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Immune to Situation: The Self-Serving Bias in Unambiguous Contexts

Traditionally, the self-serving bias has been investigated in ambiguous contexts in which participants work on tasks that measure novel abilities before making attributions without clear criteria for success or failure feedback. Prior studies have confirmed that the self-serving bias is pervasive in...

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Autores principales: Wang, Xiaoyan, Zheng, Li, Li, Lin, Zheng, Yijie, Sun, Peng, Zhou, Fanzhi A., Guo, Xiuyan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5439270/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28588532
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00822
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author Wang, Xiaoyan
Zheng, Li
Li, Lin
Zheng, Yijie
Sun, Peng
Zhou, Fanzhi A.
Guo, Xiuyan
author_facet Wang, Xiaoyan
Zheng, Li
Li, Lin
Zheng, Yijie
Sun, Peng
Zhou, Fanzhi A.
Guo, Xiuyan
author_sort Wang, Xiaoyan
collection PubMed
description Traditionally, the self-serving bias has been investigated in ambiguous contexts in which participants work on tasks that measure novel abilities before making attributions without clear criteria for success or failure feedback. Prior studies have confirmed that the self-serving bias is pervasive in the general population, yet it varies significantly across situations involving ambiguous contexts. The present study features an unambiguous context encompassing interpersonal events that involved implicit causality (with the “self” as an actor or recipient), the inherent logic of which indicated attribution criteria. The aim of this study was to explore whether there is a self-serving bias in unambiguous contexts and to examine whether it is as sensitive to situation as it has been shown to be in ambiguous contexts. The results showed that, in an unambiguous context, participants exhibited self-serving bias in relation to attribution associated with negative interpersonal events. Additionally, the self-serving bias was greater in the actor condition relative to the recipient condition (Study 1), and this effect was not affected by the level of self-awareness, which was manipulated by the use or otherwise of a camera during the experiment (Study 2). Our findings provide evidence for the existence of the self-serving bias in unambiguous contexts. Moreover, the self-serving bias was shown to be immune to situation in unambiguous contexts, but it did depend on factors associated with the events per se, such as the actor versus recipient role that the self played in interpersonal events.
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spelling pubmed-54392702017-06-06 Immune to Situation: The Self-Serving Bias in Unambiguous Contexts Wang, Xiaoyan Zheng, Li Li, Lin Zheng, Yijie Sun, Peng Zhou, Fanzhi A. Guo, Xiuyan Front Psychol Psychology Traditionally, the self-serving bias has been investigated in ambiguous contexts in which participants work on tasks that measure novel abilities before making attributions without clear criteria for success or failure feedback. Prior studies have confirmed that the self-serving bias is pervasive in the general population, yet it varies significantly across situations involving ambiguous contexts. The present study features an unambiguous context encompassing interpersonal events that involved implicit causality (with the “self” as an actor or recipient), the inherent logic of which indicated attribution criteria. The aim of this study was to explore whether there is a self-serving bias in unambiguous contexts and to examine whether it is as sensitive to situation as it has been shown to be in ambiguous contexts. The results showed that, in an unambiguous context, participants exhibited self-serving bias in relation to attribution associated with negative interpersonal events. Additionally, the self-serving bias was greater in the actor condition relative to the recipient condition (Study 1), and this effect was not affected by the level of self-awareness, which was manipulated by the use or otherwise of a camera during the experiment (Study 2). Our findings provide evidence for the existence of the self-serving bias in unambiguous contexts. Moreover, the self-serving bias was shown to be immune to situation in unambiguous contexts, but it did depend on factors associated with the events per se, such as the actor versus recipient role that the self played in interpersonal events. Frontiers Media S.A. 2017-05-22 /pmc/articles/PMC5439270/ /pubmed/28588532 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00822 Text en Copyright © 2017 Wang, Zheng, Li, Zheng, Sun, Zhou and Guo. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Wang, Xiaoyan
Zheng, Li
Li, Lin
Zheng, Yijie
Sun, Peng
Zhou, Fanzhi A.
Guo, Xiuyan
Immune to Situation: The Self-Serving Bias in Unambiguous Contexts
title Immune to Situation: The Self-Serving Bias in Unambiguous Contexts
title_full Immune to Situation: The Self-Serving Bias in Unambiguous Contexts
title_fullStr Immune to Situation: The Self-Serving Bias in Unambiguous Contexts
title_full_unstemmed Immune to Situation: The Self-Serving Bias in Unambiguous Contexts
title_short Immune to Situation: The Self-Serving Bias in Unambiguous Contexts
title_sort immune to situation: the self-serving bias in unambiguous contexts
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5439270/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28588532
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00822
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