The Truth About Managing People, Third Edition

Truth 52. Don’t Blame Me! The Role of Self-Serving Bias

Did you ever notice that people are pretty good at deflecting blame for failures yet they’re quick to take credit for successes? This is not a random occurrence. In fact, it’s predictable.

Our perceptions of people differ from our perceptions of inanimate objects such as machines or buildings because we make inferences about the actions of people that we don’t make about inanimate objects. The result is that when we observe people, we attempt to develop explanations of why they behave in certain ways. Our perception and judgment of a person’s actions, therefore, will be significantly influenced by the assumptions we make about that person’s internal state.

Attribution theory can help us ...