Self-Esteem and Impression Management Explanations for Self-Serving Biases

Individuals from diverse societies and cultures have been found to take credit for successful outcomes and deny responsibility for failures (Tedeschi, Lindskold, & Rosenfeld, 1985). The results of previous research suggest that both self-esteem and impression management processes may underlie the occurrence of these self-serving attributions. The present experiment assessed the mediating role of these alternative theoretical explanations for the self-serving bias. The subjects, American female students, succeeded or failed on a word association task and had their attributions assessed on a bogus lie-detector apparatus or on paper-and-pencil scales. This assessment was under conditions of low, medium, or high audience evaluation. An analysis of both primary and ancillary dependent measures generally supported the position of self-esteem theory.