Can someone help me

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MODULE

4 ❖

Self-Serving Bias

Most of us have a good reputation with ourselves. In studies of self-esteem, even low-scoring people respond in the midrange of possible scores. (A low-self-esteem person responds to statements such as “I have good ideas” with a qualifying adjective, such as “some- what” or “sometimes.”) In a study of self-esteem across 53 nations, the average self-esteem score was above the midpoint in every single country (Schmitt & Allik, 2005). One of social psychology’s most provocative yet firmly established conclusions concerns the potency of self-serving bias.

EXPLAINING POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EVENTS Many dozens of experiments have found that people accept credit when told they have succeeded. They attribute the success to their ability and effort, but they attribute failure to external factors such as bad luck or the problem’s inherent “impossibility” (Campbell & Sedikides, 1999). Similarly, in explaining their victories, athletes commonly credit them- selves, but they attribute losses to something else: bad breaks, bad ref- eree calls, or the other team’s super effort or dirty play (Grove & others, 1991; Lalonde, 1992; Mullen & Riordan, 1988). And how much responsi- bility do you suppose car drivers tend to accept for their accidents? On insurance forms, drivers have described their accidents in words such as these: “An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my car, and van- ished”; “As I reached an intersection, a hedge sprang up, obscuring my vision, and I did not see the other car”; “A pedestrian hit me and went under my car” (Toronto News, 1977).

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36 PART TWO SOCIAL THINKING

Self-serving explanations contribute to marital discord, worker dis- satisfaction, and bargaining impasses (Kruger & Gilovich, 1999). Small wonder that divorced people usually blame their partner for the breakup (Gray & Silver, 1990), or that managers often blame poor performance on workers’ lack of ability or effort (Imai, 1994; Rice, 1985). (Workers are more likely to blame something external—inadequate supplies, excessive workload, difficult co-workers, ambiguous assignments.) Small wonder, too, that people evaluate pay raises as fairer when they receive a bigger raise than most of their co-workers (Diekmann & others, 1997). We help maintain our positive self-images by associating ourselves with success and distancing ourselves from failure. For example, “I got an A on my econ test” versus “The prof gave me a C on my history exam.” Blaming failure or rejection on something external, even anoth- er’s prejudice, is less depressing than seeing oneself as undeserving (Major & others, 2003). We will, however, acknowledge our distant past failings—those by our “former” self, note Anne Wilson and Michael Ross (2001). Describing their old precollege selves, their University of Waterloo students offered nearly as many negative as positive statements. When describing their present selves, they offered three times more positive statements. “I’ve learned and grown, and I’m a better person today,” most people surmise. Chumps yesterday, champs today. Ironically, we are even biased against seeing our own bias. People claim they avoid self-serving bias themselves, but readily acknowledge that others commit this bias (Pronin & others, 2002). This “bias blind spot” can have serious consequences during conflicts. If you’re negotiat- ing with your roommate over who does household chores and you believe your roommate has a biased view of the situation, you’re much more likely to become angry (Pronin & Ross, 2006). We tend to see our- selves as objective and everyone else as biased.

CAN WE ALL BE BETTER THAN AVERAGE? Self-serving bias also appears when people compare themselves with oth- ers. If the sixth-century b.c. Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu was right that “at no time in the world will a man who is sane over-reach himself, over-spend himself, over-rate himself,” then most of us are a little insane. For on subjec- tive, socially desirable, and common dimensions, most people see themselves as better than the average person. Compared with people in general, most people see themselves as more ethical, more competent at their job, friend- lier, more intelligent, better looking, less prejudiced, healthier, and even more insightful and less biased in their self-assessments. (See “Focus On: Self-Serving Bias—How Do I Love Me? Let Me Count the Ways.”) Every community, it seems, is like Garrison Keillor’s fictional Lake Wobegon, where “all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking,

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and all the children are above average.” Many people believe that they will become even more above average in the future—if I’m good now, I will be even better soon, they seem to think (Kanten & Teigen, 2008). One of Freud’s favorite jokes was the husband who told his wife, “If one of us should die, I think I would go live in Paris.” Michael Ross and Fiore Sicoly (1979) observed a marital version of self-serving bias. They found that young married Canadians usually believed they took more responsibility for such activities as cleaning the house and caring for the children than their spouses credited them for. In a more recent study of 265 U.S. married couples with children, hus- bands estimated they did 42 percent of the housework. The wives esti- mated their husbands did 33 percent. When researchers tracked actual housework (by sampling participants’ activity at random times using beepers), they found husbands actually carrying 39 percent of the domes- tic workload (Lee & Waite, 2005). The general rule: Group members’ estimates of how much they contribute to a joint task typically sum to more than 100 percent (Savitsky & others, 2005).

Focus On: Self-Serving Bias—How Do I Love Me? Let Me Count the Ways “The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background,” notes columnist Dave Barry (1998), “is that deep down inside, we all believe that we are above average drivers.” We also believe we are above average on most any other subjective and desirable trait. Among the many faces of self-serving bias are these:

• Ethics. Most business people see themselves as more ethical than the average business person (Baumhart, 1968; Brenner & Molander, 1977). One national survey asked, “How would you rate your own morals and values on a scale from 1 to 100 (100 being per- fect)?” Fifty percent of people rated themselves 90 or above; only 11 percent said 74 or less (Lovett, 1997).

• Professional competence. In one survey, 90 percent of business managers rated their performance as superior to their average peer (French, 1968). In Australia, 86 percent of people rated their job performance as above average, 1 percent as below average (Headey & Wearing, 1987). Most surgeons believe their patients’ mortality rate to be lower than average (Gawande, 2002).

• Virtues. In the Netherlands, most high school students rated them- selves as more honest, persistent, original, friendly, and reliable than the average high school student (Hoorens, 1993, 1995).

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38 PART TWO SOCIAL THINKING

My wife and I used to pitch our laundry at the foot of our bedroom clothes hamper. In the morning, one of us would put it in. When she suggested that I take more responsibility for this, I thought, “Huh? I already do it 75 percent of the time.” So I asked her how often she thought she picked up the clothes. “Oh,” she replied, “about 75 percent of the time.” But what if you had to estimate how often you performed rare house- hold chores, like cleaning the oven? Here, you’re likely to say that you do

• Intelligence. Most people perceive themselves as more intelligent, better looking, and much less prejudiced than their average peer (Public Opinion, 1984; Wylie, 1979). When someone outperforms them, people tend to think of the other as a genius (Lassiter & Munhall, 2001).

• Tolerance. In a 1997 Gallup poll, only 14 percent of White Ameri- cans rated their prejudice against Blacks as 5 or higher on a 0 to 10 scale. Yet Whites perceived high prejudice (5 or above) among 44 percent of other Whites.

• Parental support. Most adults believe they support their aging parents more than do their siblings (Lerner & others, 1991).

• Health. Los Angeles residents view themselves as healthier than most of their neighbors, and most college students believe they will outlive their actuarially predicted age of death by about 10 years (Larwood, 1978; C. R. Snyder, 1978).

• Insight. Others’ public words and deeds reveal their natures, we presume. Our private thoughts do the same. Thus, most of us believe we know and understand others better than they know and understand us. We also believe we know ourselves better than others know themselves (Pronin & others, 2001).

• Attractiveness. Is it your experience, as it is mine, that most pho- tos of you seem not to do you justice? One experiment showed people a lineup of faces—one their own, the others being their face morphed into those of less and more attractive faces (Epley & Whitchurch, 2008). When asked which was their actual face, people tended to identify an attractively enhanced version of their face.

• Driving. Most drivers—even most drivers who have been hospi- talized for accidents—believe themselves to be safer and more skilled than the average driver (Guerin, 1994; McKenna & Myers, 1997; Svenson, 1981). Dave Barry was right.

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this less than 50 percent of the time (Kruger & Savitsky, 2009). Apparently this occurs because we have more knowledge about our behavior than about someone else’s, and we assume that other people’s behavior will be less extreme than ours (Kruger & others, 2008; Moore & Small, 2007). If you can remember cleaning an oven only a few times, you might assume you are unusual and that your partner must do this more often. Subjective qualities give us leeway in constructing our own defini- tions of success (Dunning & others, 1989, 1991). Rating my “athletic abil- ity,” I ponder my basketball play, not the agonizing weeks I spent as a Little League baseball player hiding in right field. Assessing my “leader- ship ability,” I conjure up an image of a great leader whose style is similar to mine. By defining ambiguous criteria in our own terms, each of us can see ourselves as relatively successful. In one College Entrance Examination Board survey of 829,000 high school seniors, none rated themselves below average in “ability to get along with others” (a subjec- tive, desirable trait), 60 percent rated themselves in the top 10 percent, and 25 percent saw themselves among the top 1 percent! Researchers have wondered: Do people really believe their above- average self-estimates? Is their self-serving bias partly a function of how the questions are phrased (Krizan & Suls, 2008)? When Elanor Williams and Thomas Gilovich (2008) had people bet real money when estimating their relative performance on tests, they found that, yes, “people truly believe their self-enhancing self-assessments.”

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40 PART TWO SOCIAL THINKING

UNREALISTIC OPTIMISM Optimism predisposes a positive approach to life. “The optimist,” notes H. Jackson Brown (1990, p. 79), “goes to the window every morning and says, ‘Good morning, God.’ The pessimist goes to the window and says, ‘good God, morning.’” Studies of more than 90,000 people across 22 cultures reveal that most humans are more disposed to optimism than pessimism (Fischer & Chalmers, 2008). Indeed, many of us have what researcher Neil Weinstein (1980, 1982) terms “an unrealistic optimism about future life events.” Partly because of their relative pessimism about others’ fates (Hoorens & others, 2008; Shepperd, 2003), students perceive themselves as far more likely than their classmates to get a good job, draw a good salary, and own a home. They also see themselves as far less likely to experience negative events, such as developing a drinking problem, having a heart attack before age 40, or being fired. Parents extend their unrealistic optimism to their children, assuming their child is less likely to drop out of college, become depressed, or get lung cancer than the average child, but more likely to complete college, remain healthy, and stay happy (Lench & others, 2006). Illusory optimism increases our vulnerability. Believing ourselves immune to misfortune, we do not take sensible precautions. Sexually active undergraduate women who don’t consistently use contraceptives perceive themselves, compared with other women at their university, as much less vulnerable to unwanted pregnancy (Burger & Burns, 1988). Elderly drivers who rated themselves as “above average” were four times more likely than more modest drivers to flunk a driving test and be rated “unsafe” (Freund & others, 2005). Students who enter university with inflated assessments of their academic ability often suffer deflating self-esteem and well-being and are more likely to drop out (Robins & Beer, 2001). Unrealistically optimistic people are also more likely to select credit card offers with low annual fees but high interest rates—a poor choice for the average borrower whose interest charges far exceed the difference of a few dollars in the annual fee (Yang & others, 2007). Because the main source of profit for credit card issuers is interest charges, unrealistic opti- mism means more profit for them—and more money out of the pockets of those surrounded by a rosy glow. Those who cheerfully run up credit card debt, deny the effects of smoking, and stumble into ill-fated relationships remind us that blind optimism, like pride, may go before a fall. When gambling, optimists persist longer than pessimists, even when piling up losses (Gibson & Sanbonmatsu, 2004). If those who deal in the stock market or in real estate perceive their business intuition as superior to that of their competitors, they, too, may be in for disappointment. Even the seventeenth-century economist Adam Smith, a defender of human economic rationality,

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foresaw that people would overestimate their chances of gain. This “absurd presumption in their own good fortune,” he said, arises from “the overweening conceit which the greater part of men have of their own abilities” (Spiegel, 1971, p. 243). Unrealistic optimism appears to be on the rise. In the 1970s, half of American high school seniors predicted that they would be “very good” workers as adults—the highest rating available, and thus the equivalent of giving themselves five stars out of five. By 2006, two-thirds of teens believed they would achieve this stellar outcome—placing themselves in the top 20 percent (Twenge & Campbell, 2008)! Even more striking, half of high school seniors in 2000 believed that they would earn a graduate degree—even though only 9 percent were likely to actually do so (Reynolds & others, 2006). Although aiming high has benefits for success, those who aim too high may struggle with depression as they learn to adjust their goals to more realistic heights (Wrosch & Miller, 2009). Optimism definitely beats pessimism in promoting self-efficacy, health, and well-being (Armor & Taylor, 1996; Segerstrom, 2001). Being natural optimists, most people believe they will be happier with their lives in the future—a belief that surely helps create happiness in the present (Robinson & Ryff, 1999). If our optimistic ancestors were more likely than their pes- simistic neighbors to surmount challenges and survive, then small wonder that we are disposed to optimism (Haselton & Nettle, 2006). Yet a dash of realism—or what Julie Norem (2000) calls defensive pessimism—can save us from the perils of unrealistic optimism. Defensive pessimism anticipates problems and motivates effective coping. As a Chinese proverb says, “Be prepared for danger while staying in peace.” Students who exhibit excess optimism (as many students destined for low grades do) can benefit from having some self-doubt, which moti- vates study (Prohaska, 1994; Sparrell & Shrauger, 1984). Students who are overconfident tend to underprepare, whereas their equally able but less confident peers study harder and get higher grades (Goodhart, 1986; Norem & Cantor, 1986; Showers & Ruben, 1987). Viewing things in a more immediate, realistic way often helps. Students in one experiment were wildly optimistic in predicting their test performance when the test was hypothetical, but surprisingly accurate when the test was imminent (Armor & Sackett, 2006). Believing you’re great when nothing can prove you wrong is one thing, but with an evaluation fast approaching, best not to look like a bragging fool. It’s also important to be able to listen to criticism. “One gentle rule I often tell my students,” writes David Dunning (2006), “is that if two people independently give them the same piece of negative feedback, they should at least consider the possibility that it might be true.” So there is a power to negative as well as positive thinking. The moral: Success in school and beyond requires enough optimism to sustain hope and enough pessimism to motivate concern.

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42 PART TWO SOCIAL THINKING

FALSE CONSENSUS AND UNIQUENESS We have a curious tendency to enhance our self-images by overestimat- ing or underestimating the extent to which others think and act as we do. On matters of opinion, we find support for our positions by overes- timating the extent to which others agree—a phenomenon called the false consensus effect (Krueger & Clement, 1994; Marks & Miller, 1987; Mullen & Goethals, 1990). The sense we make of the world seems like common sense. When we behave badly or fail in a task, we reassure ourselves by thinking that such lapses also are common. After one person lies to another, the liar begins to perceive the other person as dishonest (Sagarin & others, 1998). They guess that others think and act as they do: “I lie, but doesn’t everyone?” If we cheat on our income taxes or smoke, we are likely to overestimate the number of other people who do likewise. If we feel sexual desire toward another, we may overes- timate the other’s reciprocal desire. As former Baywatch actor David Hasselhoff said, “I have had Botox. Everyone has!” Four recent studies illustrate:

• People who sneak a shower during a shower ban believe (more than nonbathers) that lots of others are doing the same (Monin & Norton, 2003).

• Those thirsty after hard exercise imagine that lost hikers would become more bothered by thirst than by hunger. That’s what 88 percent of thirsty postexercisers guessed in a study by Leaf Van Boven and George Lowenstein (2003), compared with 57 percent of people who were about to exercise.

• As people’s own lives change, they see the world changing. Protective new parents come to see the world as a more danger- ous place. People who go on a diet judge food ads to be more prevalent (Eibach & others, 2003).

• People who harbor negative ideas about another racial group presume that many others also have negative stereotypes (Krueger, 1996, 2007). Thus, our perceptions of others’ stereo- types may reveal something of our own.

“We don’t see things as they are,” says a proverb. “We see things as we are.” Robyn Dawes (1990) proposed that this false consensus may occur because we generalize from a limited sample, which prominently includes ourselves. Lacking other information, why not “project” ourselves; why not impute our own knowledge to others and use our responses as a clue to their likely responses? Most people are in the majority; so when people

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assume they are in the majority they are usually right. Also, we’re more likely to spend time with people who share our attitudes and behaviors and, consequently, to judge the world from the people we know. On matters of ability or when we behave well or successfully, how- ever, a false uniqueness effect more often occurs (Goethals & others, 1991). We serve our self-image by seeing our talents and moral behaviors as relatively unusual. For example, those who use marijuana but use seat belts will overestimate (false consensus) the number of other marijuana users and underestimate (false uniqueness) the number of other seat belt users (Suls & others, 1988). Thus, we may see our failings as relatively normal and our virtues as relatively exceptional. To sum up, self-serving bias appears as self-serving attributions, self- congratulatory comparisons, illusory optimism, and false consensus for one’s failings (Figure 4-1).

SELF-ESTEEM MOTIVATION Why do people perceive themselves in self-enhancing ways? One expla- nation sees the self-serving bias as a by-product of how we process and remember information about ourselves. Comparing ourselves with others requires us to notice, assess, and recall their behavior and ours. Thus, there are multiple opportunities for flaws in our information processing (Chambers & Windschitl, 2004). Recall the study in which married people

Self-serving bias

Attributing one’s success to ability and effort, one's failure to luck and things external

Example

I got the A in history because I studied hard. I got the D in sociology because the exams were unfair.

Comparing oneself favorably with others I’m better to my parents than is my sister.

Unrealistic optimism Even though 50% of marriages fail, I know mine will be enduring joy.

False consensus I know most people agree with me that global warming threatens our future.

FIGURE 4-1 How self-serving bias works.

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44 PART TWO SOCIAL THINKING

gave themselves credit for doing more housework than their spouses did. Might that not be due, as Michael Ross and Fiore Sicoly (1979) believed, to our greater recall for what we’ve actively done and our lesser recall for what we’ve not done or merely observed our partner doing? I could eas- ily picture myself picking up the laundry off the bedroom floor, but I was less aware of the times when I absentmindedly overlooked it. Are the biased perceptions, then, simply a perceptual error, an emotion- free glitch in how we process information? Or are self-serving motives also involved? It’s now clear from research that we have multiple motives. Questing for self-knowledge, we’re motivated to assess our competence (Dunning, 1995). Questing for self-confirmation, we’re moti- vated to verify our self-conceptions (Sanitioso & others, 1990; Swann, 1996, 1997). Questing for self-affirmation, we’re especially motivated to enhance our self-image (Sedikides, 1993). Self-esteem motivation, then, helps power our self-serving bias. As social psychologist Daniel Batson (2006) sur- mises, “The head is an extension of the heart.” Abraham Tesser (1988) reported that a “self-esteem maintenance” motive predicts a variety of interesting findings, even friction among brothers and sisters. Do you have a sibling of the same gender who is close to you in age? If so, people probably compared the two of you as you grew up. Tesser presumes that people’s perceiving one of you as more capable than the other will motivate the less able one to act in ways that maintain self-esteem. (Tesser thinks the threat to self-esteem is greatest for an older child with a highly capable younger sibling.) Men with a brother with markedly different ability levels typically recall not getting along well with him; men with a similarly able brother are more likely to recall very little friction. Self-esteem threats occur among friends, whose success can be more threatening than that of strangers (Zuckerman & Jost, 2001). And they can occur among married partners, too. Although shared interests are healthy, identical career goals may produce tension or jealousy (Clark & Bennett, 1992). When a partner outperforms us in a domain important to both our identities, we may reduce the threat by affirming our rela- tionship, saying, “My capable partner, with whom I’m very close, is part of who I am” (Lockwood & others, 2004). What underlies the motive to maintain or enhance self-esteem? Mark Leary (1998, 2004b, 2007) believes that our self-esteem feelings are like a fuel gauge. Relationships enable surviving and thriving. Thus, the self-esteem gauge alerts us to threatened social rejection, motivating us to act with greater sensitivity to others’ expectations. Studies confirm that social rejection lowers our self-esteem and makes us to us more eager for approval. Spurned or jilted, we feel unattractive or inadequate. Like a blinking dashboard light, this pain can motivate action––self-improvement and a search for acceptance and inclusion elsewhere.

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REFLECTIONS ON SELF-ESTEEM AND SELF-SERVING BIAS If you are like some readers, by now you are finding the self-serving bias either depressing or contrary to your own occasional feelings of inadequacy. Even the people who exhibit the self-serving bias may feel inferior to specific individuals, especially those who are a step or two higher on the ladder of success, attractiveness, or skill. More- over, not everyone operates with a self-serving bias. Some people do suffer from low self-esteem. Positive self-esteem does have some benefits.

The Self-Serving Bias as Adaptive Self-esteem has its dark side, but also its bright side. When good things happen, people with high self-esteem are more likely to savor and sus- tain the good feelings (Wood & others, 2003). “Believing one has more talents and positive qualities than one’s peers allows one to feel good about oneself and to enter the stressful circumstances of daily life with the resources conferred by a positive sense of self,” note Shelley Taylor and her co-researchers (2003). Self-serving bias and its accompanying excuses also help protect people from depression (Snyder & Higgins, 1988; Taylor & others, 2003). Nondepressed people usually exhibit self-serving bias. They excuse their failures on laboratory tasks or perceive themselves as being more in control than they are. Depressed people’s self-appraisals and their appraisals of how others really view them are not inflated. Self-serving bias additionally helps buffer stress. George Bonanno and colleagues (2005) assessed the emotional resiliency of workers who escaped from the World Trade Center or its environs on September 11, 2001. They found that those who displayed self-enhancing tendencies were the most resilient. In their terror management theory, Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, and Tom Pyszczynski (1997; Greenberg, 2008) propose another reason why positive self-esteem is adaptive: It buffers anxiety, including anx- iety related to our certain death. In childhood we learn that when we meet the standards taught us by our parents, we are loved and pro- tected; when we don’t, love and protection may be withdrawn. We therefore come to associate viewing ourselves as good with feeling secure. Greenberg and colleagues argue that positive self-esteem— viewing oneself as good and secure—even protects us from feeling ter- ror over our eventual death. Their research shows that reminding people of their mortality (say, by writing a short essay on dying) moti- vates them to affirm their self-worth. When facing such threats, self- esteem buffers anxiety. In 2004, a year after the U.S. invasion, Iraqi

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teens who felt their country was under threat reported the highest self- esteem (Carlton-Ford & others, 2008). As research on depression and anxiety suggests, there is practical wisdom in self-serving perceptions. It may be strategic to believe we are smarter, stronger, and more socially successful than we are. Cheaters may give a more convincing display of honesty if they believe them- selves honorable. Belief in our superiority can also motivate us to achieve—creating a self-fulfilling prophecy—and can sustain our hope through difficult times (Willard & Gramzow, 2009).

The Self-Serving Bias as Maladaptive Although self-serving pride may help protect us from depression, it can also be maladaptive. People who blame others for their social difficulties are often unhappier than people who can acknowledge their mistakes (C. A. Anderson & others, 1983; Newman & Langer, 1981; Peterson & others, 1981). Research by Barry Schlenker (1976; Schlenker & Miller, 1977a, 1977b) has also shown how self-serving perceptions can poison a group. As a rock band guitarist during his college days, Schlenker noted that “rock band members typically overestimated their contributions to a group’s success and underestimated their contributions to failure. I saw many good bands disintegrate from the problems caused by these self-glorifying tendencies.” In his later life as a University of Florida social psychologist, Schlenker explored group members’ self-serving perceptions. In nine experiments, he had people work together on some task. He then falsely informed them that their group had done either well or poorly. In every one of those studies, the members of successful groups claimed more responsibility for their group’s performance than did members of groups that supposedly failed at the task. If most group members believe they are underpaid and underap- preciated relative to their better-than-average contributions, disharmony and envy are likely. College presidents and academic deans will readily recognize the phenomenon. Ninety percent or more of college faculty members have rated themselves as superior to their average colleague (Blackburn & others, 1980; Cross, 1977). It is therefore inevitable that when merit salary raises are announced and half receive an average raise or less, many will feel themselves victims of injustice. Self-serving biases also inflate people’s judgments of their groups. When groups are comparable, most people consider their own group superior (Codol, 1976; Jourden & Heath, 1996; Taylor & Doria, 1981).

• Most university sorority members perceive those in their soror- ity as far less likely to be conceited and snobbish than those in other sororities (Biernat & others, 1996).

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• Fifty-three percent of Dutch adults rate their marriage or part- nership as better than that of most others; only 1 percent rate it as worse than most (Buunk & van der Eijnden, 1997).

• Sixty-six percent of Americans give their oldest child’s public school a grade of A or B. But nearly as many—64 percent—give the nation’s public schools a grade of C or D (Whitman, 1996).

• Most entrepreneurs overpredict their own firms’ productivity and growth (Kidd & Morgan, 1969; Larwood & Whittaker, 1977).

That people see themselves and their groups with a favorable bias is hardly new. The tragic flaw portrayed in ancient Greek drama was hubris, or pride. Like the subjects of our experiments, the Greek tragic figures were not self-consciously evil; they merely thought too highly of them- selves. In literature, the pitfalls of pride are portrayed again and again. In theology, pride has long been first among the “seven deadly sins.” If pride is akin to the self-serving bias, then what is humility? Is it self-contempt? Humility is not handsome people believing they are ugly and smart people trying to believe they are slow-witted. False modesty can actually be a cover for pride in one’s better-than-average humility. (James Friedrich [1996] reports that most students congratulate them- selves on being better than average at not thinking themselves better than average!) True humility is more like self-forgetfulness than false modesty. It leaves us free to rejoice in our special talents and, with the same honesty, to recognize the talents of others.

CONCEPTS TO REMEMBER self-serving bias The tendency to

perceive oneself favorably. false consensus effect The ten-

dency to overestimate the com- monality of one’s opinions and one’s undesirable or unsuc- cessful behaviors.

false uniqueness effect The ten- dency to underestimate the commonality of one’s abilities and one’s desirable or success- ful behaviors.

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