Taking accountability for one’s actions is more difficult than it sounds. Although I would like to think that most people strive to be genuine and not blame others for their own misfortune, in practice it can be difficult. At one time or another we have all tripped over something that was not put back where it belonged. Of course, our first instinct is to blame the person who did not put away the object, but is it not our fault for not watching where we were going? This is an example of self-serving bias.
The principle of self-serving bias states that we have “a tendency to attribute our positive outcomes to internal causes (e.g. our traits or characteristics) but to attribute our negative outcomes to external causes (e.g. chance, difficulty of a task)” (Gruman et al. 2016). Although there are many situations in life where this principle applies, it’s very common in education.
Today, the attitude towards educators and curriculum has shifted 180 degrees. In the past, educators were not as heavily questioned as to their methods and effectiveness. If a student came home with a poor grade, their parents automatically assumed that they did not grasp the material, did not do their assignments, or generally did not work hard enough. Unfortunately, today, there is more of a trend towards blaming the teacher for being ineffective or the curriculum for being flawed. Conversely, when students do well, the teachers are given little to no attribution.
The question is, why do we do this? Most of it is based on our need to elevate our self-esteem. Although shifting blame away from ourselves (or our children) might make us feel better, it keeps us from learning from our mistakes or developing the ability to accept negative feedback (Ruhl 2021). I believe that this behavior starts with the example our parents set for us during our formative years. As previously mentioned, there is a trend towards blaming the educator or the test when a student performs poorly. This tends to come from the parents. What kind of example are they setting? Instead of the student working harder, they instead are taught that the system is slanted against them, and their failure is directly attributable to a poor teacher or curriculum. With this attitude, they will never learn that self-serving bias can be detrimental to success.
Parents should instead examine the situation more carefully and encourage the student to converse with the teacher regarding their performance. In doing so, the teacher may come to realize that they are at fault, or the student may learn how to be more effective in the course. Without this interaction, self-serving bias will continue to increase, and the student will not have the tools to be successful later in life.
References
Ruhl, C. (2021, April 19). Self-Serving Bias: Definition and Examples. Retrieved from Simply Psychology: https://www.simplypsychology.org/self-serving-bias.html
Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (Eds.). (2016). Applied social psychology : Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. SAGE Publications.
Defense mechanisms like self-serving bias have been around for a very long time. As humans, it is our nature to protect our egos (Allport, 1937 as cited in Hu, Zhang, & Ran, 2016). We employ many techniques to protect our sense of self and self-esteem from denial, repression, projection to displacement, and sublimation. I don’t believe there are more instances of self-serving bias today than at any other time in history, but because of social media, we are more aware of its existence. More teachers are posting online, as are more parents. The availability of media has heightened and skewed our perception. No one likes to be wrong, so it seems natural that some (or most) people would experience some type of self-serving bias.
Interestingly, in one study, students exhibited less self-serving bias when their test scores were held private instead of publicly released (Wen, 2018). It seems that with the students in the study when someone is watching, they blamed external forces. However, when not being observed, they blamed themselves. We don’t know if these students have parents who have taught them the dangers of blaming others or what they believe. It is hard to say that the problem with self-serving is parenting without empirical studies to back up the hypothesis. We can postulate that parenting might impact students’ experiences, or we can follow the studies showing that self-serving bias is a pretty standard way for people to protect their egos (Gruman, 2016). In fact, a study that attempted to determine if self-serving bias was a Western phenomenon found that both Indian and Canadian subject populations experienced self-serving bias and surmised that protecting oneself from an ego blow is universal across cultures (Higgins & Bhatt, 2001). So, while it would be easy to blame poor parenting on self-serving bias in education settings, the data shows us that it’s a common phenomenon that stretches across cultures and environments.
Works Cited
Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (Eds.). (2016). Applied social psychology : Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. SAGE Publications.
Higgins, N. C., & Bhatt, G. (2001). Culture moderates the self-serving bias: Etic and emic features of causal attributions in india and in canada. Social Behavior and Personality, 29(1), 49. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.2224/sbp.2001.29.1.49
Hu, T., Zhang, D., & Ran, G. (2016). Self-serving attributional bias among chinese adolescents. Personality and Individual Differences, 91, 80-83. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2015.10.008
Wen, S. (2018). The effect of result publicity on self-serving attributional bias —— a social comparison perspective. Frontiers of Business Research in China, 12(1), 1-12. doi:10.1186/s11782-018-0028-8
Hello,
Great topic! This is a topic that I can go on and on about, your statement above “taking accountability is more difficult than it sounds”. It’s similar to that saying, “everyone wants to be grown, until it is time to be grown”. Holding yourself accountable for something, takes respect for yourself, and the opposing party. It takes honesty, belief, maturity, and power. Majority of the time people have a hard time taking accountability when it puts them in a bad light/paints a negative picture. Many of us want to be seen a good, or doing good, projecting good into the world but often we can forget that we are human and we are destined to make mistakes. As humans we have the tendency to correlate our positive outcomes to our traits or characteristics and attribute the negative outcomes to specific situations or the difficulty of a task without realizing that both the positive and negative is what makes us well-rounded (Gruman et al. 2016). I enjoyed reading your post!
Hi!
I really enjoyed your explanation of the self-serving bias in relation to real-life examples because it makes this theory more relatable. With modern education, I believe the most recent years teachers have been constantly blamed for a poor curriculum, teaching methods, inclusiveness with students learning disabilities, and much more. I remember when I was younger, I would always boast to my parents when I received a high grade expressing that I was so smart, but when I did poorly for math, for example, I would state that my teacher did not explain the material in enough depth. We do this as a human response to believe that we are smarter than our peers and extrinsic and intrinsic regulations.
A lot of education systems base their students off a merit system where if you do well you will receive an award, whether it is in elementary school with a pizza party or in high school with an honors society ceremony. Because of the way we have observed situations in school, there is a “prize to win” if you do well, “The unintended message conveyed to students is that working on academic tasks is not interesting or is of little value, and that rewards are needed to get people to learn “(Deci & Ryan, 1985; Freedman et al., 1992; Lepper & Henderlong,2000). It is important moving forward for students at a young age to learn intrinsic motivation rather than extrinsic to do well for themselves; this can also improve the self-serving bias to hold yourself accountable for situations and outcomes.
Reference:
Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (Eds.). (2017). Deci & Ryan. (1985); Freedman et al. (1992); Lepper & Henderlong (2000). Applied social psychology : Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. SAGE Publications.