Individuals with higher economic insecurity manifest greater self‐serving bias

Abstract

Economic insecurity refers to a state of uncertainty about one's financial situation. It could exert negative influence on one's psychological well‐being, such as threatening self‐esteem. Previous studies have documented that people are likely to protect themselves from psychological threat by evaluating themselves in flattering ways, such as manifesting the self‐serving bias. That is, people tend to endorse positive and isolate negative interpersonal events from themselves in attribution. In the present research, two studies were conducted to explore the difference of the self‐serving bias between people with high and low economic insecurity. In study 1, economic insecurity was operationalized indirectly by the number of job offer that college senior students have got in the graduate season. In study 2, one's sense of economic insecurity was measured directly through using the self‐report scale. Results showed that participants with high economic insecurity manifested greater self‐serving bias than that of participants with low economic insecurity (study 1 and 2). It suggests that the self‐serving bias might be a self‐protection strategy to cope with the psychological threats associated with economic insecurity.