Self-serving biases: The role of perspective-taking

Assisted by a confederate, 80 Ss (mean age 25 yrs) performed an impression-formation task and were given either success or failure bogus feedback. A modified version of the actor/observer paradigm was employed with one group of Ss taking the perspective of observers ("observers") and one group of Ss keeping their original perspective ("actors") to test whether the change of perspective would increase dispositional causal attributions both in success and failure conditions. Ss gave greater causal weight to internal factors (ability, effort) and less causal weight to external factors (task characteristics, collaboration with the partner) in the success than in the failure condition. Ss attributed a greater percentage of responsibility to themselves than to their partner in the success than in the failure condition.