Page 197 - The Social Animal

Social Cognition 179

colleagues. 107 Grove found that winning teams attributed their suc-
cess to stable causes, while teams that lost attributed their failure to
unstable causes like flukes, bad breaks, and the like. This bias can be
beneficial (at least in the short run) because it allows losing teams to
avoid being psychologically devastated by setbacks, to hang in there
and continue playing in the face of a string of defeats.
There may be even more important temporary benefits to self-bi-
ases, as well. That’s what Shelley Taylor found. 108 She interviewed
hundreds of people who had faced tragic or near-tragic events. Her in-
terviewees included rape victims, cancer patients, and others with life-
threatening illnesses. She found that, far from destroying these
individuals, the tragic event had given most of them a new lease on
life. This was especially true if they held overly optimistic perceptions
concerning their chances of recovery from disease or believed that they
could control the likelihood of future victimization.The belief that one
can overcome tragic obstacles—even if this belief was an illusion—led
these people to adopt better health practices and to develop coping
strategies for dealing with stress that had a salutary effect on their lives.
Similarly, Martin Seligman 109 has found across a variety of stud-
ies that an optimistic style of thinking—believing that a defeat is due
to bad luck and can be overcome by effort and ability—leads to more
achievement, better health, and an improved mental outlook. In
brief, engaging in egocentric thought and self-serving attributions
has an array of benefits. At the same time, it is important to bear in
mind that these positive consequences are not without their price—
and as you have undoubtedly gathered, the major price is a somewhat
distorted picture of the self and the world in general.
Ironically, as we have seen, this distorted picture of the world is
frequently caused by a motive to justify ourselves and our behavior—
to interpret or distort the meaning of our actions so as to bring them
in line with what we would regard as consistent with the actions of
a morally good and sensible human being. For me, one of the most
fascinating aspects of the social animal is our touching need to see
ourselves as good and sensible people—and how this need frequently
leads us to perform actions that are neither good nor sensible. The
human tendency for self-justification is so important that it deserves
a chapter all to itself; it is to this chapter that we now turn.