A brief look at Self-serving Attributional Bias
People make this attributional bias everyday subconsciously, majority of the time it is recognized after self reflection, but never caught in the act. Take the time to assess a situation where you failed to complete a task and ever thought to yourself that “I wasn’t allowed enough time” or “the task was made too difficult to begin with”. Now reflect on a successfully completed task and the thoughts associated with completing that task may include “I’m very capable of completing difficult tasks” or “Those extra hours of work paid off”. This is quite a normal occurrence. We tend to associate the cause of our failures to external circumstances or influences, contrarily, our success are attributed to ourselves (Carver, DeGregorio, & Gillis, 1980; Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1982; Mullen & Riordan, 1988).
Mr Trump you’ve done it again
How many times has Mr Trump gone to twitter to express his upmost delight with the state of a controversial topic in US government? Too many to count since 2016. This time it hit home hard, as hard as a bullet shell in this case. As stated on Mr Trump’s personal twitter: “Happy Memorial Day! Those who died for our great country would be very happy and proud at how well our country is doing today. Best economy in decades, lowest unemployment numbers for Blacks and Hispanics EVER (& women in 18years), rebuilding our Military and so much more. Nice!” Self-serving bias is not limited to individual achievement. As the head of the US governmental administration the success of this proclaimed achievement must serve well for Mr Trump’s regime as president. On the contrary, the death toll in Puerto Rico caused by Hurricane Maria was reported to reach nearly 3,000. The relief efforts by the US were deemed less than adequate, as some parts of Puerto Rico are still without fresh water and electricity. To his defense, Mr Trump attributed that Democratic influence was the cause of reports that nearly 3,000 people lost their lives due to the hurricane. Again via twitter Trump claimed that “…This was done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad asa possible when I was successfully raising billions of dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico. If a person died for any reason, like old age, just add them onto the list. Bad politics. I love Puerto Rico!” Sounds like Trump is trying to divert the blame for Puerto Rico’s slow rehabilitation process and disregard death tolls that seem more than plausible. Trump regularly falls victim to self-serving attributional bias but, whether or not he will recognize it, there’s no telling.
References
Carver, C. S., Degregorio, E., & Gillis, R. (1980). Field-Study Evidence of an Ego-Defensive Bias in Attribution among Two Categories of Observers. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,6(1), 44-50. doi:10.1177/014616728061006
Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1982). The self-serving attributional bias: Beyond self-presentation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,18(1), 56-67. doi:10.1016/0022-1031(82)90081-6
Mullen, B., & Riordan, C. A. (1988). Self-Serving Attributions for Performance in Naturalistic Settings: A Meta-Analytic Review1. Journal of Applied Social Psychology,18(1), 3-22. doi:10.1111/j.1559-1816.1988.tb00001.x
Tillett, E. (2018). Trump disputes hurricane death toll in Puerto Rico, blames Democrats for making him “look bad”. Retrieved October 11, 2018, from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-disputes-puerto-rico-hurricane-maria-death-toll-blames-democrats-for-making-him-look-bad/
Wamsley, L. (2018, May 28). On Memorial Day, Trump Honors Fallen Soldiers; Draws Criticism Over Tweet. Retrieved October 11, 2018, from https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/28/614993465/on-memorial-day-trump-honors-fallen-soldiers-and-himself
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