The Self in Relationships: Whether, How, and When Close Others Put the Self “in Its Place”

2002/01/01 by Constantine Sedikides, W. Keith Campbell, Glenn D. Reeder +1 · 2 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Attachment and Relationship Dynamics #Social and Intergroup Psychology #Cultural Differences and Values #Dyad #Psychology #Closeness #Social psychology #Generosity #Self #Interdependence #Expectancy theory

paper · doi:10.1080/14792772143000076

openalex publication_date 2002/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

We examined whether, how, and when relational closeness reduces self-enhancement and, more specifically, the self-serving bias (SSB). Relational closeness was either measured or induced. In several experiments, either relationally close or relationally distant dyads worked on interdependent outcomes tasks. The SSB was present in members of distant dyads (i.e., participants took individual credit for the dyadic success but blamed the partner for the dyadic failure), but absent in members of close dyads (i.e., participants were equally likely to take personal responsibility for the success or the failure of the dyad). The gracious attributional pattern of close dyad members is due to: (a) forming a favorable impression of the partner; and (b) expecting attributional generosity from the partner. In fact, when the partner violates this expectancy (i.e., when helshe displays the SSB), members of close dyads respond by manifesting the SSB in turn. We discuss these and several other contingencies that are likely to keep an individual's self-enhancement tendencies in check.

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
• Egocentrism in groups: Self-serving biases or logical information processing?
• When modesty prevails: Differential favorability of self-presentation to friends and strangers.
• Egocentric biases in availability and attribution.
• The Norm of Reciprocity: A Preliminary Statement
• Social memory in everyday life: Recall of self-events and other-events.
• Self-Threat Magnifies the Self-Serving Bias: A Meta-Analytic Integration
• Attribution of success and failure revisited, or: The motivational bias is alive and well in attribution theory
• Stress, social support, and the buffering hypothesis.
• The Evolution of Cooperation
• Ego involvement and attributions for success and failure.
• The self-serving bias in relational context.
• Interpersonal attraction in exchange and communal relationships.
• The case for motivated reasoning.
• Downward comparison principles in social psychology.
• Evaluations of Self and Others: Self-Enhancement Biases in Social Judgments
• Advances in Personal Relationships
• Advances In Experimental Social Psychology
• Recipient's mood, relationship type, and helping.
• On the self-protective nature of inconsistency-negativity management: Using the person memory paradigm to examine self-referent memory.
• The psychology of interpersonal relations.
• The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Cited by

• On Pancultural Self-Enhancement
• Self-enhancement [wikipedia]