Ex: “I got an A because I studied hard. I got a D because the test was unfair.”
  • Ex: “We won because we played smart. We lost because the referees were terrible.”
  • Ex: “I got the job because I interviewed well. I did not get the job because they already had someone in mind.”
• The same person, explaining two of their own outcomes, points in two different directions.
• The outcome decides the direction. A good outcome is explained by the self, and a bad outcome by the situation.

How It Differs From the FAE

• Whose behavior is being explained?
  • Fundamental attribution error: Someone else’s.
  • Self-serving bias: Your own.
• Does the outcome matter?
  • Fundamental attribution error: No. People explain good and bad behavior alike by the person.
  • Self-serving bias: Yes. People explain success by themselves and failure by the situation.

How It Differs From the FAE, Continued

• What does each one protect?
  • Fundamental attribution error: Nothing. It happens because the person is easier to see than the situation.
  • Self-serving bias: A favorable view of yourself.

The Self-Serving Bias in the Sports Pages

• The sports pages study (1980): Researchers coded explanations that players and coaches gave to newspaper reporters after 33 major-league baseball and college football games.
  • Finding: Explanations for wins pointed mostly at the team’s own skill and effort. Explanations for losses pointed at outside causes far more often: bad calls, injuries, and the other team’s luck.
• These were real explanations given to reporters in the hour after a game, with no experiment involved.
• Sportswriters showed the same pattern when writing about the home team.
• Players and coaches explained wins by themselves and losses by the situation, which is the self-serving bias in explanations no researcher asked for.

Does It Hold Up?

• A meta-analysis (2004) combined 266 studies of the self-serving bias.
  • Finding: The average effect was large, d = 0.96. It appeared in children, adults, and older adults, and in samples from every region studied. It was smaller in East Asian samples.
• The bias was weaker or absent in people with depression, who explained their failures by themselves as readily as their successes.
• A large effect in a meta-analysis of hundreds of studies is the strongest kind of support psychology can offer for a finding.

The Actor-Observer Difference, Revisited

• Last time: The actor-observer difference says people explain their own behavior by the situation.
• A meta-analysis (2006) combined 173 studies of that claim.
  • Finding: Averaged across all studies, the difference was close to zero. It appeared only when the behavior was negative. For positive behavior, it reversed, and people explained their own behavior by themselves more than observers did.
• That reversal is the self-serving bias.
• The actor-observer difference as it was first stated in 1971 was too broad. The outcome, and whether it makes the actor look good, decides which explanation the actor gives.

Why the Self-Serving Bias Happens

• Self-protection. Explaining a failure by the situation keeps it from saying anything about you.
• Expectation. People expect to succeed. A result that matches what you expected gets explained by you. A result that does not match gets explained by whatever was unusual about that day.
  • Ex: A student who expected a B and got a B says “that is about my level.” The same student who expected a B and got a D says “that test was nothing like the study guide.”
• Both reasons produce the same pattern, and researchers still argue over which one matters more.

Poll: Rate Yourself

Compare yourself with the average student at Kentucky State. For each one, choose a number from 1 (much below average) to 5 (much above average).

Click Here to Answer

Poll Results

The Better-Than-Average Effect

• Better-than-average effect: The tendency to rate oneself above the average person on most desirable traits and abilities.
• If everyone rated themselves accurately, half the class would be below the middle of the scale on each trait, and the class average would land at 3.
• The class average on each trait is on the previous slide.

The Driver Study

• The driver study (1981): American and Swedish college students rated their own driving skill and driving safety compared with the other students in the room.
  • Finding: 93% of the American students and 69% of the Swedish students placed themselves in the top half for skill. At most half of them could have been right.
• A survey of about one million high school seniors (1977) asked the same kind of question about several traits.
  • Finding: 70% rated themselves above average in leadership ability. 85% rated themselves above average in getting along with others, and 25% put themselves in the top 1%.

Does It Hold Up?

• A meta-analysis (2020) combined 291 studies of the better-than-average effect.
  • Finding: The average effect was large, d = 0.78. It was strongest for traits people care most about, such as honesty and getting along with others, and for traits with no fixed definition.
• The effect was present in East Asian samples but smaller.
• A limit: For skills most people find hard, such as juggling or computer programming, most people rate themselves below average. The comparison to the average person is mostly a judgment about yourself, and the average person barely enters into it.

How It Differs From the Self-Serving Bias

• What kind of judgment is it?
  • Self-serving bias: An explanation. Why did this happen?
  • Better-than-average effect: A rating. How good am I at this?
• Does it need an outcome?
  • Self-serving bias: Yes. Something happened, and it gets explained.
  • Better-than-average effect: No. Nothing has to happen. The rating is made without any event.
• What do they have in common?
  • Both end with a more favorable view of the self than the facts support.

Why the Better-Than-Average Effect Happens

• The trait has no fixed definition. “Good driver” can mean fast, careful, or never lost. People define the trait by what they do well, then rate themselves on that definition.
  • Ex: One student decides a good driver never speeds, and another decides a good driver can handle any road. Each rates themselves high on their own definition.
• The average person is vague. You know your own record in detail. “The average student” is vague, and a vague person gets an average rating.
• The rating feels good. A high self-rating is pleasant, and there is usually no one in the room to correct it.

Exercise: Which Bias Is It?

For each one, say whether it shows the fundamental attribution error, the self-serving bias, the better-than-average effect, or none of them.

1. “I passed because I know this material. I failed the last one because the professor wrote confusing questions.”
2. “The guy who cut me off is a terrible driver.”
3. “I would say I am a more patient person than most people.”
4. “She got the promotion because her manager likes her. I got mine because I earned it.”
5. “I failed because I did not study. That one is on me.”
6. “Most of the people in this room are worse cooks than I am.”