By Yiler Huang
The Self-Serving bias is a common thinking mistake many people make. It makes us think that our accomplishments are the result of our own works, but our failures are caused by external factors or factors we can not control. In other words, it makes us think that other people are dumb and incompetent when they make mistakes, and makes us think that we are just unlucky when we ourselves make the same mistake. Most people fall into this bias, because it hurts our self-esteem when we acknowledge our own faults.
One common example can be observed in sports or other kinds of competitive activities. Whenever we score in a competitive game or win in a sport, we often think it’s our effort (such as your performance in a sports competition) that leads to success. And when we fail, we think it’s other players’ fault or it’s because of things that you can’t control (such as blaming the weather for not performing well, or blaming your teammates for not supporting you properly). Also, when other people succeed, we would sometimes think that they are just lucky, but we’ll also blame them when they fail.
This bias can create some problems for society. It would be hard for us to learn or correct our own mistakes if we can’t even acknowledge them. This bias can also make us more narcissistic thus ignoring or disagreeing with what other people say. To avoid this bias, we need to know that everyone makes mistakes, and it is okay to mess up sometimes even if it’s your fault. When we fail at something, we need to carefully examine what exactly caused our failure instead of mindlessly blaming it onto someone else.