Self-Serving Biases in Leadership: A Laboratory Experiment

Abstract

The present study investigated the role of self-serving biases in leaders' and subordinates' attributions for group performance and their appropriateness ratings of various supervisory actions. Subjects were 144 undergraduate students who were randomly assigned to the roles of leader or subordinate and asked to work on a simulated manufacturing task. Following a 20-minute work session, groups received either high or low performance feedback. Leaders and subordinates then made attributions for the group's performance and rated the appropriateness of various supervisory actions. Analyses indicated that leaders attributed low group performance to subordinates, whereas subordinates attributed low group performance to leaders. In addition, leaders rated the supervisory actions of training and punishment as more appropriate than did subordinates. The implications of these findings for attributional approaches to leadership, leader-subordinate conflict, and leadership training are discussed.

The role, function, and contribution of attribution theory to leadership: A review

“…The empirical research in this area almost unequivocally confirms the existence of this bias and its effects. More specifically, Dobbins & Russell (1986) confirmed this bias, demonstrating that leaders blamed their subordinates for their failures while the subordinates blamed the poor performance of their organization and their leaders.…”

Causal reasoning in dysfunctional leader‐member interactions

“…Self-serving bias. Self-serving attributional bias denotes a tendency to attribute positive outcomes to internal, stable, and possibly controllable aspects of one's self while attributing negative outcomes to external factors beyond one's personal control (Zuckerman, 1979;Dobbins and Russell, 1986). Evidence indicates that this bias is especially common in individualistic Western cultures (Mezulis et al, 2004), but has been identified in subjects across the world (Al-Zahnrani and Kaplowitz, 1993;Islam and Hewstone, 1993;Mezulis et al, 2004;Taylor and Jaggi, 1974).…”

Factors affecting supervisors' use of disciplinary actions following poor performance

“…Supervisor locus attributions One item, using a 7-point Likert-type scale, similar to that constructed by Dobbins and Russell (1986), measured supervisor locus attributions. Subjects were asked, 'To what extent was subordinate performance caused by factors internal to the nurse, such as personality, attitudes, abilities, motivation, etc?'…”