Self-enhancing attribution biases as a function of objective response-outcome contingencies

Abstract

This experiment investigated whether causal attributions for success vary with differences in objective response-outcome contingencies. In a 2 ×2 factorial design, 96 college males performed either a solvable or an unsolvable intellectual task and then received either success feedback or no feedback. Thus, the success feedback was contingent or noncontingent on performance for solvable and unsolvable test subjects, respectively. Solvable test subjects generally attributed their performance more to ability than did unsolvable test subjects, but success feedback significantly increased the ability attributions of unsolvable test subjects only. These data suggest the importance of objective contingencies in determining biased attributions and of including a neutral outcome condition in research on self-serving biases.