The self and threatening information: A motivational approach to understanding and reducing self-serving social judgments

It has long been noted in social psychology that people have both a need to be accurate in their judgments and a need to feel good about themselves. Tension can arise from these needs when an accurate judgment about information threatens an individual's self-image. Individuals often reduce this tension by making self-serving social judgments. In this dissertation, I hypothesized that affirmation of valued aspects of the self would reduce this tension and make people less self-serving in their judgments about threatening information. In Study 1, female participants read an article linking caffeine consumption to breast cancer. Among control participants, coffee-drinkers denigrated the threatening information more than non-coffee-drinkers. A self-affirmation task reduced this defensive tendency, as affirmed coffee-drinkers were more accepting of the information than non-coffee-drinkers and intended to change their behavior accordingly. In Study 2, sexually active participants viewed an AIDS-educational video. Participants who completed a self-affirmation task reported being at greater risk for HIV and purchased more condoms than control participants. In Study 3, participants competing in team sports assessed whether their performance caused their team to win or lose. Control participants showed a self-serving bias in causal attributions: Winners claimed more personal responsibility for victory than losers claimed for defeat. The self-affirmation task completely eliminated this self-serving tendency. In Study 4, participants competing in team sports assessed what personal, team, and external factors caused their team to win or lose. Control participants exhibited a self-serving bias about their teams: Winners claimed that they and their teammates were more responsible for victory, while losers claimed that luck was more responsible for the defeat. Participants who completed a self-affirmation task did not exhibit this bias. Across four studies, participants were less self-serving in their judgments when they completed a self-affirmation task. These results support a motivational basis for self-serving biases often theorized to be cognitive in nature and suggest that motivational manipulations that affect the self can lead individuals to take greater responsibility in threatening situations.