Abstract
A bstract Do causal attributions serve the need to protect and / or enhance self‐esteem? In a recent review, Miller and Ross (1975) proposed that there is evidence for self‐serving effect in the attribution of success but not in the attribution of failure; and that this effect reflects biases in information‐processing rather than self‐esteem maintenance. The present review indicated that self‐serving effects for both success and failure are obtained in most but not all experimental paradigms. Processes which may suppress or even reverse the self‐serving effect were discussed. Most important, the examination of research in which self‐serving effects are obtained suggested that these attributions are better understood in motivational than in information‐processing terms.
Keywords
AttributionPsychologySocial psychologyMillerAttribution biasSelf-esteemInformation processingCognitive psychology
Affiliated Institutions
Related Publications
Self-serving biases in the attribution of causality: Fact or fiction?
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 propo...
Self-Serving Attributions: The Role of Physiological Arousal
Asymmetrical attributions for success and failure are an established empirical fact, but the origins of this asymmetry are still the source of some debate. The present research ...
Depression and causal attributions for success and failure.
The present study investigated the effects of depression on causal attributions for success and failure. Specifically, female university students were separated into depressed a...
Naive psychology and the attributional model of achievement
A bstract Open‐ended explanations for the success and failure outcomes of others were obtained from ( N = 226) undergraduates. Only 23% of the 2,495 explanations generated by th...
Self‐esteem and responses to success and failure: Subsequent performance and intrinsic motivation
Abstract A model is proposed in which the goal of people with high self‐esteem is to cultivate personal strengths in order to excel, whereas the goal of people with low self‐est...
Publication Info
- Year
- 1979
- Type
- article
- Volume
- 47
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 245-287
- Citations
- 1132
- Access
- Closed
External Links
Social Impact
Altmetric
PlumX Metrics
Social media, news, blog, policy document mentions
Citation Metrics
1132
OpenAlex
Cite This
Miron Zuckerman
(1979).
Attribution of success and failure revisited, or: The motivational bias is alive and well in attribution theory.
Journal of Personality
, 47
(2)
, 245-287.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.1979.tb00202.x
Identifiers
- DOI
- 10.1111/j.1467-6494.1979.tb00202.x