Self-Serving Biases in the Attribution of Causality: Fact Or Fiction? Dale T

Psychological Bulletin 1975, Vol. 82, No. 2, 213-225

Self-Serving Biases in the Attribution of Causality: Fact or Fiction? Dale T. Miller and Michael Ross University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

A review of the evidence for and against the proposition that self-serving biases affect attributions of causality indicated that there is little empirical support for the proposition in its most general form. The literature provides some support for the contention that individuals engage in self-enhancing attributions under conditions of success, but only minimal evidence was found to suggest that individuals engage in self-protective attributions under conditions of failure. Moreover, it was proposed that the self-enhancing effect may not be due to motivational distortion, but rather to the tendency of people (a) to expect their behavior to produce success, (b) to discern a closer covariation between behavior and outcomes in the case of increasing success than in the case of constant failure, and (c) to misconstrue the meaning of contingency.

We are prone to alter our perception of causality so we try to explain our behavior in terms that as to protect or enhance our self esteem. We attribute "flatter us" and "put us in a good light." success to our own dispositions and failure to external forces. (Hastorf, Schneider, & Polefka, 1970, This formulation is, of course, quite consistent p. 73) with social psychological theories predicated upon self-esteem maintenance (e.g., balance The principle described in the foregoing theory, dissonance theory). The principle of observation has received considerable atten- ego-biased attribution is also compatible with tion in social psychology. Variously labeled Kelley's (1971) notion of "effective control." ego-defensive, ego-protective, or ego-biased at- Kelley, postulating that it is important for tribution, discussions of the phenomenon can individuals to be able to exercise control over be found in source books (Heider, 1958; their environment, described the relationship Kelley, 1967), text books (Hastorf et al., between the need for effective control and 1970; Weiner, 1973), and innumerable jour- the attribution process as follows: "The at- nal articles (e.g., Beckman, 1973; Schopler & tribution to self of success and the attribution Layton, 1972a, 1972b; Wolosin, Sherman, & to external factors of failure provides for the Till, 1973). continuation of control attempts" (p. 23). The concept of a self-serving attribution process owes its existence, in part at least, to While most discussions of self-serving biases in perception of causality have assumed their Heider's (1958) "naive analysis of action" model. According to Heider, the selection of existence, some authors have questioned the an acceptable causal attribution depends on principle's theoretical and empirical under- two factors: "(1) The reason has to fit the pinnings (Bern, 1972; Kelley, 1971). No- wishes of the person and (2) the datum has where in the extant literature, however, has to be plausibly derived from the reason" (p. the principle's empirical base been critically 172). Thus, assuming it is plausible to do so, examined; and it is to this task that we ad- dress ourselves in succeeding portions of the The writing of this article was supported by a present article. The major thrust of this ex- Canada Council Doctoral Fellowship to Dale Miller amination is to compare the explanatory and a Canada Council Research Grant to Michael Ross. The authors would like to thank Don DiTecco, power of the self-serving attributional analy- Dick Eiser, John Holmes, and Mel Lerner for their sis with that of a nonmotivational, informa- comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. tion-processing analysis. It should be noted Requests for reprints should be sent to Dale T. at this time that the biased-attribution prin- Miller, who is now at the Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario, London N6A 3K7, ciple is double-edged and to receive full sup- Ontario, Canada. port it must be shown that people indulge 213 214 DALE T. MILLER AND MICHAEL ROSS

both in self-protective attributions under con- (Actually there were no pupils and the feed- • ditions of failure and in self-enhancing attri- back was programmed.) Subjects then taught butions under conditions of success.1 their pupils to multiply by 20. On receiving The empirical data that are most often their subsequent work sheets, subjects learned adduced in support of the existence of self- that A had continued to do well and B had serving attributional biases come from two either (a) continued to do badly or (b) im- general traditions. The first is represented by proved to do as well as A. When asked to a series of interpersonal influence studies account for the performances of the two pupils which examined the relationship between in an open-ended format, the teachers tended causal ascription and the success of influence to accept responsibility for improved per- attempts. Studies of the relationship between formance but to blame continued low per- causal ascriptions and outcomes in skill- formance on B himself. oriented performance tasks provide the second While this study is ubiquitously cited as a source of relevant data. demonstration of self-serving biases in attribution, a careful examination of the data and INTERPERSONAL INFLUENCE RESEARCH design fails to bear this out. To begin with, In the experiments described in this section, it is not obvious why a motivational concept subjects are asked to instruct another person of any description needs to be invoked to on how to perform at a particular task. The explain these data. Since all subjects simul- subjects are informed that following their taneously taught a student who performed in intervention, the target person either suc- a consistently successful manner, they knew ceeded or failed at the activity. The subjects' that their behavior did not predictably pro- perceptions of the causal determinants of the duce low performance. With this information target person's performance are then assessed. before them, it would seem only rational to Of the research employing an interpersonal draw the inference that a poor performance influence paradigm, three studies involved a by B was not due solely to their influence. quasi teacher-student relationship. The proto- Further support for a nonmotivational inter- typic experiment in this area (Johnson, pretation comes from a consideration of Feigenbaum, & Weiby, 1964) required edu- Kelley's (1971) "covariation principle." Ac- cational psychology students to teach arith- cording to Kelley's model of attribution, "an metic concepts to fourth-grade boys. Each effect is attributed to the one of its possible teacher explained to two pupils how to multi- causes with which, over time, it covaries" (p. ply by 10 and then saw that Pupil A had 3). Within the present context, therefore, it done well but that Pupil B had done poorly. is conceivable that insofar as the teacher tried 1 The scope of the present review has been limited harder or varied her instructional method to studies which assess causal attributions following after B's initial poor performance, the in- success and failure. The concept of self-protective formational pattern available to her would biases is also integral to a body of literature which focuses on causal attributions for another's accidental show a strong positive covariation between harm doing (Chaikin & Darley, 1973; Shaver, her own behavior and that of the improving 1970a, 1970b; Walster, 1966, 1967). Defensive at- student, but a negative or noncovariance be- tribution, as the phenomenon has been labeled, im- tween her own behavior and that of the con- plies that an individual often distorts his ascriptions of responsibility for an accident in order to protect sistently poor student (Kelley, 1967). By the himself against the threatening possibility that (a) covariation principle, the former would war- a similar accident could happen to him or (b) at rant a self-attribution and the latter would some future time he could himself be responsible not. for someone's suffering. Unlike the defensive attribu- Another feature orthe data which suggests tion literature, the studies described in the current review center on the individual's causal attributions that the subjects' attributions could represent for the consequences of his own behavior. It is logical inferences, and not ego-colored ones, interesting to note that the empirical and theoretical is the finding that subjects did not credit bases of the defensive attribution phenomenon have themselves with the consistently high per- also recently been questioned (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1973; Kelley, 1973; Ross & DiTecco, in press; Vidmar formance of Child A. Child A's performance & Crinklaw, 1974). tended to be attributed to his eagerness, moti- BIASES IN ATTRIBUTION 215 vation, ability, and so on. In other words, high condition. Teachers attributed more cau- subjects took credit for a successful student's sal responsibility to self in this condition than performance only when it was possible to did observers. perceive some correspondence between their To summarize, Beckman's study, like the efforts and the student's performance.2 Johnson et al. (1964) study, reported little In a study reported by Beckman (1970), evidence to indicate a biased-attribution phe- female educational students were again re- nomenon. The fact that teachers credited quired to teach arithmetic concepts and sym- themselves more than observers did in the bols to children. As in the Johnson et al. low-high condition suggests that something (1964) study, teachers instructed two stu- like self-enhancing attribution may be oper- dents at a time, one of whom performed con- ative, but there is certainly no evidence in sistently well over a series of four trials. this study to suggest that teachers engaged in Beckman's design, however, diverged from ego-protective attributions. Even the presence the Johnson et al. study in two important of a self-enhancing attributional bias (as- respects. First, causal attributions were col- sumed from the existence of participant-ob- lected for both ascending and descending server differences) can be questioned, how- performance patterns. Thus, B's performance ever. The major problem of interpretation was varied according to one of three pat- concerns the fact that observers did not actu- terns: (a) low initial and low final perform- ally view the interaction but were provided ance, (b) low initial and high final perform- only with a stylized transcript. (Moreover, ance, or (c) high initial and low final per- the transcript was somewhat misleading since formance. The second manner in which Beck- it incorrectly implied that teachers and stu- man's study differed from the earlier one was dents were in face-to-face contact with each that she included observer subjects. These other). Without the same evidence that was subjects were asked to make causal attribu- available to the teachers, observers may have tions on the basis of written transcripts of been unable to appreciate the contingencies the teacher-student interaction. between the teacher's efforts and the student's The results of this study were generally performance. To return to Kelley's (1971) co- consistent with those reported by Johnson variance model, the attributional patterns of et al. (1964). Teachers tended to accept re- the observers may not have concurred with sponsibility for a student's performance when those of the teachers because the observer the student improved. When the student per- did not have the covariance data that the formed poorly, responsibility was attributed teacher herself had. It should be noted that to various causes external to the teacher, such this is a very difficult problem to resolve. as the child's motivation or situational factors. While participant-observer comparisons seem Interestingly, this was true whether the pat- to represent an effective means of testing for tern for failure was low-low or high-low. the presence of self-serving attributions, one Further evidence relevant to the phenome- can never be certain that participants and non of biased attribution comes from a com- observers are receiving, or attending to, the parison of the causal attributions made by same information in forming causal ascrip- participant and observer subjects. The as- tions (Jones & Nisbett, 1971). sumption underlying the inclusion of observ- A second study by Beckman (1973) im- ers in this experiment was that their attribu- proved upon her earlier one by having ob- tions would not be ego colored and would server subjects view directly the teacher- serve as a baseline against which to compare student interaction. While there were only the ego-biased attributions of the teachers. minor variations in design from Beckman's The only condition in which teachers and first to her second study, the pattern of re- observers differed significantly was the low- sults was strikingly different. Contrary to the first study, participants and observers did not 2 It should be noted that Johnson et al. (1964) did not actually report the subjects' perceptions of differ in their causal attributions for the low- A. Consequently, the present description is based high condition. More importantly, participant solely on those authors' discussions of the data. subjects assumed more personal responsibility 216 DALE T. MILLER AND MICHAEL ROSS

in the high-low condition than in the low- makes it difficult to argue that either self- high condition. Observer judgments showed enhancing or self-protective attributions were no such differentiation. In sum, the second operative. Nevertheless, it is necessary to con- Beckman study not only failed to replicate sider why the high-high condition yielded the apparent ego-enhancing effect in the pre- more self-attribution of responsibility than vious study, but actually found evidence the low-low condition. Schopler and Layton against defensive attribution; that is, teachers (1972b) suggested the possibility that this accepted more responsibility for failure than difference may be due, in part, to the subject's for success (high-low versus low-high).3 expectations: The final study which examined the process From A's point of view his own interventions may of self-serving attributional biases within an simply appear to be more predictive of success than interpersonal influence context (Schopler & failure. Indeed, . . . A's interventions are typically Layton, 1972a) employed a social judgment intended to produce success and may actually be task. Each subject was paired with a partner more predictive of success than failure, (p. 10) who had previously performed either well or Support for this speculation comes from the poorly on the task. During the next set of work of Parducci (1963, 1965, 1968) on the trials, subjects were asked to offer advice to "range-frequency compromise principle." Ex- their partner while he performed the judg- amining a wide range of outcome judgments, ment test. The degree of interaction between Parducci has consistently found that people the adviser and the partner was held constant expect the majority of outcomes to be positive. by limiting the adviser's communication to The work of Marks (1951) and Irwin (1953) the sending of recommendations which the also indicates that individuals tend to under- partner was free to accept or reject. After estimate the probability of a negative event. completing the second set of trials the sub- On the whole, the interpersonal influence ject learned how well his partner had per- studies seem to provide little evidence to sup- formed. The partner's performance was pre- port the assertion that perceptions of causality sented as having remained the same (low- are distorted in the service of self-protection low or high-high) or as having changed (low- or self-enhancement. The only finding to re- high or high-low). ceive considerable empirical support is that The data from this study are consistent people are more likely to perceive that they with some aspects of the results obtained in have influenced a target person's improve- research already described. As in Johnson ment than that they have produced his re- et al. (1964), subjects accepted less responsi- peated failure. As noted earlier, however, this bility for the other's performance when it re- finding need not be interpreted in motivational mained low (low-low) than when it improved terms. The self-enhancing effect is readily (low-high). Unlike in the Johnson et al. interpretable by an information-processing study, however, subjects seemed to assign model which assumes that attributions are themselves a high degree of responsibility in determined by intentions, expectations, and the continuous success condition (high-high). the perceived covariation between behavior Moreover, as in the Beckman (1973) experi- and outcome. ment, subjects accepted considerable responsi- RESEARCH ON ACHIEVEMENT TASKS bility for a decrease in performance (high- low). (Examination of the interaction means Do people take responsibility for their suc- suggests that the high-low condition yielded cesses at a skill task, while attributing their substantially more self-attribution of responsi- failures to external factors such as bad luck, bility than the low-low condition and not other persons, or the difficulty of the task appreciably less than the low-high or high- itself? Much recent research has addressed high conditions). This self-attribution of re- itself directly to this question, though the sponsibility for a decrease in performance range of tasks employed has been relatively 3 narrow. The use of an anagrams task has An unpublished study by Ross, Bierbrauer, and been particularly popular (Davis & Davis, Polly (Note 1), which employed actual school teachers in a similar situation, also failed to find evidence 1972; Feather, 1969; Feather & Simon, for self-serving causal attributions. 197la, 197Ib), although pattern recognition BIASES IN ATTRIBUTION 217

(Chaikin, 1971), number estimation (Fitch, come conditions.4 Subjects played either a 1970), simulation games (Streufert & Streu- cooperative (Experiment 1) or competitive fert, 19.69; Wolosin et al., 1973), and bogus (Experiment 2) game with another person. social perceptiveness tests (Davis & Davis, The outcome of this game, from the subject's 1972; Wortman, Costanzo, & Witt, 1973) point of view, was either successful, unsuc- have also been used. The choice of task is cessful, or neutral. Subjects were then asked limited by the fact that it is necessary to to distribute responsibility for the outcome randomly assign subjects to success and fail- among self, other, and situation. In the co- ure experiences. In the anagrams task this is operative experiment, subjects who received usually accomplished by varying the diffi- failing outcomes attributed slightly, though culty of the anagrams given to the subjects. nonsignificantly, more responsibility to self In the other tasks, subjects are provided with than did subjects who received neutral out- false feedback as to their degree of success comes (32.6% versus 29.8%); the most re- at the activity. sponsibility was assigned to self in the suc- A review of the literature on skill tasks cess condition (38.7%). In th§ competitive does not suggest a straightforward answer to experiment the pattern of means suggests both the question posed above. The predicted suc- avoidance of responsibility for failure and in- cess-failure effects on self-attributions of creased acceptance of responsibility for suc- causality were obtained unambiguously in cess (success: 42.7%; neutral: 35.3%; fail- only a small number of experiments (Streu- ure: 27.6%), though only the success-failure fert & Streufert, 1969; Wolosin et al., 1973; difference was statistically significant.5 Wortman et al., 1973). The remaining studies In summary, there are four studies (Streu- showed that causal attributions were depen- fert & Streufert, 1969; Wolosin et al., 1973; dent on an interaction between success and Wortman et alv 1973) which provide rela- failure and certain situational and personality tively unambiguous support for the hypothesis factors. that attributions of causality are directly af- First, let us consider the research that fected by task performance. In only two of provides the strongest evidence for self-serv- these studies (Wolosin et al., 1973; Experi- ing biases in the attribution of causality. ments 1 and 2), however, is it possible to Streufert and Streufert (1969) required pairs assess the directionality of the effect. One of of subjects to play an international simulation these studies (Experiment 2) suggests that game against another team. Programmed people are inclined to make self-enhancing feedback indicated that subjects either gradu- attributions under conditions of success, but ally improved or became worse at the game. neither provides strong evidence to suggest In these circumstances, subjects attributed that people avoid personal responsibility greater responsibility to their own team for 4 The present authors would like to thank Wolosin success than for failure. Similarly, Wortman et al. for providing the data required to compute the statistical significance of these comparisons. et al. (1973) found that subjects who al- B It is not clear that an intermediate outcome con- legedly succeeded at a social perceptiveness dition completely relieves the interpretational am- task were less likely to attribute their per- biguity which surrounds this phenomenon. For in- stance, how is the intermediate outcome experienced formance to luck than were failing subjects. in the individual's phenomenology? The valence of However, since the Streufert and Streufert neutral outcomes may be located somewhere between and Wortman et al. experiments did not in- success and failure, but it is also possible that individuals may not discriminate between a neutral and clude a condition that received intermediate failing outcome, given a desire for and an expectation outcomes, it is impossible to determine the of success. If the latter were the case, then a com- directionality of this effect. That is, the re- parison of causal ascriptions for failure and neutral outcomes would be insensitive to a potential self- sults may indicate either enhanced responsi- protective bias. A neutral outcome condition is only bility for success or avoidance of responsi- valuable to the extent that the outcomes are evalu- bility for failure, or both. ated as truly neutral in the subject's phenomenology. Thus, while we stress the conceptual value of inter- The two experiments conducted by Wolosin mediate outcome conditions, their empirical validity et al. (1973) did include intermediate out- should be assessed in future research. 218 DALE T. MILLER AND MICHAEL ROSS

under conditions of failure. Moreover, as tive and, hence, yield neither stable personal noted earlier, the self-enhancing effect may nor environmental attributions. reflect the tendency of people to anticipate and work toward success rather than failure. INTERACTIVE VARIABLES It is also possible that people actually per- This section reviews research which has ceive a greater relationship between behavior investigated factors that interact with attribu- and positive outcomes that between behavior tions of causality following success or failure and negative outcomes. Support for this alter- at achievement tasks. native explanation may be derived from two studies which examined adults' understanding Performance Expectancies of the concept of correlation. Smedslund Feather and his colleagues (Feather, 1969; (1963) required nursing students to estimate Feather & Simon, 197la, 197Ib) have ex- the relation between a symptom (s) and a amined the effect of expectations for success diagnosis (d). The subjects based their deci- and failure on subjects' attributions of cau- sions on data which indicated varying fre- sality for low and high levels of performance. quencies of the following categories: s present, Expectations of success either were based on d present; s absent, d absent; s present, d subjects' own estimates of their anagram- absent; s absent, d present. Smedslund found solving ability (Feather, 1969) or manipu- that the subjects' judgments of a relationship lated by providing subjects with easy or diffi- depended almost solely on the frequency of cult practice problems (Feather & Simon, the s present, d present category. The fre- 1971 a, 1971b). This research suggests that quency and distribution of the remaining an unexpected outcome—whether it be suc- categories were virtually ignored. cess or failure—is more likely to be attrib- In a similar vein, Jenkins and Ward (196S) uted to external factors than an expected out- asked subjects to judge the degree of con- come. Gilmor and Minton (1974) have repli- tingency between their responses and put- cated these results using an experimental comes at a task which required subjects to paradigm similar to that of Feather (1969). guess. which of two possible responses was Additional relevant evidence comes from correct. The major finding paralleled that Fitch's (1970) experiment in which chronic, obtained by Smedslund (1963): The amount low self-esteem subjects (who may anticipate of judged control was determined by the fre- failure at most tasks) were found to accept quency of correct guesses, rather than the more -responsibility for failure than high self- actual programmed contingency between out- esteem subjects at a task in which they were comes and responses. required to estimate the number of dots on These data indicate that adults do not a briefly exposed slide. In the Fitch study, understand the meaning of statistical con- however, low self-esteem subjects did not tingency. As Jenkins and Ward observed, differ from high self-esteem subjects in their "The baseline against which subjects assess causal attributions for success. their performance appears to be one of zero The research conducted by Feather (1969) occurrence of the event in interest in the suggests that expectations of performance absence of control" (1965, p. 17). Estimates level are more important determinants of at- of amount of control are thus based on the tributions of causality than the actual level frequency of positive instances, with the fre- of performance attained. Feather interpreted quency of negative instances being uninforma- this effect in terms of balance theory (Heider, 1958). A balance theory formulation assumes tive. The attributional results obtained on that positive outcomes (success) will be at- skill tasks are consistent with this primitive tributed to self when there is positive self- notion of contingency. Positive instances of evaluation with respect to the performance the co-occurrence of the response and the de- task (high expectations of success), but will sired outcome (i.e., success) induce percep- be attributed to external factors when there tions of self-control. Negative instances (i.e., is negative evaluation (low expectation of failure), on the other hand, are less informa- success). Similarly, with failure, negative self- BIASES IN ATTRIBUTION 219 evaluations produce internal attributions, and Internal Versus External Locus of Control positive self-evaluations yield external attri- One individual difference dimension which butions. might be expected to influence the nature of A recent experiment by McMahan (1973) causal attributions is internal-external con- suggests a refinement of the balance theory trol of reinforcement. Individuals occupying analysis. McMahon found that expected suc- the internal end of this dimension perceive cess or failure tended to be attributed to abil- reinforcement as contingent upon their be- ity, a relatively stable dispositional property havior, whereas externals perceive reinforce- of the person. On the other hand, unexpected ment as more dependent on external factors performance increased attributions to more such as luck (Lefcourt, 19.66; Rotter, 1966). variable causes such as luck and effort. The Of major interest here is the suggestion that important finding here is that effort, an in- some individuals who obtain external scores ternal cause, may be used to account for on the internal-external dimension may have unexpected success or failure. The reliability developed this orientation as a defense since of this result is in doubt, however, as it was it enables them to maintain self-esteem by not obtained in a Feather and Simon (1971b) attributing failures to events beyond their study which also assessed attributions to ef- control (Rotter, 1966). fort. Nevertheless, it seems likely that the If an external orientation does serve a de- stability dimension is independent of the in- fensive function, it might be expected that ternal-external dimension and may prove to externals would be more likely than internals be more critical in determining causal infer- to attribute failure to external factors. Con- ences that the latter (Feather & Simon, versely, the causal ascriptions of internals and 1971a, 1971b; Weiner, Frieze, Kukla, Reed, externals for a successful performance should Rest, and Rosenbaum, 1971). be similar, since success is presumably nonthreatening. This hypothesis was tested in Simple-Complex Conceptual Structures two studies conducted by Davis and Davis An information-processing theory proposed (1972). In the first study, highly internal and by Schroder, Driver, and Streufert (1967) highly external subjects were induced to per- suggests that people differ in terms of the form either well or poorly on an anagrams test degree of complexity they perceive in their and were then asked to indicate the extent to environment. For example, the attitudes of which their scores were based on skill or luck. simple subjects tend to be based on unidimen- The second study manipulated subjects' per- sional interpersonal perceptions, while com- formance at a "social sensitivity test" and plex subjects tend to perceive others in a required subjects to evaluate the degree to more multidimensional fashion (Streufert & which their scores were determined by ability, Streufert, 1969). Streufert and Streufert have effort, luck, or situational factors. Employing suggested that this complexity dimension may Heider's (1958) classification system, ability have important implications for attributions and effort were classified as internal causes, of causality. Specifically, complex persons and luck and situational factors as external should be less likely than simple individuals causes. to assign responsibility to a single causal The results provide some support for inter- factor for either a successful or failing per- preting an external orientation as defensive. formance. Thus, complex individuals should In both studies externals were more likely show less of a tendency to attribute failure than internals to attribute failure to bad luck solely to external factors and to attribute suc- rather than to lack of ability. No differences cess solely to internal factors than should occurred between the two groups under suc- simple individuals. In the Streufert and Streu- cess conditions. However, these results were fert study, both complex and simple subjects not replicated by Gilmor and Minton (1974) tended to accept^ more responsibility for suc- and Lefcourt (Note 2), who also used an cess than failure. However, as expected, this anagrams test. Gilmor and Minton obtained effect was more pronounced for simple than an internal-external locus of control by per- for complex subjects. formance interaction, indicating that internals 220 DALE T. MILLER AND MICHAEL ROSS

accepted more responsibility for success than as failing. The results indicated that males did externals; a nonsignificant trend in the high in achievement motivation were more opposite direction was found under failure. likely to attribute success to ability and fail- (It should be noted that unlike the Davis and ure to lack of effort than males low in achieve- Davis (1972) study, a successful-failure out- ment motivation. come was determined by the subject's actual In summary, the study of personality vari- performance at the task). Finally, Lefcourt ables indicates that there are individual dif- (Note 2) found that externals accepted less ferences in the tendency to accept responsi- responsibility for both success and failure bility for success and failure. It is possible than did internals in a design in which all that individual differences of this nature re- subjects were induced to both succeed and flect motivationally induced distortions of fail on repeated administrations of an ana- causality, but it is also possible that these dif- grams test. ferences simply reflect differential perform- The contradictory nature of these results ance expectancies (cf. Feather, 1969). For indicates that the relationship between in- example, people high in achievement motiva- ternal-external locus of control and attribution may be motivated to distort their per- tions of causality for success and failure re- ceptions of causality in a manner which en- mains to be determined. Procedural differ- hances their feelings of mastery and achieve- ences between the studies must be examined ment, or, alternatively, their achievement- and further research conducted if the incon- oriented dispositions may render them more sistencies are to be explained. At the present likely to expect success than people low in time, research on the internal-external dimen- achievement motivation. Indirect support for sion does not provide strong evidence for this latter possibility is provided by Kukla self-serving biases in causal attributions. (1972), who found that following either success or failure at a task, subjects high in Achievement Motivation achievement motivation rated themselves as Weiner and Kukla (1970) have investi- higher in ability than did subjects in the low- gated the relation of achievement motivation motivation group. to perceptions of causality. In one study, It is also possible that individual differ- these authors compared subjects above and ences in causal attribution stem from a differ- below the median in achievement motivation ential concern with the covariation between in their causal ascriptions for hypothetical behavior and the consequences of behavior. successes and failures. The data indicated that To stay with the dimension of achievement the tendency to make internal attributions motivation, people high in achievement moti- for success was greater for the high- than vation may very well be more sensitive to for the low-achievement-oriented males. How- the covariation between behavior and conse- ever, these two groups did not differ signifi- quences than people scoring low on this cantly in their causal attributions for failure, dimension, and this may account for the and none of the differences between female tendency of the former to assume more credit subjects reached statistical significance. for success relative to failure than do the In a second study, Weiner and Kukla had latter. male subjects perform a skill task which re- In any event, there appear to be individual quired them to guess the next number in a differences in the attribution of causality, sequence. At the end of the task, subjects and future research should attempt to assess were asked to estimate how many of their the relative explanatory values of motiva- total number of correct responses were due tional and nonmotivational interpretations of to skill rather than lucky guessing and how these differences. much effort they had expended at the task. For the purpose of statistical analyses, sub- COMPARISONS WITH OTHERS jects who scored in the upper one third of Attributions of causality for success and the outcome distribution were defined as suc- failure at skill tasks have rarely been exam- cessful, and subjects in the lower one third ined in a social context. This is surprising BIASES IN ATTRIBUTION 221 because it would seem that a social situation ner, and in the cooperative set (Wolosin et al., is well suited for determining whether biases 1973, Experiment 1) both participants re- and misperceptions do occur. For example, do ceived the same outcome. In contrast, Feather we attribute more causality to ourselves for and Simon (1971a) had subjects work inde- a successful performance at a task than we pendently at a task in which their outcomes would to another person who performed were in no way related. Second, whereas equally well? Alternatively, do we attribute Feather and Simon (1971a) and Wortman more responsibility for failure to another et al. (1973) assessed causal attributions on person than to self, given equal performance bipolar scales, the other studies required sub- levels? Once again, however, any confidence jects to assign percentages of responsibility to that we place in interpersonal comparisons as self (or own team), other (or opposing team), a basis for assessing motivational biases must and situation (or causes other than the de- be tempered by the recognition that the co- cisions made by the other team), with the variation between behavior and outcomes is sum of the three percentages always equaling likely to be considerably more salient for self 100%. Thus, the Streufert and Streufert and than for others. Wolosin et al. procedures seem likely to make Feather and Simon (1971a) devised a situ- interpersonal comparisons of task skill ex- ation in which two subjects worked simul- tremely salient. As a result, these latter taneously but independently at anagrams studies might be expected to provide a par- tests. Comparisons of attributions made to ticularly facilitative setting for self-serving self and another showed that the other's suc- distortions in attributions of causality. cess was more often attributed to ability than The results of these studies do yield some was one's own success, while the other's fail- support for a biased attribution process. ure was more often attributed to such ex- Streufert and Streufert (1969) found that ternal factors as bad luck than was one's own approximately equal responsibility was as- failure. These results are directly opposite to signed to own and other team for failure by those predicted by a self-enhancement hy- one's own team. When one's own team suc- pothesis. ceeded, however, more causality was attrib- Wortman et al. (1973) obtained results uted to it and less to the decisions of the consistent with those of Feather and Simon other team. Wolosin et al. (1973) also found (1971a). In their experiment, subjects worked that subjects attributed greater responsibility independently at a social perceptiveness test, to themselves for success than to their part- at the end of which they were asked to make ners. This was true in both the competitive causal inferences for their own performance and cooperative games. In the failure condi- and that of a highly successful other. Sub- tion, Wolosin et al. expected subjects in the jects indicated that their own performance cooperative game to attribute responsibility was due more to luck and less to ability than to their partner. In the competitive game, the other's performance. Further evidence however, it was expected that subjects would against the presence of self-serving biases blame the situation since attributing responsi- comes from the fact that subjects' own per- bility to the partner would imply that he was formance levels did not affect their causal better at the game. Neither of these predic- interpretation of the others' (always success- tions was strongly substantiated. In both the ful) performance. cooperative and competitive games, failure The Feather and Simon (1971a) and Wort- produced approximately equal attributions of man et al. (1973) studies differed from other responsibility to self and others—a finding relevant research (Streufert & Streufert, consistent with Streufert and Streufert's re- 1969; Wolosin et al., 1973) in two important sults. In the competitive game, failure did respects. Most importantly, the outcomes of cause subjects to attribute more responsibility the participants in these latter studies were to the situation than to self or another. How- interdependent. In the competitive set (Streu- ever, between-group comparisons suggest that fert & Streufert, 1969; Wolosin et al., 1973, subjects who received failing outcomes did Experiment 2) there could only be one win- not attribute any more responsibility to the 222 DALE T. MILLER AND MICHAEL ROSS situation than did subjects who received neu- The Chaikin experiment, involving only a tral outcomes. Moreover, Streufert and Streu- single subject playing a skill game at each fert reported no tendency for failing subjects session, failed to obtain significant effects for to increase situational attributions. In fact, attributions of causality to self following de- Streufert and Streufert's successful subjects scending versus ascending success at the task. attributed significantly more responsibility This contrasts sharply with the very strong to causes external to the decisions made by results obtained by Streufert and Streufert either team than did failing subjects^ for the same patterns of performance in a In summary, studies in which the outcomes competitive, interdependent game situation. of the participants were independent yielded Why might interdependence lead to an in- no indication of self-serving biases in inter- creased tendency for individuals to take credit personal attributions (Feather & Simon, for success? One possibility is that interde- 1971a; Wortman et al., 1973). Three studies pendence increases the subject's motivation to in which the outcomes of the participants do well, to perform better than the other were directly related did appear to obtain participant. A strong desire for success in self-enhancing attributions because success at combination with a high degree of effort would the task tended to be self-attributed. On the be expected to result in individuals perceiving other hand, subjects showed no strong tend- themselves as personally responsible for suc- ency to deny responsibility for failure by cess. In contrast, success achieved under con- attributing it to the other person (s) or the ditions of lower levels of effort may be at- situation. Moreover, to return to an earlier tributed, in part, to external factors such as point, even self-attribution of success need good luck. not be due to motivational biases. A person is likely to be more aware of the covariation Is the Failure to Obtain Self-Protective Biases between his own responses and the resultant due to the Nature of the Experimental Tasks? outcomes than he is of the relation between As the present review has shown, there is the outcomes and behavior of the other par- very little experimental evidence to support ticipant (s). Hence, he may be expected to the hypothesis that people in general attempt attribute greater responsibility to himself for to avoid blame for negative outcomes by at- success. Constant failure may be less likely tributing responsibility to external factors. to be self-attributed because the response- Possibly, the tasks employed in these studies outcome covariation may be less apparent. failed to arouse the level of ego involvement Changes in responding are not associated with necessary to elicit self-protective reactions. variation in outcomes when subjects continu- Most of the experimental activities were ally fail at the task (Kelley, 1967; Wolosin relatively trivial (anagrams, guessing games, et al., 1973). etc.), and failure could not be expected to Another interesting finding is that self- provide a telling blow to the ego. On the attributions of causality seem to be affected other hand, almost any task may appear im- by the degree of interdependence of out- portant by virtue of the fact that it is em- comes. Since independent and interdependent ployed in an experimental setting. As studies situations have not been directly contrasted of evaluation apprehension (Rosenberg, 1969) experimentally, any conclusions are specula- have indicated, experimental subjects want tive at present. A comparison of the Feather very much to appear intelligent in the eyes and Simon (1971a) study with those con- of the experimenter. ducted by Streufert and Streufert (1969) and Furthermore, research by Lerner (1970) Wolosin et al. (1973) does suggest, however, indicates that people often do, in fact, accept that increasing the interdependence of out- responsibility for nontrivial negative conse- comes increases the likelihood that subjects quences. Pairs of subjects reported to the will assign more responsibility to themselves laboratory for an experiment in which one of for successful outcomes. A comparison of the them would receive- strong electric shock, Chaikin (1971) and Streufert and Streufert while the other would be in a control condi- studies lends credence to this interpretation. tion. The decision as to who would receive BIASES IN ATTRIBUTION 223 shock was determined by which of two slips success (Archibald, 1974; Diggory, 196.6; of paper the first subject selected in a random Diggory, Klein, & Cohen, 1964; Feather, draw. The interesting conditions here were: 1963). One interpretation of this finding is (a) Subject A drew a slip assigning Subject that people who expect failure are inclined to B to the shock and (b) Subject B drew a expend low degrees of effort so that they will slip assigning himself to the shock. Subject A be able to legitimately locate causality for was later asked to assign responsibility for their anticipated failure in sources which are his own and B's fate to either self, other, or nonthreatening to their self-esteem (i.e., per- the experimenter. When Subject A drew the sonal effort). slip, we might have expected him to assign Once again, however, a very different proc- responsibility to the experimenter and hence ess may underlie this phenomenon. In the avoid blame for committing the other subject face of anticipated failure, individuals may to shock. Moreover, this would be quite a simply feel that it does not make sense to rational attribution. Was it not the experi- try hard because their efforts will likely go menter who determined that one of the sub- for nought. Support for the argument that dif- jects would receive shock and arranged the ferences in expended effort under failure and draw to designate which one it would be? success conditions reflect rational decision Nevertheless, approximately 47% of the sub- making comes from a study (Weiner, Heck- jects who drew the slip committing B to hausen, Meyer, & Cook, 1972) in which sub- shock accepted responsibility for their own jects were asked to indicate "the best per- and B's fate, as compared to less than 10% formance strategy" in tasks of varying diffi- when the shock victim drew the slip himself. culty. When there was little chance of suc- Thus, subjects do not seem to be strongly cess, subjects indicated that effort was of motivated to deny responsibility for the little importance and advocated a "low-effort" other's fate. An examination of the "trans- strategy. As the likelihood of success in- gression-compliance" literature also indicates creased, the perceived importance of effort that people are very willing, perhaps too will- generally increased, although under high ex- ing, to accept responsibility for another per- pectations of success, effort also ceased to be son's negative fate (Carlsmith & Gross, 1969; regarded as an important factor. Darlington & Macker, 1966; Freedman, Wal- lington, & Bless, 1967; Rawlings, 1968; SELF-ENHANCING BIASES IN THE Regan, 1971; Wallace & Sadalla, 1966). ATTRIBUTION PROCESS It seems likely, therefore, that the trivial- While evidence for self-protective attribu- ness of the tasks employed in many of the tional biases is minimal, there are at least experimental investigations is not responsible some data consistent with a self-enhancement for the preponderance of negative results. position. In a number of the experiments re- Nevertheless, this possibility should be ex- viewed above, successful outcomes led to plored in future research in which the poten- greater self-attribution of performance than tial seriousness of failure for the subject is either failing or neutral outcomes. As noted varied. In doing so, however, it will be im- earlier, the self-enhancement effect need not portant to control subjects' expectations of be explained in motivational terms. Conceiv- success in the different achievement situations ably, subjects are simply more likely to per- (cf. Feather, 1969). ceive a relationship between their behavior Finally, it should be pointed out that there and its outcome when they succeed than when is some evidence to suggest that people are they fail. This may occur for any or all of the motivated to avoid feelings of responsibility following reasons: (a) People are more likely for failure. Research examining the relation- to accept responsibility for expected outcomes ship between performance expectations and ex- than for unexpected outcomes (Feather, 1969; pended effort, for example, has consistently Feather & Simon, 1971a, 1971b), and, in found that people who are led to expect fail- general, people intend and expect success not ure on a particular task are inclined to expend failure (Parducci, 1963, 1965, 1968); (b) a less effort on that task than people expecting covariation between behavior and outcome is 224 DALE T. MILLER AND MICHAEL ROSS

more likely to be perceived under conditions Chaikin, A. J. The effects of four outcome schedules of increasing success than under conditions of on persistence, liking for the task, and attributions of causality. Journal of Personality, 1971, 39, 512- constant failure, where changes in behavior 526. are not perceived to be associated with Chaikin, A. L., & Darley, J. M. Victim or perpetra- changes in .outcome; and (c) an erroneous tor? Defensive attribution of responsibility and the conception of contingency leads people to as- need for order and justice. Journal of Personality sociate control primarily with the occurrence and Social Psychology, 1973, 25, 268-275. Darlington, R. B., & Macker, C. E. Displacement of of the desired outcome (cf. Jenkins & Ward, guilt-produced altruistic behavior. Journal of Per- 1965; Smedslund, 1963). sonality and Social Psychology, 1966, 4, 442-443. In conclusion, existing data seem readily Davis, W. L., & Davis, D. E. Internal-external con^ interpreted in information-processing terms. trol and attribution of responsibility for success and failure. Journal of Personality, 1972, 40, 123- It would be clearly premature, however, to 136. deny the possibility of self-serving causal at- Diggory, J. S. Self-evaluation: Concepts and studies. tributions. An examination of the literature on New York: Wiley, 1966. perceptual defense may be instructive in this Diggory, J. C., Klein, S. J., & Cohen, M. Muscle- action potentials and estimated probability of suc- regard. Early, methodologically flawed re- cess. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1964, search supported the perceptual defense hy- (55,449-455. pothesis; later evidence contradicted the hy- Dixon, N. F. Subliminal perception: The nature of pothesis on logical and empirical grounds and a controversy. London: McGraw-Hill, 1971. supported a rational, decision-making ex- Erdelyi, M. H. A new look at the new look: Per- ceptual defense and vigilance. Psychological Re- planation. The most recent evidence, however, view, 1974, 81, 1-25. has once again supported the perceptual de- Feather, N. T. Persistence at a difficult task with fense hypothesis (Dixon, 1971;. Erdelyi, an alternative task of intermediate difficulty. Jour- 1974). It is our belief that the self-serving nal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1963, 66, 604-609. bias hypothesis may suffer a similar fate, for Feather, N. T. Attribution of responsibility and it is too intuitively appealing to be summarily valence of success and failure in relation to initial abandoned. The challenge remains for future confidence and task performance. Journal of Per- researchers to assess the relative explanatory sonality and Social Psychology, 1969, 13, 129-144. Feather, N. T., & Simon, J. G. 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