Page 196 - The Social Animal

178 The Social Animal

gamblers is likely to be similar. Another explanation proposed for the
self-serving bias is that we are motivated to engage in such attributions
to protect and maintain our self-concepts and self-esteem. According
to this perspective, if I have a positive self-view, it is easy for me to see
and accept myself as accomplishing positive things;on the other hand,a
threat to this positive self-view must be defended against—perhaps
through denial or a good excuse.This is called ego-defensivebehavior.
How can we be certain that some of this behavior is motivated
by a desire to maintain high self-esteem? Let us look at the condi-
tions under which we are most likely to engage in ego-defensive at-
tributions. In a series of experiments, Gifford Weary and her
colleagues 106 found that the likelihood of giving a self-serving expla-
nation increases when (1) the person is highly involved in the behav-
ior; (2) the person feels responsible for the outcome of his or her
action; and (3) the person’s behavior is publicly observed by others.
Further, people are least likely to offer a self-serving attribution when
they feel that they can’t get away with it; that is, when the audience
makes it clear that an excuse is not appropriate or that an excuse will
set up unreasonable expectations about future performance. In other
words, self-serving explanations occur most when the self is “on the
line”—when the self is clearly threatened or when the person sees an
opportunity to achieve a positive image.

Of What Value Are Self-Biases? When we treat mental
processes as objects and discover that the overwhelming majority of
people engage in such behavior as egocentric thought and the self-
serving bias, it would be easy to conclude that (1) humans are pa-
thetic, irrational, silly organisms who blind themselves from seeing
things as they are, and (2) self-biases should be eliminated at all cost.
Such conclusions would be gross oversimplifications. First, as men-
tioned earlier, although we humans frequently engage in biased
thinking, we are also capable of clear, rational thought. Moreover,
self-biases can serve important purposes. The individual who be-
lieves that he or she is the cause of good things will try harder and
persist longer to achieve difficult goals. Such efforts can result in new
scientific discoveries, great works of art, or political agreements that
can be of great benefit to millions of people.
An interesting example of this kind of process emerges from the
results of a study of basketball players done by Robert Grove and his