The More Rational Side of Self-Serving Prototypes: The Effects of Success and Failure Performance Feedback

doi:10.1006/jesp.1998.1362

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Volume 34, Issue 6, November 1998, Pages 513-529

https://doi.org/10.1006/jesp.1998.1362 Get rights and content

Abstract

People have a tendency to believe that the attributes they view as self-descriptive are more important for success than those they view as non-self-descriptive. That is, the prototypes that people possess of social concepts tend to be self-serving. We propose that this bias may arise because people rationally infer from their experiences of achievement that their personal skills and characteristics are related to success. In two studies, the correlation between participants' self-ratings on number of attributes related to a domain and their ratings of importance of those attributes to success within that domain was examined before and after performance feedback was provided. As expected, those who received success feedback came to perceive a stronger relationship between “what they had” and “what it takes to succeed” than did those who received failure feedback. Discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for the development and consequences of self-serving prototypes.

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^☆

The authors thank Michelle Silver, Amy Holzberg, and Erin Pettis for their assistance in this research and the anonymous reviewers, whose comments improved the quality of this manuscript. Preparation of this article was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grant RO1 56072 to the second author.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Amber L. Story, University of South Carolina Aiken, Department of Psychology, 471 University Parkway, Aiken, SC 29801. E-mail:[email protected].

^☆☆: J. Suls

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Regular ArticleThe More Rational Side of Self-Serving Prototypes: The Effects of Success and Failure Performance Feedback☆,☆☆

Abstract

Journal of Research in Personality

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Turning up the contrast: Self-enhancement motives prompt egocentric contrast effects in social judgments

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Self-relevance and goal-directed processing in the recall and weighing of information about others

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Student descriptiveness questionnaire

Motivated skepticism: Use of differential decision criteria for preferred and nonpreferred conclusions

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Words to live by: The self and definitions of social concepts and categories

Psychological perspectives on the self

Egocentric definitions of traits and abilities in social judgment

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Evidence for egocentric comparison in social judgment

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

A new look at motivated inference: Are self-serving theories of success a product of motivational forces

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Idiosyncratic trait prototypes and self-description: Implications for self and social judgment

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Ambiguity and self-evaluation: The role of idiosyncratic definitions in self-serving assessments of ability

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Regular Article
The More Rational Side of Self-Serving Prototypes: The Effects of Success and Failure Performance Feedback☆,☆☆