The self-serving bias in relational context.

1998/02/01 by Constantine Sedikides, W. Keith Campbell, Glenn D. Reeder +1 · 7 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Psychology · #Attachment and Relationship Dynamics #Context (archaeology) #Customer Service Quality and Loyalty #Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior #Psychology #Self-disclosure #Social psychology

paper · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.74.2.378

openalex publication_date 1998/02/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/26

Abstract

This article examined the impact of relationship closeness on the self-serving bias (SSB). Members of relationally distant dyads working on interdependent-outcomes tasks manifested the SSB: They took credit for dyadic success but blamed the partner for dyadic failure. However, members of relationally close dyads did not manifest the SSB: They did not take more credit than their partner for dyadic success and did not blame the partner more than the self for dyadic failure. This gracious attributional pattern of relationally close dyad members is due, at least in part, to formation of a favorable impression of the partner. Relationship closeness acts as a bound to an individual's self-enhancing tendencies.

Citations

• Self-Evaluation: To Thine Own Self Be Good, To Thine Own Self Be Sure, To Thine Own Self Be True, and To Thine Own Self be Better
• Stress, social support, and the buffering hypothesis.
• Interpersonal attraction in exchange and communal relationships.
• Evaluations of Self and Others: Self-Enhancement Biases in Social Judgments
• The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness: A Procedure and Some Preliminary Findings

Cited by

• Self-Threat Magnifies the Self-Serving Bias: A Meta-Analytic Integration
• Is there a universal need for positive self-regard?
• Pancultural self-enhancement reloaded: A meta-analytic reply to Heine (2005).
• Accountability as a deterrent to self-enhancement: The search for mechanisms.
• The Self in Relationships: Whether, How, and When Close Others Put the Self “in Its Place”
• On Pancultural Self-Enhancement
• Self-enhancement [wikipedia]