Self-Serving Biases in the Attribution of Causality: Fact or Fiction?

A review of the evidence for and against the proposition that self-serving biases affect attributions of causality indicated that there is little empirical support for the proposition in its most general form. The literature provides some support for the contention that individuals engage in self-enhancing attributions under conditions of success, but only minimal evidence was found to suggest that individuals engage in self-protective attributions under conditions of failure. Moreover, it was proposed that the self-enhancing effect may not be due to motivational distortion, but rather to the tendency of people (a) to expect their behavior to produce success, (b) to discern a closer covariation between behavior and outcomes in the case of increasing success than in the case of constant failure, and (c) to misconstrue the meaning of contingency.