The Self-Serving Bias in Attributions as a Coping Strategy
- 1 March 1986
- journal article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology
- Vol. 17 (1) , 83-97
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002186017001006
Abstract
The present study suggests that American students tend to use an individual coping strategy (i.e., self-serving attributions) more than Japanese students do in dealing with success and failure experiences. However, this tendency was observed only on the ability-related dimensions of attention and memory. The patterns of attributions seem to suggest that on the other dimensions, the subjects' causal inferences about their task performance are relatively reason-able rather than self-serving. One possible interpretation of this finding is that different cultural groups have different ways of coping with such inherently ambiguous issues as a person's ability; but in the face of obvious situational information, their judgments converge, although they leave some differences due to cultural preferences.Keywords
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