Self-serving Attributions Research Articles

Employee reactions to perceived ‘non-talent’ designation: a social comparison perspective

Talent designation is one of the most sensitive and controversial topics in talent management. As organisations adopt workforce differentiation practices, a subset of employees is often considered ‘talent’, while other employees may implicitly perceive ‘non-talent’ status. Taking a social comparison perspective, we examine under which conditions employees are more likely to respond positively or negatively to perceived non-talent designation. Specifically, we draw on research on personal goals and extend the self-evaluation maintenance model. We argue that, contrary to common assumptions, perceived non-talent designation may not universally cause negative responses. Comparison can be experienced as inspiration or envy – depending on the relevance of talent status to one’s identity, attainability of talent status in the future, and a multitude of micro-, meso-, and macro-level contextual factors. This, in turn, shapes both employees’ approach motivation to gain talent status and self-serving attributions to defend non-talent status. In doing so, we provide a more nuanced understanding of employee reactions to perceived non-talent designation and highlight the value of dynamic talent designation in organisations.

The Impact of Offsetting Internal Attributions on Investor Judgments

While prior research has primarily focused on how self-serving versus incentive-incompatible attributions impact investors’ judgments, we focus on how combining self-serving or incentive-incompatible attributions with offsetting internal attributions impact investors’ judgments. Offsetting internal attributions are causal explanations attributed to internal actions that impact earnings positively (negatively) in an overall negative (positive) news environment. Our first experiment demonstrates that when a firm has overall negative news, highlighting an offsetting, silver-lining attribution is viewed as more credible/forthcoming when it is accompanied by an overall incentive-incompatible versus self-serving attribution. Therefore, highlighting the silver-lining offset improves investors’ earnings estimates only when the management has also been highlighting incentive-incompatible versus self-serving attributions. Our second experiment finds that highlighting an offsetting, blemish attribution together with self-serving attributions increases credibility/forthcomingness assessments more than highlighting self-serving attributions alone. Our study extends research on management attributions and strategic disclosures and has practical implications.

What to Blame? Self-Serving Attribution Bias with Multi-Dimensional Uncertainty

Abstract People often receive feedback influenced by external factors, yet little is known about how this affects self-serving biases. Our theoretical model explores how multi-dimensional uncertainty allows additional degrees of freedom for self-serving bias. In our primary experiment, feedback combining an individual’s ability and a teammate’s ability leads to biased belief updating. However, in a follow-up experiment with a random fundamental replacing the teammate, unbiased updating occurs. A validation experiment shows that belief distortion is greater when outcomes originate from human actions. Overall, our experiments highlight how multi-dimensional environments can enable self-serving biases.

Subordinate self-serving attribution of leader respect and employee interpersonal deviance

Subordinate self-serving attribution of leader respect (SSALR) refers to the extent to which employees attribute leader respect to intrinsic personal factors, such as their ability and contribution to the organization, rather than extrinsic factors, such as leadership or luck. Based on attribution theory, we proposed that subordinate SSALR triggers psychological entitlement, inducing subordinate interpersonal deviance. In Study 1 (n = 139) and Study 2 (n = 200) we conducted experiments to investigate the association between subordinate SSALR and subordinate psychological entitlement, and, by extension, interpersonal deviance through psychological entitlement. Empirical results showed that subordinate SSALR positively correlated with subordinate psychological entitlement. Additionally, subordinate psychological entitlement was positively associated with subordinate interpersonal deviance and mediates the relationship between subordinate SSALR and subordinate interpersonal deviance. This study's contribution lies in testing, for the first time, the influence of subordinate SSALR on subordinate interpersonal deviance, which has important theoretical and practical significance.

Who Gets the Credit for Success and the Blame for Failure? On the Links Between Narcissism and Self- and Group-Serving Biases

People often attribute success to themselves and failure to others. Past research indicates that this tendency toward self-serving attributions is pronounced among individuals high in trait narcissism. The aim of this registered report was to re-visit the link between narcissism and self-serving attributions by studying attributions in a group context and by distinguishing between two major dimensions of grandiose narcissism, admiration, and rivalry. We conducted a group study, ( N = 422 participants nested in 54 groups), in which participants of each group were randomly assigned to one of two teams which then engaged in an intergroup competition. In line with our hypotheses, admiration predicted the tendency to take personal credit for success. Contrary to our hypotheses, rivalry did not uniquely predict the tendency to blame others for failure. Instead, admiration uniquely predicted the tendency to attribute negative team outcomes to unfairness of the competing outgroup. Explorative analyses further revealed that both admiration and rivalry were associated with the tendency to attribute negative, rather than positive, team outcomes to chance. Taken together, the findings indicate that narcissism goes along with an increased propensity for self-serving attributions in competitive intergroup settings and that this tendency is mainly driven by the admiration dimension.

Croatian Combat Athletes’ Attribution Patterns for Their Successes and Failures

Successes and failures are integral outcomes to the sport experience. Based on decades of research, how athletes process both outcomes influence their thoughts, emotions, and subsequent achievement endeavors. Attribution theory details three dimensions as to the causes of success and failure. Since the 1980s, attribution theory has found a home in sport psychology literature. However, research across countries requires valid and reliable questionnaires. One such country is Croatia where attribution research is scant. Thus, in a Croatian combat athlete sample, we examined athletes’ attributions for the most and least successful performances via retrospection. Croatian athletes (N = 154) from three combat sports (judo, karate, and taekwondo) who all competed at least once on an international stage completed the Croatian Causal Dimension Scale-II, answered in reference to a specific reason for their best and worst competitive experience. Results showed that the combat sport athletes attributed their most and least successful competitive achievement to psychological reasons more than other reasons (i.e., general preparation and physical preparation). Furthermore, based on a series of two-tailed paired samples t-tests and the nonparametric equivalent, Wilcoxon signed rank test, the participants made, from small to medium in meaningfulness (Cohen’s d), more internal (d = 0.30), stable (d = 0.56), personal (d = 0.30), and external (d = 0.21) controllable attributions for success than for failure (all t-test p-values < 0.01). Our results suggest the athletes made the self-serving attribution bias across both the success and failure competitive events. Our results contribute to better understanding of specific reasons for success and failure and the attribution dimensions explaining the competitive outcomes in competitive combat sport. Specific to Croatian sport, our results provide Croatian combat sport with theory driven research applicable to improving development of Croatian combat athletes on the international stage.

Effect of Attributions on Consumer Response to CSR Efforts with Consumer Trust as the Moderator

This study aims to examine the effect of other and self-serving attributions on the consumer response to corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts with consumer trust as the moderator. This study also examines the differences in perceptions between men and women in assessing the motives of CSR efforts. Data were collected through a questionnaire survey of 122 students at a private university in Bandung. Multiple linear regression, independent simple T-Test, and F test were used for data analysis. Results prove that other-serving attributions have a positive effect on consumer response to CSR efforts. Meanwhile, self-serving attributions have a negative effect on consumer response to CSR efforts. When moderated by consumer trust in the firm, other-serving attributions will increase the consumer response to CSR efforts, whereas self-serving attributions will further reduce the consumer response to CSR efforts. Differences in perceptions are found between men and women regarding the consumer response to CSR efforts. This study implies that the development of CSR efforts needs to consider attributions and consumer trust in the firm.

Testing the TEBOTS model in self-threatening situations: The role of narratives in the face of ostracism and mortality

The TEBOTS model predicts that narratives are sought after more often in times of depletion. The present study aimed at expanding this idea by testing whether engagement with narratives is also intensified under self-threatening conditions. Further, we examined whether narratives can serve coping functions. In a 3(Threat: mortality salience vs. ostracism vs. control condition) × 2(Review of the narrative: positive vs. negative) online experiment (N= 228), we tested whether self-threats and the expectation towards the narrative increase entertainment experiences and facilitate self-serving attributions. The results demonstrated that self-threats and a positive review indeed increased the entertainment experience. Narratives could support coping with anexistentialthreat through enhancing self-serving attributions. The findings are discussed in light of the TEBOTS model and its application in the context of self-threats.

Problems with Premortems: Self-Serving Attribution Bias in a Popular Debiasing Strategy

Before making major decisions, managers engage in prospective hindsight – imagining a future outcome and working backward from that outcome – to anticipate risks. The most popular type of prospective hindsight is the “premortem” – imagining a negative future outcome and identifying reasons why it occurred. Premortems have been broadly endorsed by psychologists and Nobel Prize winners as a debiasing strategy over the past two decades. However, surprisingly little research has investigated the premortem to identify whether or not it actually works. Across three studies that span prediction and planning domains, we find that the types of risks premortems identify are systematically biased. We contrast premortems, preparades, and preflections – imagining bad, good, or undefined outcomes – and find that individuals who engage in a premortem focus far more attention on factors outside of their control than do individuals who engage a preparade or preflection. Further, this effect persists across perspectives: individuals imagining self-relevant and other-relevant outcomes exhibit this bias. Together, our results suggest that although premortems mute overconfidence, they introduce attribution bias, ironically focusing managers’ attention away from the risks most within their control.

When transparent leadership communication motivates employee advocacy: Testing the mediator roles of employee attributions in CEO activism

This study examined employees’ self-serving and genuine attributions of CEO activism as mediators, focusing on how they explain the process through which CEO’s transparent leadership communication impacts employees’ company advocacy and issue advocacy behaviors. With a survey of U.S. full-time employees, results showed that genuine attribution mediated the influence of transparent leadership communication on both advocacy variables. However, self-serving attribution was not identified as a significant mediator. Furthermore, though transparent leadership communication was not significantly associated with self-serving attribution, the latter was positively related to both issue advocacy intention and company advocacy intention. Highlighting the mediating roles of employee attributions, the findings of this study provide an advanced understanding of employee advocacy behaviors as impacted by transparent leadership communication in CEO activism.

The Paradoxical Effects of the Contagion of Service-Oriented Organizational Citizenship Behavior.

PurposePrevious research on the service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) of employees has mainly focused on the examination of its driving factors, and has ignored the consequences that it may bring to the workplace. To bridge this research gap, by shifting the focus to the event observers, a double-edged sword model is constructed in the present study, which helps explain whether, when, and why the service-oriented OCB of coworkers is contagious.MethodologyMulti-wave data of 239 employees from seven service-oriented companies in the hospitality industry in central and southwestern China were used to support the proposed model. The time-lag method and critical incident techniques were introduced during the data collection stage. OLS regression and the bootstrapping method were employed for hypothesis testing.FindingsDrawing on attribution theory, it is argued that the contagion (vs non-contagion) effects of service-oriented OCB work through the dual cognitive pathways (hypocrisy perception vs serving self-efficacy) of observers, which depend on the self-serving attribution of the observers to the behaviors of their coworkers. Specifically, when the self-serving attribution of observers is high, the service-oriented OCB of their coworkers is positively associated with the hypocrisy perception of the observers, which in turn inhibits their own service-oriented OCB. In contrast, when the self-serving attribution of observers is low, the service-oriented OCB of their coworkers is positively associated with the serving self-efficacy of the observers, which in turn promotes their service-oriented OCB. This framework provides a valuable theoretical explanation perspective and empirical evidence for the exploration of how service-oriented OCB affects observers.

Experimentation with Self-Serving Attribution Biases

We study an experimentation problem in a situation where the outcomes depend on the decision-maker’s intrinsic ability and on an external variable. We analyze the mistakes made by individuals who hold inaccurate prior beliefs about their ability. Overconfident individuals take too much credit for their successes and excessively blame external factors if they fail. They are too easily dissatisfied with their environment, which leads them to experiment in variable environments and revise their self-confidence over time. In contrast, underconfident individuals might be trapped in low-quality environments and incur perpetual utility losses. (JEL D11, D83, D91)

In retrospect: The influence of chief executive officers’ historical relative pay on overconfidence

This study proposes that chief executive officers who have received over their tenure a greater sum of total compensation relative to the market’s going rate become overconfident. We posit that this happens because historically overpaid chief executive officers perceive greater self-worth to the firm whereby such self-serving attribution inflates their level of self-confidence. We also identify chief executive officer- and firm-level cues that can influence the relationship between chief executive officers’ historical relative pay and their overconfidence, suggesting that chief executive officers’ perceived self-worth is more pronounced when chief executive officers possess less power and when their firm’s performance has improved upon their historical aspirations. Using a sample of 1185 firms and their chief executive officers during the years 2000–2016, we find empirical support for our predictions. Findings from this study contribute to strategic leadership research by highlighting the important role of executives’ compensation in creating overconfidence.

From Help to Harm: Increases in Status, Perceived Under-Reciprocation, and the Consequences for Access to Strategic Help and Social Undermining Among Female, Racial Minority, and White Male Top Managers

This paper explores how social psychological biases impede the social exchange relations of executives who ascend to high-status corporate leadership positions. We theorize that a combination of self-serving attribution biases among executives who gain status and egocentric biases of their prior benefactors cause a systematic difference in perceptions about the relative importance of that help to the beneficiary’s success. This leads to the perception among prior benefactors that the high-status executives have not adequately reciprocated their help. We then extend this argument to explain why perceptions of under-reciprocation are heightened when the high-status executive is a racial minority or a woman but reduced when the prior benefactor is a racial minority or a woman. The final element of our theoretical framework examines the social consequences of perceived under-reciprocation for corporate leaders. We suggest that the high-status leaders’ access to strategic help is reduced, and they may become the target of social undermining that can damage their broader reputation. The findings support our social psychological perspective on social exchange in corporate leadership, revealing how and why executives who have ascended to high-status positions not only may encounter difficulty obtaining assistance from fellow leaders but also may experience adverse reversals in their social exchange ties such that managers who previously aided them engage in socially harmful behavior toward them.

Positive framing of surface acting: The mitigating effect of self-serving attributions on sense of inauthenticity and emotional exhaustion.

Positive framing of surface acting: The mitigating effect of self-serving attributions on sense of inauthenticity and emotional exhaustion.

Extraversion as a Moderator of the Efficacy of Self-Esteem Maintenance Strategies.

Four experiments explored how extraversion's connection with self-esteem may depend on specific self-enhancement strategies. Participants' self-esteem threatening feedback indicating that they had performed poorly on a vocabulary or emotional intelligence test. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 80) were randomly assigned to either a control condition (no self-enhancement) or a downward social comparison condition. The procedures for Experiments 2 (N = 470) and 3 (N = 514) were similar, adding a self-serving attribution condition (Experiments 2 and 3) and Basking-in-Reflected-Glory (BIRG) condition (Experiment 3). Across the experiments, extraversion was more related to self-esteem under downward social comparison versus other conditions. BIRGing produced higher self-esteem in Experiment 3 across extraversion levels. Experiment 4 (N = 355) focused on downward social comparison versus control, and provided evidence that an increased perception of being similar to the comparison targets may partially explain extraversion's self-esteem link. Theoretical implications concerning both extraversion and self-enhancement are discussed.

Insensitivity to Success and Failure: An Experimental Study of Performance-Based Feedback in Depression.

ObjectiveThis experimental study set out to examine the effects of performance feedback (success or failure) on depressed emotions and self-serving attribution bias in inpatients suffering from major depressive disorder (MDD).MethodsThe study was based on a 2 × 2 experimental design in which 71 MDD patients and 59 healthy controls participated. Both groups (MDD and controls) were randomly assigned to two conditions: success or failure in the performance feedback. A section of Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM) was used as a bogus test of the participants’ reasoning abilities, and the Core Depressive Factor of the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale was used to measure changes in depressed emotion in the subjects following the performance feedback. Participants then rated the accuracy of the SPM as a measure of their reasoning capacity.ResultsThe levels of depressed emotions in patients with MDD did not differ significantly under the two feedback conditions. In contrast, depressed emotion levels increased significantly in healthy individuals in response to failure feedback but did not change in response to success feedback. With regard to the ratings of SPM accuracy, there was no significant difference across the two feedback conditions for depressed patients; however, the accuracy ratings were higher in the success condition than in the failure condition for the controls.ConclusionIndividuals with MDD exhibit blunted emotional reactivity when experiencing new positive or negative social stimuli, supporting the theory of Emotion Context Insensitivity. In addition, self-serving attribution bias does not occur in MDD, which is consistent with the theory of learned helplessness in depression.

자기본위적, 타인본위적, 평등주의적 성패 귀인의 인상형성 효과: 고등학생 · 성인을 중심으로

자기본위적, 타인본위적, 평등주의적 성패 귀인의 인상형성 효과: 고등학생 · 성인을 중심으로

Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Self-Serving Attribution Biases in the Competitive Context of Organized Sport.

This meta-analysis explored the magnitude of self-serving attribution biases for real-world athletic outcomes. A comprehensive literature search identified 69 studies (160 effect sizes; 10,515 athletes) that were eligible for inclusion. Inverse-variance weighted random-effects meta-analysis showed that sport performers have a tendency to attribute personal success to internal factors and personal failure to external factors (k = 40, standardized mean difference [SMD] = 0.62), a tendency to attribute team success to factors within the team and team failure to factors outside the team (k = 23, SMD = 0.63), and a tendency to claim more personal responsibility for team success and less personal responsibility for team failure (k = 4, SMD = 0.28). There was some publication bias and heterogeneity in computed averages. Random effects meta-regression identified sample sex, performance level, and world-region as important moderators of pooled mean effects. These findings provide a foundation for theoretical development of self-serving tendencies in real-world settings.

Do consumers really care about organisational motives behind CSR? The moderating role of trust in the company

PurposeLiterature on corporate social responsibility (CSR) posits that organisational motives underlying corporate social initiatives play a key role in stakeholder responses to these activities. However, individuals do not always make attributions. This study aims to examine when CSR attributions shape consumer reactions to CSR initiatives.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on attribution theory and relevant literature on consumer trust, this study proposes a framework for explaining when attributions shape reactions to CSR initiatives. To test this framework, the study uses data from a random sample of 512 Polish consumers.FindingsThe results show that consumer responses to corporate social initiatives are largely independent of perceived corporate motivation when a consumer has a high trust in the firm. However, a low level of initial trust triggers causal thinking and its effects. Specifically, if a firm lacks credibility, self-serving attributions negatively influence consumer outcomes of social initiatives, but they remain neutral when trust is high. Accordingly, when trust is low, other-serving attributions have greater effects on the initiative outcomes than when trust is high.Originality/valueThe paper provides important insights into CSR literature by showing that initial trust in the company is a salient variable that moderates the link between CSR attributions and consumer responses to these actions. This role of trust has been largely unexplored as past studies considered trust in the firm to be a key outcome of corporate social performance.