Enhancement Bias in Portrayal of Self and Others on Personality Traits: A Test of Two Explanations

Abstract

This study examined whether individuals show self-enhancing tendencies in perceiving their self-esteem and self-protecting tendencies in perceiving their trait anxiety compared with their friends. It also tested whether motivational and/or cognitive explanations account for self-enhancement. Four hundred ten management students from two institutes in India participated. A questionnaire was administered containing socio-demographic information, and inventories of self-esteem, trait anxiety, and tolerance of ambiguity. Inventories with differing instructions assessed the participants' perception of their friends' self-esteem and friends' trait anxiety. Results suggested that individuals perceive themselves to have higher self-esteem and less anxiety than their friends. While males who have low ambiguity tolerance scores increase their self-esteem and decrease their anxiety compared with their perceptions of friends, females who have high ambiguity tolerance scores do not show such selfenhancement. Conclusively, motivated desire of males and their shallow information processing jointly explain the enhancement bias.Though self-serving bias is an attributional phenomenon of taking credit for success and putting blame on others or circumstances for failure, it also appears in social comparisons (Myers 2005;Pal 2007;Shepperd, Malone, and Sweeny 2008;Taylor and Brown 1988). Individuals tend to enhance the positivity or decrease the negativity of their self-view in comparison with others. Most people see themselves as friendlier, more ethical, more intelligent, more insightful, more competent, better adjusted, less prejudiced, and less biased in their self-assessments than similar others (cited in Myers 2005, p.70). The tendency to see oneself better than similar others misinterprets reality (Taylor and Brown 1988) and is a bias. To our knowledge, rating oneself higher than others on a valued personality trait and rating oneself lower than others on a not-valued personality trait, have not been studied simultaneously. Though such self-enhancement bias (SEB) is an etic/universal phenomenon (Higgins and Bhatt 2001; Hooghiemstra 2008), it is reported to be high in individualistic and low in collectivist cultures. Also, controversies continue about whether motivational and cognitive explanations account for SEB (Shepperd et al. 2008). Taking such issues into consideration, this study (a) investigated whether self-enhancement emerged in descriptions of self and others on a desirable and an undesirable personality trait in the collectivist society of India, and (b) searched for the explanatory mechanism of self-enhancement.Most people depict themselves as happier, more optimistic, and better adjusted than people who are similar to them (Taylor and Brown 1988). This is an above-average effect. Also, most people report a lesser likelihood than their peers that they will commit automobile accidents (Robertson 1977),

Workplace Politics and Performance Appraisal

“…Self-serving behavior refers to attempts to defend against a threat to one’s identity or to garner or protect resources by engaging in activities that enhance self-perceptions (Johns, 1999). Examples of self-serving behavior include avoiding responsibility for failing to meet obligations, taking undue credit for success, and attributing success exclusively to the self (Suar, Mishra, & Mishra, 2015). By definition, self-serving activities involve some distortion of reality, either to the self or others, driven by motives to maintain a positive image and maximize resources available to the actor (Halbesleben & Wheeler, 2006).…”