The “Self-Serving” Student

Have you ever encountered an academic situation in which you felt someone else was to blame? For example, instead of admitting that you failed your test due to lack of studying, you blamed it on your noisy neighbors – because, you know, they stayed up until 4AM partying? Or, you blamed it on the professor because he or she did not cover the exam materials? In truth, how many exams have you taken in which none of the material was covered by the professor? For me, I have never taken an exam that consisted of material that was not covered. The professor may not have covered it verbatim, but perhaps the necessary information was easily found within your readings, you know, the ones you “forgot” to do. Additionally, there have been instances where a question was misworded; however, in these instances, all class members received credit. As such, a practical resolution was applied equally to everyone.

The point I am trying to make is that sometimes, we tend to blame everyone or everything but ourselves for our academic shortcomings. In fact, I have been party to numerous discussions that blamed poor grades on professors. Yet, the follow-up to this was, “Oh man, that party was insane last night!” Think about this for a moment. The professor is the one who gave you a bad grade on an assignment, project or exam, because the professor somehow forced you to go to a party or “insert any other excuse here.” The logic is not sound. Additionally, if you did happen to do well on the exam, odds are pretty high that you will take personal credit for instead of looking at the environmental factors (i.e. it was an extremely easy test). In short, when related to negative academic outcomes, we tend to attribute the outcomes to external factors. When it comes to positive academic outcomes, we tend to attribute these to internal factors. This principle is known as the self-serving bias.

In general, it seems that we are likely to take credit for things that we do well, but we blame others for things that we do not do well (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012). However, it is interesting that within the academic realm, people still apply this same principle. Growing up, I had always been taught to work hard to achieve a goal, though I may have grumbled here and there about different things (i.e. test structure, material, professor, weather). At the end of the day, the simple fact was that if I did not do well, it was because I did not prepare myself accordingly. Now, I have grown up and firmly believe that anything is possible with the right amount of effort and work. In a previous course, this was known as locus of control. For those that are not familiar with this concept, it is the extent to which an individual believes that he or she can influence situations through his or her own actions (Gale, Batty, & Deary, 2008). If you have a high internal locus of control, then you believe that you have more control over things that happen to you; whereas if you have a low locus of control, you believe that things are beyond your control.

Gramzow, Elliot, Asher, and McGregor (2003) found that some students exaggerate their academic performance, with need for achievement and poor prior performance both predicting exaggerated self-reports. The type of self-report varied though – exaggeration grounded in poor prior performance predicted poor subsequent performance and exaggeration grounded in need for achievement actually predicted improved performance. One potential justification for this is self-protection; if someone does poorly academically, he or she may believe that they will not be able to “rise above” strong academic performers. Additionally, he or she may believe that this will impact their entire future. As such, the self-serving bias may arise out of environmental cues or environmental pressures that cause an individual to try and produce his or her best “self.”

It is clear now that the self-serving bias definitely exists, but is there anything that can be done to prevent it? One potential idea is to help students change their attributions about the cause of their educational outcomes. It was demonstrated that by doing so, overall academic performance would improve (Marsh, 1986). If the process of the self-serving bias is interrupted, it can help promote a higher level of academic performance. In other words, if you break the cognitive pathways that generate this bias, then the bias will not be able to occur. Given that self-serving bias is essentially a blame game of sorts, this begins to make sense. Ultimately, if you can stop a student from pointing the finger or playing this game, you can get them to realize that perhaps they are the ones that are truly in control of their academic future.

References

Gale, C. R., Batty, G. D., & Deary, I. J. (2008). Locus of control at age 10 years and health outcomes and behaviors at age 30 years: The 1970 British cohort study. Psychosomatic Medicine, 70(4), 397-403. doi: 10.1097/PSY.0b013e31816a719e

Gramzow, R. H., Elliot, A. J., Asher, E., & McGregor, H. A. (2003). Self-evaluation bias and academic performance: Some ways and some reasons why. Journal of Research in Personality, 37(2), 41-61. doi: 10.1016/6566(02)00535-4

Marsh, H. W. (1986). Self-serving effect (bias?) in academic attributions: Its relation to academic achievement and self-concept. Journal of Educational Psychology, 78(3), 190-200. doi: 10.1037/0022-0663.78.3.190

Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., & Coutts, L. M. (2012). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems (2nd ed.) Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

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3 comments

  1. Stephanie R Subedi

    Your post is on point with my blog of motivation and education. Motivation is a key trait provides an individual with the desire or drive to do things in their lifespan (Psychology Today. n.d). From the time of birth through adulthood motivational drives explain why individual do the things they do. Two types of motivational concepts are intrinsic and extrinsic driven motivation. Intrinsic motivation is define as “the drive simply for the sake of doing them” (muchinsky p.365). Individuals are willingly interested to participate in activities for the sake of doing it, meaning without type of rewards, just for owns’ personal gratification. Individuals However, motivation can be driven by external rewards, through extrinsic motivation. Muchinsky defines extrinsic motivation as motivation that is dictated by perceived instrumental outcome and is driven externally. People who have “self-serving bias”, I believe has come along in recent generations, people expect to be given the same things as they were raised on. However, what they do connect is that their parents had to do without to ensure their children did not go without. That mindset has had a domino effect once these children hit adulthood. Great Post!

  2. Taylor Alexis Greco

    This blog post has been a crazy eye opener for me! I never noticed but I do this myself. Whenever I do bad on an exam or an assignment I try to blame every other variable I can for why I did poorly. Then when I do well I think it’s because I must have done really well and worked hard for it. When in reality maybe it was that the exam or assignment was made to be easy for students. I found your evidence on internal locus of control to be very interesting. I didn’t know that if someone has a low locus of control then you believe things are beyond your control, and likewise a high locus of control is someone who believes they have more control over things. From this information I have come to think I have a high locus of control because I’m aware I have control over things. I may at first try to blame others for why I failed but after a day or two of being upset for doing bad then I look back on the situation and realize, “Hey, I should have studied more, then I would have performed better.”

  3. External and internal factors! A great tie into the connection between social and applied social psychology. I have been victim of both when related to my academic success or failures. Maybe I earned an ‘A’ on a paper because I studied a little bit everyday which would be optimistic or because I am great (I think) at juggling studying, work, gym, social life, and complaining about life’s ups and downs with friends over a glass (most likely more) of wine. When I do not do well on an exam it’s normally because the teacher is a very tough grader, not because I stayed up late watching that extra episode and was then drifting asleep through the multiple choice questions. Everyone has their own internal and external factors and it is great that we recognize them for better or worse. I realized this characteristic in myself during my first semester at a community college. I was fresh out of high school and the academic transition from 12th grade to freshman year was difficult for me and I tried to play it off cool. While attending PSU I broke this habit. My academic load was and has been difficult and there are times where juggling material for 2 exams in one week is difficult for me, but instead of pointing the finger, I ask questions to better myself. This semester when there are questions I get incorrect on an assignment I have a professor who responds through Canvas with questions, to which we are not required to respond, but I do. Keeping constant communication between professors and students I think is a great way to prevent a self-serving bias. As an undergraduate student who wants to succeed in this field and continue on to a further degree I also feel a responsibility within myself to make my professors proud with whom I have open communication with versus those who do not reach out to their students often.

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