The Self-Serving Bias In Psychology

The over estimation of self worth, while under estimating the unfavorable drawbacks is called self-serving bias that is caused because of cognitive bias. In simple words taking the credit of success and blaming others for failure. One attributes positive events in their lives to their own high capability and character and link negative events to external factors like bad luck or the unfavorable actions of others. Though it helps people to protect their ego from negative feedback that could damage self worth of a person.

Like everything in the world has pros and cons the same applies to Self-serving Bias. Depression and Self-serving Bias are related. When people are depressed or have a low self-esteem the attribution style is flipped. They attribute positive events to chance or external help, and attribute negative events to their own character. One can also avoid the self-serving attribution bias by:

·       Mindful awareness helps: when one knows about common cognitive biases he/she can start noticing it in them and self correct themselves.

·       Self compassion: self compassion is an extremely useful skill for reducing defensiveness and increasing one’s self-improvement motivation.

By: Shruti Anand

Content: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/in-practice/201301/the-self-serving-bias-definition-research-and-antidotes