Self-Serving Biases in Implicit Evaluations

Abstract

Ninety subjects read one of eight paragraphs describing an encounter between a same-sex actor and a target person. The Actor's implied evaluation of the target (positive or negative) and whether the subject or another person of the same sex was identified as the target were varied. When subjects allocated attribution points to target, actor, and circumstances, both selfenhancing and self-protective biases were demonstrated; i.e., when subjects themselves were target persons, most attributions to the self and least to circumstances were made in the positive evaluation condition and fewest attributions to the self and most to circumstances were made in the negative evaluation condition. No sex differences were found. Discrepancies with an open-ended measure were discussed. Previous studies have shown that self-serving biases affect attributions about one's own behavior; this study demonstrates that these biases also affect perceptions of another person's behavior.