Theories Cognitive Psychology Print How the Self-Serving Bias Protects Self-Esteem By Kendra Cherry facebook twitter Kendra Cherry, MS, is an author, educational consultant, and speaker focused on helping students learn about psychology. Learn about our editorial process Kendra Cherry Medically reviewed by Medically reviewed by Steven Gans, MD on January 17, 2016 Steven Gans, MD is board-certified in psychiatry and is an active supervisor, teacher, and mentor at Massachusetts General Hospital. Learn about our Review Board Steven Gans, MD Updated on March 04, 2020 The self-serving bias often leads us to blame our failures on outside sources. Blend Images/Ariel Skelley/Getty Images More in Theories Cognitive Psychology Behavioral Psychology Developmental Psychology Personality Psychology Social Psychology Biological Psychology Psychosocial Psychology Self-serving bias is how social psychologists describe humans’ tendency to blame external forces when bad things happen and to give ourselves credit when good things happen. Although it can mean evading personal responsibility for your actions, self-serving bias is a defense mechanism that protects your self-esteem. When Self-Serving Bias Occurs Let’s say you ace an exam. The self-serving bias would lead you to believe that it's because you studied hard. If you failed, on the other hand, you might believe it was because the teacher didn't explain the subject correctly, the classroom was too warm, or your roommate kept you up all night before the exam. All of these things may be true, but they’re not painting a complete picture of all the circumstances that led to your performance on the test. Examples of Self-Serving Bias Following a car accident, both parties involved blame the other driver for causing the crash.After a disastrous meeting with a potential client, a businessman blames losing the account on a competitor's dirty business practices.A high school basketball player makes a throw during the final seconds of a game and manages to make a basket. He attributes this to his skill at the game. Why Self-Serving Bias Occurs In many cases, this cognitive bias allows you to protect your self-esteem. By attributing positive events to personal characteristics, you get a boost in confidence. By blaming outside forces for failures, you protect your self-esteem and absolve yourself from personal responsibility. A number of factors have been shown to influence the self-serving bias, including age and gender. Older adults tend to make more internal attributions, that is, credit themselves for their successes. Men are more likely to make external attributions, meaning they tend to blame outside forces for their failures. Often when a person is depressed or has low self-esteem, this kind of bias may be reversed: they’ll attribute positive outcomes to outside help or even luck, and blame themselves when bad things happen. Common Situations Experts suggest that while this bias is quite widespread in Western cultures including the United States and Canada, it tends to be much less frequent in Eastern cultures like China and Japan. Why? Individualist cultures such as the U.S. place a greater emphasis on personal achievement and self-esteem, so protecting the self from feelings of failure is more important. On the other hand, collectivist cultures, such as tend to be found in Eastern cultures, are more likely to attribute personal success to luck and failures to lack of talent. There are some scenarios where self-serving bias is less likely. Some research has found that people in romantic relationships and close friendships tend to be more modest. Your friends or your partner, in other words, keep you in check with honest criticism about when a bad situation might be part of your own doing. Positive Side of Self-Serving Bias One advantage of this bias is that it leads people to persevere even in the face of adversity. An unemployed worker may feel more motivated to keep looking for work if he attributes his joblessness on a weak economy, for instance, rather than some personal failing. An athlete might feel more motivated to perform well if she believes that her failure during a previous event was the result of bad weather rather than a lack of skill. Other Types of Cognitive Biases Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback! Ever wonder what your personality type means? Sign up to find out more in our Healthy Mind newsletter. Sign Up You're in! Thank you, {{form.email}}, for signing up. There was an error. Please try again. What are your concerns? Other Inaccurate Hard to Understand Submit Article Sources Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy. Zhang Y, Pan Z, Li K, Guo Y. Self-Serving Bias in Memories. Exp Psychol. 2018;65(4):236-244. doi:10.1027/1618-3169/a000409 Korn CW, Rosenblau G, Rodriguez buritica JM, Heekeren HR. Performance Feedback Processing Is Positively Biased As Predicted by Attribution Theory. PLoS ONE. 2016;11(2):e0148581. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0148581 Miyamoto R, Kikuchi Y. Gender differences of brain activity in the conflicts based on implicit self-esteem. PLoS ONE. 2012;7(5):e37901. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0037901 Bart VKE, Sharavdorj E, Bazarvaani K, Munkhbat T, Wenke D, Rieger M. It Was Me: The Use of Sense of Agency Cues Differs Between Cultures. Front Psychol. 2019;10:650. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00650 Wang X, Zheng L, Li L, et al. Immune to Situation: The Self-Serving Bias in Unambiguous Contexts. Front Psychol. 2017;8:822. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00822 Additional Reading Beyer F, Sidarus N, Bonicalzi S, Haggard P. Beyond Self-Serving Bias: Diffusion of Responsibility Reduces Sense of Agency and Outcome Monitoring. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. 2017;12(1):138-145. doi:10.1093/scan/nsw160. Nevid JS. Psychology: Concepts and applications, 4th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth; 2013.