What to Blame? Self-Serving Attribution Bias with Multi-Dimensional Uncertainty

Alexander Coutts; Leonie Gerhards; Zahra Murad

doi:10.1093/ej/ueae005

What to Blame? Self-Serving Attribution Bias with Multi-Dimensional Uncertainty

Alexander Coutts, Leonie Gerhards, Zahra Murad^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Economics

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

People often receive feedback influenced by external factors, yet little is known about how this affects self-serving biases. Our theoretical model explores how multi-dimensional uncertainty allows additional degrees of freedom for self-serving bias. In our primary experiment, feedback combining an individual's ability and a teammate's ability leads to biased belief updating. However, in a follow-up experiment with a random fundamental replacing the teammate, unbiased updating occurs. A validation experiment shows that belief distortion is greater when outcomes originate from human actions. Overall, our experiments highlight how multi-dimensional environments can enable self-serving biases.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1835-1874
Number of pages	40
Journal	Economic Journal
Volume	134
Issue number	661
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueae005
Publication status	Published - 5 Mar 2024

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abstract = "People often receive feedback influenced by external factors, yet little is known about how this affects self-serving biases. Our theoretical model explores how multi-dimensional uncertainty allows additional degrees of freedom for self-serving bias. In our primary experiment, feedback combining an individual's ability and a teammate's ability leads to biased belief updating. However, in a follow-up experiment with a random fundamental replacing the teammate, unbiased updating occurs. A validation experiment shows that belief distortion is greater when outcomes originate from human actions. Overall, our experiments highlight how multi-dimensional environments can enable self-serving biases.",

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What to Blame? Self-Serving Attribution Bias with Multi-Dimensional Uncertainty

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