Evaluating Others: The Role of Who We Are Versus What We Think Traits Mean

Self-Serving Bias Effects on Job Analysis Ratings

“…Thus, hypothesis 1 was supported. This pattern of results is consistent with past research showing evidence of the self-serving bias (e.g., Cucina et al, 2005;Dunning et al, 1991;Kunda, 1987;McElwee et al, 2001). While the current study addresses issues similar to those covered by Cucina et al (2005) and Aguinis et al (2009), it contributes uniquely to the literature in several ways.…”

“…For students planning to attend professional school, those who matched the target on an attribute were more likely to say that the attribute was important for professional school performance. Likewise, McElwee, Dunning, Tan, & Hollmann (2001) showed that participants led to believe that they had high verbal or math ability ranked college applicants with similar abilities higher than college applicants with dissimilar abilities in a simulated college admissions exercise. Participants also tended to rate leaders (but not non-leaders) as goal-or people-oriented depending on where the participants personally fell on that dimension.…”

“…Although much of the existing literature comes from the social psychology and personality literatures, the self-serving bias could also occur when SMEs are asked to rate the importance of competencies (i.e., knowledge, skills, abilities, traits) for successful job performance. In essence, this is a similar task to students indicating the characteristics important for academic performance (Kunda, 1987;Dunning et al, 1991;Cucina et al, 2005), leadership McElwee et al, 2001), or job performance (Aguinis et al, 2009). Based on the aforementioned discussion, the following hypothesis was made:…”

Know thy self, know thy leader: Contributions of a pattern-oriented approach to examining leader perceptions

“…It is a pivotal, person-based construct that influences how individuals define themselves, as well as the information they recall and to which they pay attention (Trafimow, Triandis, & Goto, 1991). Dunning and colleagues (Dunning & Hayes, 1996;Dunning, Perie, & Story, 1991;Dunning & Spencer, 2003;McElwee, Dunning, Tan, & Hollmann, 2001) have investigated how self perceptions may lend predictability to activation divergences in prototypes for social categories, such as leadership. Specifically, they propose that prototypes tend to differ in a self-serving manner.…”

“…Clearly, the causal relationships among people's views of themselves as leaders, views of their ideal leaders, and evaluation of observed leaders are complex. In the social literature, previous work has shown that when judging others, people compare those others to their ideal leader prototypes, but because those prototypes resemble the self in a self-serving way, people tend to make judgments of others that are egocentric (McElwee et al, 2001). Thus, future research needs to address the issue of causality among self leader perceptions, ideal leader prototypes, and evaluations of observed leaders.…”